Case in point: from Crooks and Liars. While denouncing all hate-speech (which is a good thing) Bill O'Reilly added:
The press is obviously pumping up inappropriate things that happen on the right and pretty much ignoring hateful things on the left. Bernie Goldberg and I established that on Monday.To which C&L commented:
Tell you what, Bill and Laura. Come and talk to us again about how nasty and wrong hateful talk from the left is when:
Our own Reg Henry treads upon similar ground today:
- A liberal walks into a church and opens fire on the congregation because they're all a bunch of conservatives and he wants to kill as many right-wingers as he can.
- A liberal walks into another church and shoots a doctor in the head.
- A liberal shoots three police officers who come to his door because he fears the president is going to take his guns away.
- A liberal walks into the Holocaust Museum and shoots a guard because he hates Jews and believes it's time to start a race war.
- A liberal walks into the Pentagon and opens fire because he believes the government is plotting against its citizens.
- A pack of gun-loving liberals forms a plot to kill law-enforcement officers and start a revolution.
On the circle of political opinion, the far left and the far right sit uncomfortably next to each other and both are certifiably nuts. But the reality is that the far left has been a small sliver for the past 30 years while the far right is such a large cohort that it now represents mainstream opinion in the Republican Party. Really.Really.
7 comments:
I saw a couple of the right wing pieces on hate speech from the left posted on Facebook just yesterday. One was a documentary type thing from a couple of years ago that captured left wing opinions right around the election in 2004. Ten or so liberals said some fairly despicable (and silly) things, comparing Bush to Hitler, saying that someone has to be killed, etc. I thought about what they were saying, and then I thought (as C&L did), what incidents occurred because of this hate speech coming from the left?
To be sure, the incidents of violence that might be attributed to people on the right that have occurred have been scattered and few in number. But it is hard to think of much left motivated violence that has occurred since the heyday of the Weathermen.
And Bill O'Reilly manages to undermine a reasonably valid point by going one step too far. He complains that the media ignores hate speech from the left, then points to protests from students in California over tuition increases. "Can't say whether they are liberals or not" he say, then decides they are liberals, and that the budget problems in California are due to liberal spending (Bill has never heard of Proposition 13?).
It is worth noting that the left is far from perfect or saintly on speech. But the right has gone so much further than the left.
A pack of gun-loving liberals forms a plot to kill law-enforcement officers and start a revolution.
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn?
You guys are still defending them.
So how about these Progressives?
Jim Jones whose good buddy Jerry Brown is running for Governor of California.
How about a liberal who shoots her coworkers after being denied tenure? Dr. Amy Bishop
Or the Unabomber?
A liberal walks into the Holocaust Museum
You do know that he hated G. W. Bush and the "Neocons"?
Well, to be fair I suspect Republicans/conservative/libertarians probably don't want to claim militia types as their own. Or at least I hope not.
Neither Dayvoe nor I defended Ayers and Dohrn in his post or my comment. I did point out that the activities of the weathermen occurred a long time ago. I guess by doing that I was spitting on the constitution and advocating violent revolution.
I don't know that liberals particularly want to endorse Ayers's activities, any more than any liberal agrees or even sympathizes with Jim Jones ((who also did his thing a long time ago).
Once again, HTTT, you demonstrate that there is no librul misdeed so old that you are not willing to wave it in our face as proof of the patriotic bankruptcy of the Democrats.
Let's talk about what's happening now, HTTT.
The Unabomber? You've reached a new low for a conservative.
And you won't finding liberals defending plots against our government. Or defending Bill Ayers.
So much for 9/11 changing everything, huh?
But talk about moral relativism - you sound like a child.
Found this link today.
Lest They Forget
Just six months ago, the FBI raided the houses of followers of a 60's leftist radical (Black Panther, SNCC, etc.)who is currently in prison for murdering police officers in 2002. They did not come quietly.
Yeah, so a guy who had an illegal stash of weapons was killed when the FBI tried to arrest him. Whatever blog you linked to was in turn linked to a media website that reported the story. The media site didn't defend the criminal, didn't attack the FBI. They simply reported the story.
The kind of widespread anger towards the government during the Vietnam war simply doesn't exist on the left now. There is some anger that the government is doing less and less to help the poor, but social justice concerns do not usually lead one to violence. Yes, there is still a hard core cadre of confused anarchists floating around Universities and cities, like there has been for at least one hundred and fifty years. But the vast mass of liberals wants nothing to do with anarchists, rather like the vast mass of conservatives and even libertarians that want nothing to do with militias and those people who believe in the black helicopter UN world government Illuminati Free Mason Templar illegal and or space alien controlled conspiracy to control our brains through either chips forcibly implanted by IRS agents acting on the authority of the health care bill (you didn't actually read it, did you) or through NPR.
n'at.
Good for you, HTTT.
And if the FBI thought they needed to act, we Democrats fully support it. If they felt their was a threat from the group, I fully support their actions.
That's the difference between you and me, HTTT.
I'm capable of denouncing domestic terrorism w/o equivocation - all you can do is assess partisan labels in a sad, sorry attempt to justify the violent imagery that is prevalent in right wing rhetoric.
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