[RobertoG]

It's something that also bother me about HN. People downvote when disagree. I think that downvoting should be used for uncivil comments, not related comments, spam.. Otherwise we will finish in an echo-chamber.

When we disagree we should answer. This is what I'm going try to do.

First, you say "If given the opportunity, they would kill every single one of us". That's not true. Those terrorist acts have politic goals.

Then, you say "So if the people who are on our side feel they need.." Here you assume that those people is in your side, and that they shouldn't be under control. Two assumptions that I recommend you to give more consideration.

[ufmace]

I don't entirely agree with either side, but I will say that:

> First, you say "If given the opportunity, they would kill every single one of us". That's not true. Those terrorist acts have politic goals.

Certain segments of the western Political scene very much want to believe this, but I'm skeptical. They said that Hitler wasn't serious about his rhetoric either, that it was all politics. In fact, he meant it all, and indeed went on to start the biggest war in history and slaughter millions.

They downplayed the extremism of the ISIS types, and look what we have there. Just what we've seen so far is quite bad enough, and we haven't even gotten a full look at the situation.

Do we not at least owe the enemy the respect of believing they really intend to do exactly what they say they want to do? And they most certainly are the enemy of everything that we in the West hold dear.

[RobertoG]

I assume you are talking about ISIS here. This is my current understanding.

The explicit goal of ISIS is the creation of a caliphate. A caliphate is an area governed by a caliph that enforce their strict interpretation of the quran in their limits.

The terrorist acts that we suffer in the west have mainly two aims: terrorize the civil population so they force the governments to stop acting in the area and attract fighters to their cause.

If something, their ideal world is not one where they kill us all but where they convert us all.

Can you tell me where you heard/read that they want "to kill us all"? Is in the same place where they say that they just "hate our freedoms"?

[Gracana]

> People downvote when they disagree.

And of course they do, because the implementation encourages it. Downvoting has no consequence, it allows people to express disagreement with zero effort, and they even get a chance to hide posts they don't like. If I were designing a site to be an echo chamber, reddit-style voting is the killer feature I'd want to have.