"Me? A racist? No, I'm in marketing." PART III

Having established to my satisfaction, if not to some of my readers, that groups do indeed possess characteristics and that individuals, as well as other groups, recognise those characteristics and re-act accordingly, let me move on to the delicate, well, delicate in this hyper-sensitive society of ours, to those groups defined by their ethnicity. Again, I will use my question and answer technique.

1:  Should you make judgements concerning other groups on the basis of their ethnicity? Yes, if you have any sense!  For example, were I a Maori, an Aborigine or an American Indian, either South or North, born, say, 250 years ago, I would suggest that a very strong suspicion amounting to a downright detestation of all white men would have been both sensible and excusable given that they were, on the whole, a bunch of thieving, raping, murdering rascals.  If I was a Palestinian living today, I would have a very keen dislike, perhaps hatred is a better word, for all Jews for reasons that are too well-known to be repeated here.  Whether those reasons are right or wrong, or even sufficient, need not detain us.  Were I a Chinese of venerable age I would have considerable suspicion and dislike of the Japanese, and for very good reason, at least, good enough for me!  Were I an American Negro of advanced years living in, say, Alabama, I doubt that I would possess warm feelings towards white Americans.

2.  But are those hostile feelings due to the colour of the skin?  Of course not!  Skin colour never hurt anyone, it's people who hurt people.  The tint of the skin acts merely as a handy tool for identification purposes.

3.  So are they due to the ethnicity of the group?  No, again.  It is what the ethnic group does, not what it is, that matters.  As of today, English people have no particular view of South Americans.  There was very slight hostility towards Argentinians during the Falklands war but within months of it ending some of their footballers were welcomed back here.  The reason for our neutral stance is that they haven't done anything to us, and, they are a very long way off. The Celtic Southern Irish, are a different case.  For some thirty years a small group of activists, assisted by a very much larger group of supporters and well-wishers, some of whom were in the very highest levels of the Irish government, plus a vast number of sympathetic and condoning members of the Irish public, declared war on the people of the UK.  Again, it is not necessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of it, it was war and as in all wars, both sides felt they were in the right.  If I had been born an Irish Catholic, I would have felt much as the majority of the Southern Irish felt, that is, a more, or less, vague feeling of dislike of all things English.  However, I am an Englishman and when a group, defined by its ethnicity, or anything else, starts blowing up my fellow English men and women and children, then I definitely feel hostile! All of this is as old as history and is completely unexceptional.

4.  But should I allow my antipathy to the group to affect my dealings with an individual of that group?  Of course you should!  But exactly how, is impossible to define because the circumstances will be precisely that - individual.  It will depend on the history, the circumstances of the meeting, his re-action to you, and so on into infinity.  I am reminded of a story told, I think, by the late Eric Newby who had escaped in Italy during the war and was on the run.  Hiding high up in the mountains he unexpectedly bumped into a German officer who was obviously an amateur botanist pursuing his hobby.  A civil exchange ensued and then both parties went their separate ways with mutual good wishes. (Some one correct me if I have the details wrong, I heard the story years ago.)  However, and again from WWII, there were, I think, several instances of allied bomber crews parachuting to what they thought would be safety, only to be strung up by enraged German civilians.  So, to sum up, of course you will, and you should, allow your understanding of the likely behaviour, or the degree of threat, from any defined group to colour (no pun intended) your re-action to any particular individual.

5.  But must your re-action to an individual from a (potentially) hostile group be justified?  Absolutely!  Today we have militant Islamists trying, and succeeding in some cases, in planting bombs aimed to kill as many people as possible.  That does not give anyone the right to go off and kill as many Moslems as he can find.  However, and as an example, it would be totally justified for you to leave a tube train carrying a Muslim woman in full burka and mask, and were she to claim that such an action was prejudicial, the only reply would be 'damn right it is!'

6.  What is 'racism'?  I have no idea!  It is one of those words which might have had a meaning when it was first invented, but the 'liberalocracy' being forever engaged in a competition to be 'more politically correct than thou', keep moving the meaning to cover this or that eventuality so that finally it ends up meaning nothing at all and is useful only for the dim and the dumb to shout at anyone with whom they disagree.

