Being tolerant of intolerance is not a virtue

@SW-User Well, yeah, I don't even really care much for the terms "tolerance" and "intolerance". What does it mean to "tolerate" something? To be quiet about it? To accept it? To approve of it? There's a scale here. Am I being intolerant by speaking out against it but not actually doing anything about it? I'm not trying to stop it or change someone's culture. I'm just expressing my moral disapproval of it.

I think it's fine for people to take a stance on something. Sometimes it seems that people think taking a stance is being inflexible and bigoted, but why is it wrong to take a stance on something you believe to be morally wrong? I am inflexible on something like treating migrant workers terribly: I'm not going to say "well, it's their culture". (First of all, is it? Second, certain things are just wrong. Some things are black and white. Not everything is gray and "it depends".) And by criticizing one culture I'm not implying that my own is perfect.

And yes, there is a point to be made about a sporting event bringing it to everyone's attention. The U.S. is close allies with Saudi Arabia, despite Saudi Arabia's terrible human rights track record, its murdering of journalists...none of these things prevent us from continuing to give them huge amounts of money.

@SW-User that's right, I think it's okay to express one's feelings and thoughts... But what do mean with :[quote]. (First of all, is it?) [/quote]
Like what makes you think it's not or something?

It's all about political gain in the end... But yeah I just don't think it's okay to give them attention now when this has always been like that... Even now probably they're kind of behaving better according to their standards which are sucks.
Like makes me glad I don't live there... But the people there still live like that, hasn't changed, they in the end settled to live like that or simply don't know anything better? About human rights etc. For them their religion is too linked with their life and culture so... It's tough

@SW-User I definitely don't think lording Western values over another country achieves anything. There are people here who still actually think we fought in Afghanistan to "save women". That's not what that war was about. And we can't force the Taliban to treat women better. I do not agree with cultural imperialism, even if I have strong negative feelings about some of these practices.

But what I meant by that is that while opposing homosexuality can be argued to be a part of their religion and culture, I don't think viewing migrant workers as expendable is the same thing. That is how the Qatari oil barons view migrant workers. Is that how the average Qatari family feels? Why are we acting like allowing 5000+ workers to die building the World Cup facilities is "cultural"? That sounds like an excuse for heartless, immoral business practice to me. I don't think there's anything cultural about it. It was the norm in the U.S. not that long ago (think how many immigrants died building American railroads). It wasn't cultural for us. It was just what we were allowed to get away with when there were few regulations.

@SW-User I can see that

@SW-User Just to toss it out there, all those workers who died over the past ten years were not working on the stadium. That's the total of migrant worker deaths in the country since they got the WC nod. Foreigners outnumber native born citizens there so it's proportionate. Qatar is a seriously messed up place, and screw them, but that death total got out there without context.

@SW-User Thats a very good point.

@SW-User “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”