Dear Bee Happy,
"No" by itself is fine and often justified. But use of the word "No" just to be obstructionist, without following up and offering an alternative, useful and constructive alternative is an unpardonable sin coming from an elected leader.
"No. That's a bad bad idea and here's my reasoning...."", is fine. So long as it's followed up with " Here's what I'd like to propose as an alternative that will satisfy boht your valid points and mine..."
As for your point about Islam....
Yes, there are a lot of crazy radical Muslim thugs. Granted. Nobody with a reasonable mind disputes that.
But the Israelis are currently doing some pretty despicable things in Palestine. Are all Jews bad?
There have been some pretty ghastly, gross and vile atrocities committed by priests, ministers, bishops, cardinals and Pope's over the years. In fact I venture to say that there have been far more people butchered, sodomized, and tortured by Christians over the last thousand years than in all of the other genocides combined. Are all Christians bad?
Judging the followers of any religion based on the most visible actions of their extreme ranks and their leaders (often the same people) is taking the bullet train to a religions war, and a walk down a path that humanity can ill afford to tread.
I think the word "obstructionism" has been given some negative connotation that it may not deserve. I think that when a set of values are being attacked by law or forms of propaganda, it would only be a natural defense to obstruct the advance of ideals and values you believe to be detrimental to your society and nation; if it turns out that the choice to obstruct prevented a series of missteps that would result in disaster and chaos, obstruction is not such a bad thing.
I know that there are peaceful proponents of Islam, though I honestly believe that pointing out the brutality in others to excuse it in another may be unwise. If the numbers expressed as a percentage of population for propensity toward violence and oppression were brought into the discussion I feel confident that it would be another matter altogether; I do not believe that the combined acts of violent Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus could add up in ten years to one year of Islamic religious violence. I did mention though, that it would need to be expressed as a function of percentage Vs. population - and under those conditions I am still very confident that there would be a much higher percentage of violence from and within Islamic sects than the other religious groups I've mentioned previously.
In another post you mentioned the economy growing steadily. I believe the numbers to be false or misleading - the unemployment rate drop was quickly undone by the approval of new funds for people whose unemployment insurance had expired - the numbers shot upwards again. The economy appears to have barely moved at all under those criteria, and I would contend that those "new" unemployed have been unemployed all along.