7.  Do you, David Duff, believe that some people are inherently inferior to you on the grounds of their ethnicity?  Yes and No!  Yes, for example, I believe that a jungle-dweller from Papua is inferior to me in knowledge of history, but, I am inferior to him in the specialised techniques required to track animals through a jungle.  None of those things are important, unless you are either about to face an examination in history, or find yourself starving in a jungle and unable to find dinner!  What does matter is that both of us share a common humanity.  His life is as precious as mine.  We are of equal worth.

Here endeth the last lesson - praise the Lord!

Comments

[Simon Metz]

I've got no more...the argument led where we said it would so all answers are to be found in previous posts. Anyway, there's no point "outing" an outright racist.

[David Duff]

You mean all those Maoris, Aborigines and American Indians were 'racists'! My God, I thought they were the 'good guys'!

[Don Bagman]

I lost a close friend when a cut-n-shunt he'd just bought skidded over a cliff. Ever since I've felt nothing but deep hostility towards used car salesmen -- a reaction which is strongly reinforced every time I meet any of the verminous scumbags. I've never met one who didn't turn out to be a total arsehat.

To sum up, screw you Duffles, and everyone like you. Goodnight.

[David Duff]

Alas, Mr. Bagman, that makes you a member of the least exclusive club in the land!

[Professor Lovehandle]

As Simon says: please see original responses written in anticipation of this garbage.

As with your previous post, which began "If I am right...", thereby crushing the rest of the post under the weight of that impossible precondition, this one begins: "Having established to my satisfaction, if not to some of my readers...", and that, I'm afraid, is as far as anyone need read. You are the only person who could possibly have been satisfied with what was "established" in the preceding parts of this hopelessly confused essay. The only thing you have managed to successfully establish is that you are a delusional paranoid possessed of many incredibly stupid prejudices against several millions of people based upon nothing but the justifiable (by your own admission) actions of a statistically insignificant portion of same. Well, Mr. Duff, we could have told you that from the outset.

Please refer to the previous comments about the impossibility of making judgments about larger groups based upon the behaviour of sets and sub-sets of those groups. To use your own analogy, your attitudes here are the equivalent of marketing dildos and nipple clamps to all shoppers on the basis that some shoppers have bought them in the past. You are not even as smart as marketers and advertisers.

This whole performance of yours has been very much like a scene in a comedy, wherein the boring old fart is left rambling to himself by the fireplace as his audience, tiring of trying to engage him in dialogue, slowly exits the room and leaves him to it. In the seconds before they close the door behind themselves, the following can be heard from the oblivious and now sole occupant of the room:

"I am reminded of a story told, I think, by the late Eric Newby who... CLICK.

[David Duff]

"dialogue"? What dialogue? All I have had from you, 'Prof.', is an endless list of assertions and insults. That may pass for 'dialogue' where you come from and I must suppose that you all shout at each other non-stop. Well, each to his own.

[Professor Lovehandle]

All I have had from you, 'Prof.', is an endless list of assertions and insults.

Well, I don't know about all that, but I'm happy to let the record speak for itself in the rare event that someone out there cares enough to verify the accuracy of your harsh assessment of my contributions here. (I will admit to being somewhat perturbed by your remark about my supposed "endless list of assertions"; after all, you are a professional when it comes to that sort of thing, so I can only suppose you know what you are talking about.)

You have amassed, by this juncture, several pages worth of arguments and points previously raised by myself, Simon Metz and others. If it's dialogue you seek, then you could busy yourself with responding to them. However, given that you have studiously ignored the vast majority of the comments you have received so far (and, indeed, have chosen precisely one word from my last comment with which to take issue), please excuse me if I consider you less than sincere on this front.

[Larry Teabag]

I think this a tremendously clever way of advancing an argument.

To start with David was able to dismiss all counterarguments on the basis that they were getting ahead of his argument, and later he was able to ignore them again because he'd already established them to his satisfaction.

David, I salute you as Socrates' natural heir.

[David Duff]

Very well, 'Prof.', I will take some of your, er, "arguments and points" from your penultimate comment:

"written in anticipation of this garbage."

