"Dangerous Individuals"

It has been fashionable in recent years to portray one or another person as dangerous. The correct response is that nothing is more dangerous to liberty or democracy than that kind of thinking. Which means that it is not only the right, but the duty, of people who hold liberty dear to be dangerous to those who think in such terms.

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, they would have seen him as dangerous. If William Blake were alive today, they would have seen him as dangerous. If Nikola Tesla had been alive today, they would have seen him as dangerous. They saw John Lennon and Ronald Reagan (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/marx-and-reagan) as dangerous as well. The world in general – and America in particular – owes everything that it has to bold, innovative thinkers (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/credibility-and-originality) such as the preceding. Do not claim that you are protecting your society when you are destroying what made it great or even possible at all.

Hurricane Carter was regarded since childhood as a dangerous person. That is because he was a black person who was not a loser and refused to be treated as one. The people who are most seen as dangerous are people who are not a part of the in-group, but have strengthening qualities. They are seen as dangerous for a very good reason. They are refutation, by counter-example, of the in-group's claim that they are the only smart, or successful, or good people in the world. If you believe that women are stupid, you will see a smart woman as dangerous. You would say that she is arrogant, manipulative or sociopathic. If you believe that you and yours own success or prosperity, you would see someone who's not a part of your club but achieves success or prosperity as dangerous. And further along the same lines. In all such cases the person is seen as dangerous because the person constitutes a refutation of one's false worldview.

I once read an analysis of the Holocaust in which the author stated that the Nazis tried to convince the Jews that they were dirt and were worthy of extermination, and that the Jews who survived were ones who decided, Why should I listen to pigs like you? Now calling people pigs is not exactly Christian behavior; but there are many people who have been doing very wrong things. That includes the followers of political correctness (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/refuting-political-correctness) as well as the self-proclaimed men's rights people (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/kicking-iago-in-the-teeth). That includes the Holocaust deniers (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/holocaust-revisionism-and-nazism) and the global warming deniers (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/addressing-deniers-of-global-warming). That includes the followers of Sigmund Freud (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatwritings/psychology), Alfred Adler (http://ibshambat7.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/the-evil-concept-of-adequacy.html) and Sam Vaknin (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/narcissistic-personality-disorder-and-dr-sam-vaknin).

Should I endeavor, as Christ commands, to love these people? Maybe I could make an effort to understand them. The feminists are women who weren't valued or were treated badly and became angry for that, and many on the other side are men who had to deal with these women. Sam Vaknin was busted for a white-collar crime and is looking for some kind of redemption. These people are coming from understandable considerations. Understandable however is not the same thing as right.

So should I then “love the sinner hate the sin”? That may very well be the way to go. Do not wish ill on any of the preceding, but remove from society their poisonous influence. Do not respond with anger but with viable refutation.

You will see that, and more, on my sites.