"You are the only person who could possibly have been satisfied with what was "established" in the preceding parts of this hopelessly confused essay"

"you are a delusional paranoid possessed of many incredibly stupid prejudices"

"the boring old fart is left rambling to himself by the fireplace as his audience, tiring of trying to engage him in dialogue, slowly exits the room and leaves him to it."

And those are what you consider to be "arguments and points", are they? I would call it 'invective', not bad as invective goes (and I should know!) but hardly conducive to intelligent conversation, which, you may remember, 'Prof', was my desire clearly expressed at the very beginning of my posts. Still, if you want to shout at the moon, go ahead, but don't expect any more responses from me.

[David Duff]

Thank you, Dr. 'Teabag', I learnt the technique at a second-hand car selling course!

[Professor Lovehandle]

Fantastic Mr. Duff. My last comment was posted in the late stages of extreme boredom caused by your inability and/or refusal to respond sensibly to the multitudes of sound points raised by myself and others in response to your arguments. How thrilling that you have stripped out the harsh words and displayed them for all to see like exhibits in a murder trial. How red my face!

Mr. Teabag is exactly right regarding your grasp of this "debating lark". I've spoken robustly no doubt (but then "robust" is one of the brand values at Duff & Nonsense, is it not?), more so in the latter stages of this farce, but I have, in addition, raised a great number of sound objections to your reasoning. Can you blame me if I'm a little frustrated by your constant dodging?

If we're going to cherry-pick my last comment only, like children, then how about this one, that has so far not been presented by you to your scandalised jurors:

"To use your own analogy, your attitudes here are the equivalent of marketing dildos and nipple clamps to all shoppers on the basis that some shoppers have bought them in the past."

Perhaps we can take that one and work backwards from there, and at some point maybe even poor Simon will get a look in. He has been very patient with you, I'm sure you will agree.

[David Duff]

I will give it one more try, 'Professor'.

Your rather exciting analogy concerning "dildos and nipple clamps", which was an effort on your part to indicate that not everyone in a group conforms exactly to the average group characteristic, made a point that I had already made myself when, in relation to shoppers in a Tesco store, I suggested that the manager would know "what percentage of the lookers will actually buy". Please note the word "percentage", ie, not all!

Correct me if I infer wrongly that behind your obvious point that all individuals are, er, individual, you are suggesting that in real life we must treat all individuals as exactly that, whatever group they come from and whatever characteristics that group has shown in the past. In other words, we must remain strictly neutral until such time as the other individual gives an indication of his likely behaviour. Failure to do this, and on the assumption that the group we are considering is an ethnic group, would lay one open to a charge of 'racism'.

If that is the essence of your proposition then am I right to accuse Maoris, Aborigines and American Indians of racism against Europeans?

Similarly, let me ask you what your immediate re-action would be if you were introduced to a rather pleasant, polite man at a party, and then some one whispered in your ear that he was the local chairman of the BNP?

[Professor Lovehandle]

You may well have already raised this issue in your own inestimable style, Mr. Duff, but the point is that you subsequently contradicted this observation. Your response to the veiled Muslim lady, for example, is analogous to the Tesco manager treating all lookers as if they will actually buy, regardless of the fact that in the past only a percentage of them did so. It should also be pointed out that even if the Tesco manager made such an error, he would be less wrong than you, since the percentage of lookers who buy is substantially greater than the percentage of Muslims who bomb. Taking the UK as an example, we have 8 known bombers out of a Muslim population of 1.6m, giving us a bombing percentage of 0.000005%. Judging by this statistic, UK Muslims probably are more likely to buy nipple clamps than blow you up, but it would be equally foolish to expect them to do either. You can add your Abu Hamzas and the rest but you still won’t increase this percentage by any appreciable amount.

In reality, then, your appeals to market research (“Me, a racist? No, I’m in marketing!”) only underline how erroneous your attitudes are, Mr. Duff. It is vanishingly unlikely that the veiled Muslim lady poses any threat whatsoever to you and yours, and an advertiser would certainly not stake his career on those odds. You can argue all you like that all of us do this (although we do not) but, as pointed out in my very first comment, this does not make it correct to do so, in either the logical or the moral sense of the word. In actual fact, an acknowledgement that one behaves in this way places an onus on the responsible citizen to do something about it. Surely it is not good for a society that the innocent Muslim lady is punished for the actions of 8 people, with whom you would place her in a group, when in actual fact it is much more likely that she has virtually nothing in common with them at all.

Let’s take your group. White british males. Suppose I hear about some National Front thugs pounding the life out of an Asian gentleman? Would I be correct to assume that this is behaviour shared by the group “white british males” and to therefore assume that you, David Duff, are fixing to step on the head of the first Pakistani man you see? Or would I be more correct to assign the behaviour of the National Front thugs to a statistically minor sub-group called “violent racist sociopaths”, and to shake your hand and say “Hello, Mr. Duff, nice to meet you?”

I think the latter. Your problem is that you assume that the behaviour of tiny sub-groups to the larger group as a whole. This is, quite simply, a mistake. It is to say that the common feature is not the ideological or political views that cause the subgroup to behave in a certain way, but that it is some wider feature that we should look out for. It is precisely the same as saying that Hitler was white, therefore David Duff is a Nazi, or at least that we would be justified in treating him as if he was. It is to say that Jack the Ripper was English, therefore David Duff slices up prostitutes, or at least, he probably does. This would be transparently wrong.

Similarly, it is to say that some Maoris etc. might have entertained certain attitudes towards a European sub-group of settlers and colonialists, therefore all Maoris etc. hate all Europeans. So yes, you are wrong to say this, for the precise reason that you are wrong about everything else: you have assumed that sub-group behaviour is equal to group behaviour.

You want a position statement from me? Easy. Spend enough time with real people, as opposed to tabloid villains, and you will quickly find that the overwhelmingly vast majority of people from all groups, however you want to classify them and cordon them off from the rest of humanity, want to do things like this: have fun, drink a beer, hang out with their friends, have sex with someone, ride a motorbike, paint a picture, eat ice cream. Very, very few of them want to stomp on Pakistani heads or push Jews into the sea or whatever nonsense. It is my statistically solid position that we are far better off, morally and scientifically, treating people as if they belong to the first group than the latter.

Finally, if I met the man you describe, I would think that he was a rather pleasant, polite man who had some totally repulsive views, and I would wonder what the hell I was doing at that party anyway. What I wouldn’t do is automatically assume, before being told, that he was a member of the BNP because he was white.

Or, who knows, maybe I would ask him if his name was Duff.

[David Duff]

You were doing rather well, there, 'Professor', until your last line which was a gratuitous insult of the type that I expressly hoped everyone would avoid. I suppose we must put it down to your 'behavioral characteristics' but, whatever, as it precludes any sort of useful conversation we had better call it a day.

[Simon Metz]

I'm not sure that the Professor's final comment is that far from your own logic, David.

You see muslim and assume terrorist. You see Irish and assume English-hater. Well, perhaps it's not so different to read your racist views and assume BNP.

It's wrong, it's perverse, but not far off your views. It's what we've been trying to tell you all along.

[Professor Lovehandle]

Oh come on. It was a joke, Mr. Duff, not an insult. I had already pointed the absurdity of making such assumptions earlier, and this throwaway rhetorical punchline was intended to underline that. Of course I do not think that you are the chairman of your local BNP.

I apologise if you found my last line offensive, although I think you are being overly sensitive. I sat here, taking time out of my daily tasks, and I typed that comment out in good faith, answering, yet again, the questions that you asked of me. This is considerably more than you have offered me during the course of this discussion, and I feel it deserves a reply.

[Professor Lovehandle]

Also, as Simon points out, there is a certain irony at work here. The fact that you took umbrage with that last line tends to underline the point that making assumptions about people based on the minority behaviours of other people who look like them can and does offend.

If one finds it prohibitive of civilised dialogue, then surely one should endeavour to avoid indulging in it oneself?

[David Duff]

'Prof', no apology was expected; I am not sitting here dissolved in tears, indeed, when it comes to gratuitous insults I'm fairly handy myself! It was just that on this occasion, and knowing how any discussion on 'racism' nearly always degenerates into a shouting match, I really did want a reasoned discussion on the subject. We'll try again.

I'm sorry but I am returning to my atomic analogy. There is a difference in how a physicist would study *an* atom, and how he would study millions of them as a group. He would apply different scientific tools to the task. I think this is a useful analogy for human groups. The whole point of my example concerning the Tesco manager is that he has no idea what one individual might do faced with his shelf of goods but, like a book-maker, he would offer you good odds on what 'x'% of them would do. For his purposes, that is enough. Thus, it would be of no use reproaching him that Mrs. Smith failed to buy anything.

Returning to my example of the Muslim lady in full burka on a tube train we have two sets of pertinent facts. On one side we have the statistics that only a very tiny number of Muslims are terrorists and that they are very fundamentalist Muslims. Here we have a lady who is, compared to some of her more westernised 'sisters', obviously a strict observer of Muslim rules. We know that crowded tube carriages are prime targets for Muslim terrorists, and that a full burka could conceal anything - or nothing. What do we do?

I just mentioned a book-maker, and what I am now doing in my imaginary scenario is taking a bet. The odds are highly in favour of the Muslim lady being perfectly innocent, BUT, and this is the clincher for me, the stake is as high as it can get, that is, my life. Unlike your advertising man betting on his career, I would be betting on my life. As I disintegrated into bits of blood and protein it would be of little comfort to know that they were at least un-prejudiced bits of blood and protein! Thus, I would instantly change carriages if not trains.

However, all of that comes under the heading of what I call *individual* meetings, about which no rules can be drawn because they are exactly that - individual. You rather carefully avoided answering my question as to your re-action on being introduced to an otherwise unremarkable man who subsequently turned out to be a member of the BNP, although you hinted that you would find his company distasteful. Why? Are you suggesting that *all* members of the BNP are evil? I am reminded of my earlier question: were there any good Nazis? Following *your* precept that we must all, on all occasions, treat individuals on an individual basis, I fail to understand you re-action to meeting a BNP member.

You painted, if I may say so, a rather lyrical picture of your fellow men, as follows: "the overwhelmingly vast majority of people from all groups, however you want to classify them and cordon them off from the rest of humanity, want to do things like this: have fun, drink a beer, hang out with their friends, have sex with someone, ride a motorbike, paint a picture, eat ice cream. Very, very few of them want to stomp on Pakistani heads or push Jews into the sea or whatever nonsense."

Would that include, for example, the German population of the 1930s? The Marxist-Leninists of the 1920s-50s? The European settlers in South and North America? The Hutus in Rwanda in the 1990s? I could go on but it would cover all of human history.

I suspect that you and Simon are young men, well, almost everyone's young compared to me these days! You have lived in a golden age of increasing wealth, liberty approaching licence, a time of relative peace, security and tranquility. Like Bertand Russell's famous chickens who grew used to the farmer's wife coming out at 8.00 every morning to scatter feed in the yard, a state of affairs they had every reason to think would continue for ever, until the day she came out and wrung their necks!

[Professor Lovehandle]

I think I have demonstrated well enough that I understood your Tesco analogy, so it requires no further explanation. I think you also understood my own point that a percentage probability of 0.000005% would hardly be worth the attention of even the most ambitious Tesco manager or dildo salesman.

It is already 200,000 to 1 against your Muslim woman being a terrorist. The odds probably decrease when other factors are considered, for example, how many of our 8 UK terrorists have been women? How many have worn traditional dress while carrying out their terrorist tasks? None? You ask me what you should do when you see a woman in a burka on the tube? Well, that’s a no-brainer: nothing. You carry on with reading your Metro or your Daily Mail or your Spectator like everybody else, and you get off at the end of your journey having absolutely not been blown to pieces. Maybe you even offer her your seat, if you are a gentleman. I was once beaten up by a drunken white male, but what kind of life would it be if I assumed that every drunken white male that I encountered was about to knock my pan in? No kind of life, that’s what.

(My other thought here is that if you approach your betting like you do your Muslims you would make an ideal addition to any high-stakes table, although probably not for long.)

Regarding the BNP fellow: I did not “carefully avoid” your question. I told you that I would think him a pleasant chap with disagreeable views. I certainly didn’t mention “evil” or any other such dungeons and dragons concept. If he was a pleasant chap, as you say, that means I probably wouldn’t find his company distasteful, but I imagine that if he later began to bend my ear with his noxious views I might tire of him rather quickly. Maybe I would challenge him, maybe he might throw a drink in my face, maybe he might renounce his ways and we would then exchange passionate blow jobs in the bathroom. I have no idea, Mr. Duff. How much of this fiction will satisfy you? I haven’t met this guy, I don’t know what I would do.

But in any case, I fail to see how this would not be an example of an “individual” encounter. I met an individual, found him pleasant, and then found out that he is a member of a reactionary organisation. Where does group behaviour come in to this? This is the equivalent of me asking you how you would react if you met a perfectly pleasant Muslim man, and then someone whispered in your ear that he was a paid-up member of Al-Qaeda. So what? This is entirely different from simply assuming that because he is a Muslim he is a terrorist, or that because he is a white Briton that he is from the BNP – both of which would make us wrong about 99.9999% of the time.

I’m glad you found my description of my human brothers and sisters “lyrical”. I suppose this viewpoint of mine is one of the advantages of not living in fear of my fellow man. You may search the archives of history for exceptions to this (and even then they will be subsets of groups, not entire groups themselves), but they will still only be that: exceptions. The vast majority of people on the planet do not want to kill you or blow you up, Mr. Duff, and life is quite simply much, much more fun if you take this simple lesson to heart.

[David Duff]

I really do not wish to be bogged down in the minutiae of my imaginary journey on a tube train with a lady dressed in a burka, but I cannot allow you, 'Professor', to get away with the sort of sloppy thinking that reckons the chances of her being a terrorist are 0.000005% - I accept your math at face value - but you are comparing her to the totality of Muslims in this country. I, on the other hand, being somewhat more experienced in the betting game than you, realise that the millions of Muslims *not* travelling on the tube during the rush hours need not be considered. If one takes that group of Muslims who do travel at that time as the group most likely to be of potential and personal danger, and if one considers that who ever they are, they are likely to be strict adherents to their faith as the dress code of the Muslim lady indicates, then the odds shrink alarmingly. I really cannot be bothered to correct in detail your assertion that there are only 8 bombers in the UK, but readers will judge the strength of your argument by the way you deliberately avoid counting the very many either in gaol or awaiting trial as 'wannabe' bombers. Nor should we forget that the Met have told us that there are over 200 seperate conspiracies being watched as of today.

All of our discussion boils down, in effect, to your belief that people are innocent until their actions prove them guilty, where-as mine are the exact opposite. I have a suspicion, based on your comments, that you might be homosexual. If so, I would remind you that thousands of homosexuals, along with thousands of gypsies and millions of Jews adopted your approach of trusting to Man's inherent good nature in the 1930s, when what they should have been doing was the equivalent of my changing trains, that is, getting out of Germany whilst they had a chance.

I have consistently made clear that there are no fixed rules guiding one individual's re-action to meeting an individual from a definitive group. For example, for much of my life I have met and known a considerable number of homosexuals. I know their proclivity but they constitute no threat to me so whilst I personally don't care much for what they do in bed, that might well apply to some of my more dexterous heterosexual friends, as well! However, their activities as a group, lobbying for political/social aims *does* effect me, and I oppose it with much the same vehemence as I oppose socialists - they're both, in my opinion, a nuisance and a threat - as a group!

You will notice that none of what I have written advocates a violent re-action to individuals from a hostile group - except 'in extremis'. However, neither do I agree with your somewhat idealistic mode of going through life muttering vaguely, "Peace 'n' love, man!"

[Professor Lovehandle]

Well, this comment is interesting. You appear to acknowledge, first of all, the statistical wrongheadesness of applying the judgment "Muslims are terrorists" to the group "Muslims". You then argue that "Muslims are terrorists" becomes more correct the tighter you reign in your group, so that in effect you are actually talking about minority subgroups, this one in particular being "Muslims on the tube at rush hour". Leaving aside the fact that none of the known bombers (and I did mention those in jail - "http://duffandnonsense.typepad.com/duff_nonsense/2007/10/me-a-racist-n-2.html#comment-87590394>your Abu Hamzas and the rest") have been female and none have worn traditional dress, I'll accept the basic logical premise of your thinking.

Thusly, there are two things to say about your argument. Firstly, it makes a nonsense of your earlier assertion that one can deduce group behaviours in groups as large as, say, the Irish, and it confirms the arguments of Simon Metz and others who argued that, while you might be able to observe to a satisfactory degree of probability that certain minority sub-groups might behave in a certain way, this does not tell you anything about the group as a whole.

Secondly, your argument reminds me of something. What is it? Oh yes:

A statistically significant proportion of certain narrowly defined groups may, in certain circumstances and as a result of various contemporaneous socio-economic factors (including but not limited to historical, cultural and, perhaps in some cases, biological considerations), exhibit particular behaviours that can be regarded as effectively 'uniform' for certain limited purposes (although it is unclear what those purposes may entail); however, there has as yet been no evidence introduced to suggest that such behaviours are either exclusively or predominantly biologically determined or are shared by the group as a whole.

How about that? Let's add "religious" considerations to the list, too, just to keep everybody happy.

I'm glad we were able to talk you round, Mr. Duff. Have a nice day.

[David Duff]

'Prof', you really must try and exercise some restraint and observe the rules of debate. For example, you put the words "Muslims are terrorists" in quotation marks suggesting that I had written them. I can't be bothered to check back but I would stake the deeds of the house that I never wrote those words, and it is naughty of you to give the impression that I did.

Nor did I change my mind, or in any way alter my argument despite you claiming that a proposition I had *never* made "becomes more correct the tighter you reign in your group". I already knew to whom *I* was referring, it was *your* rush to quote spurious figures of 0.0000005% (or whatever) that led you up a dead end. Also, and it's hardly worth saying because it would be obvious to the dimmest of the dim, it is only a matter of time before the terrorists use women as suicide bombers. You, 'Professor', will be the only surprised person in the country!

You then carry out your own intellectual suicide mission by insisting on *denying* that "one can deduce group behaviours in groups as large as, say, the Irish", when everything I wrote about the Celtic Irish was true - the minority of activists, the larger grouping of supporters and well-wishers many at the highest levels of the Irish government, and the overall soft support of the Irish public. Oh, and they killed lots of us, remember? You know, not just 'Toms' in N.I. but women and children over here. And you think I should love them!

As to your sadly pontifical paragraph in italics, would that apply to, say, (and here I repeat myself because to date I have received no answer), "the German population of the 1930s? The Marxist-Leninists of the 1920s-50s? The European settlers in South and North America? The Hutus in Rwanda in the 1990s? I could go on but it would cover all of human history."

[Simon Metz]

I'll attempt to answer your question , David. Might take some time so bear with me. Does the Professor's paragraph apply to those groups you mention?

Yes.

[David Duff]

Thank you, Simon, so I suppose I must think of the overwhelming majority of the German population of the 1930s who actively or passively supported Hitler's policy towards the Jews as: "A statistically significant proportion of certain narrowly defined groups"? Well you might say that, I couldn't possibly comment on the evident fact that there is none so blind as them who don't wish to see - rather like your co-ethnics who failed to run!

And of course, the Hutu tribe in Rwanda who, in 1994, carried out one of the biggest genocides since the war, managing to kill some 800,000 Tutsis. According to the 'Prof', they must have been "exhibit[ing] particular behaviours that can be regarded as effectively 'uniform' for certain limited purposes (although it is unclear what those purposes may entail)."

Oh, I don't know, I think if you asked a Tutsi he'd be pretty clear what the Hutu purposes entailed!

The 'Prof' claims that "there has as yet been no evidence introduced to suggest that such behaviours are either exclusively or predominantly biologically determined or are shared by the group as a whole." Did I read that right?!!! Is he seriously arguing that the vast majority of Germans and Hutus were *not* pleased to be rid of those they considered their enemies? Is he seriously telling us that the early Spanish interlopers into South America were not intent on killing as many Indians as possible? And finally, are not all of these people living creatures subject to the rules of biology?

Come, come, Simon, do not join the 'Prof' in his folly!