This will be something of a confessional post in that I have seen the error of my ways and wish to make amends.
For all the times I referred to liberals as “loons,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.
For all the times I have called liberals “lickspittles,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.
For all the times I have referred to the left as “a gaggle of idiotic, self-important nitwits,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.
I could go on and on, of course, But like a sex addict who has forgotten the names of most of their scores, the herculean effort required to recall all the slights, the insults, the downright nasty things I’ve said about liberals over the years would tax the memory of an elephant and the patience of a conservative trying to explain capitalism to a lefty.
OOOPS! There I go again. I’m sorry, that one kind of slipped out. I wonder if there’s something I can take to help with the withdrawal symptoms…
If only I had realized how thin skinned my leftist brothers and sisters truly were, I would never have tried to marginalize them politically by coming up with ever more hurtful and inventive invective to describe their cockamamie ideas or unpalatable personalities in such a way as to cause the kind of psychic pain evinced in this post from Hume’s Ghost at Unclaimed Territory.
This is life altering stuff. Maybe I’ll run away in shame and join a Zoroastrian monastery. Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps. Or the Foreign Legion.
I’ll have to stop laughing first:
Not too long ago a friend of mine told me she was trying to become more politically informed. To do so, she continued, she had begun reading Ann Coulter’s How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). Think about that for a moment. This was an individual who did not know much about politics, was a non-ideological independent and the first person she could think of to learn more about politics from was a hate-mongering hack. This should have never happened, because Coulter should have been exposed for the vile, bigoted, intellectually bankrupt propagandist that she is by journalists a long time ago. In this regard, my friend was failed by a mainstream media which is more interested in using Coulter as a figure to drive up ratings than they are in doing their jobs of promoting a responsible national discourse.
First of all, I’m calling out the poster as a prevaricator. If there is anyone in America so stupid, so naive as to think that they can become “more politically informed” by reading Ann Coulter, I will eat my size 11B Floresheim Wingtips. How about picking up a frickin’ newspaper? Or a magazine?
No, sorry – I don’t buy it. That “friend” is a figment of the poster’s imagination. And only an idiot liberal would believe that anyone with half a brain would fall for such a transparent literary device.
Yes Coulter is vile. Bigoted? Perhaps. Intellectually bankrupt? Hardly. Coulter may be many things but even her enemies concede she has a first class mind. Certainly she’s smarter than the bozo who wrote this post in that Coulter would never underestimate the intelligence of her readers the way this fellow has by simply making stuff up.
But why invent someone so stupid? Why someone who has the brains of a marmoset and the political awareness of my pet cat Aramis?
SO THAT THE LIBERAL CAN RIDE TO THE RESCUE AND SAVE HER!
This is why I respond to Coulter and her apologists like Malkin, because I don’t want their hate corrupting people like my friend. In the comments of Glenn’s post, I linked to this entry I had previously written about why eliminationist rhetoric is not a joke as an explanation of why I write about extremists. You’ll notice that it contains a link to a post that Alonzo Fyfe wrote after his wife was sent an e-mail from a co-worker which fantasized about the deaths of liberals. The co-worker thought it “too good not to pass along.”We must answer Coulter and her ilk, because unanswered their hateful rhetoric creeps into society, meant to divide us from our friends, family, and fellow Americans. The reason these pundits are incapable of disagreeing with someone without first labeling an opponent as liberal, Democrat, socialist, far left, moonbat, communist etc. (and the same can go for those who do the reverse) is because their tribal binary logic requires them to identify an outgroup, a “them” to be excluded, or worse, eliminated.
Wait a minute….hold the phone. My tribal binary logic circuits are corrupted. I wonder if Rush Limbaugh has a spare?
I should point out that there is nothing hateful in calling someone a liberal, or a moonbat, or a socialist, or even a Democrat. And while “eliminationist” rhetoric is vile and disgusting, only certain types of polemicists use it – those without the intellectual gifts to form complete sentences or close their mouths when breathing. As for the vile “jokes” coming from the likes of Coulter, Savage, Randi Rhodes, and half the posters at the Democratic Underground, poor taste in humor is not a danger to the republic. I would suggest the poster grow up a little and recognize that jokes about assassinating the President or Supreme Court judges are impolitic and ignorant – not yet crimes in America, though give liberals 20 years and they very well could be.
Few people on the web are more shallow in their thinking than Glenn Greenwald, quoted admirably here along with “The Propaganda Critic” who instructs us What It All Means:
This is why Glenn discovered that he was a “leftist” and/or a “liberal” for his opposition to the Bush administration. Sarcastically explaining this tactic, Glenn wrote[T]hey label the argument and the person making it “leftist” and “liberal” and – presto! – no more need to address the arguments or consider its substance because it’s all been shooed away with one fell swoop of name-calling cliches.
In a post commenting on this I noted that the name-calling tactic is actually a common propaganda technique. The Propaganda Critic website describes name-calling thusly:
The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.
Sorta like calling me a “racist” or a “fascist” because I disagree with you. But liberals are above that sort of thing, right? I mean, it’s not like calling me a racist in order to delegitimze any countervailing arguments made in opposition to the dominant leftist worldview is the same thing. Coming from someone who obviously speaks with superior moral authority on the subject of race having felt the black man’s pain and sympathized with the oppressed, any arguments that run counter to the prevailing liberal position on race can automatically be tossed into the intellectual dustbin.
What. A. Crock.
And then, to prove how really clueless the author of this shallow piece of drivel truly is, I present Exhibit 15:
The rhetoric of these media transmitters, both by repackaging extremist views for mainstream consumption and by engaging in the ritual defamation of those with whom they disagree, serve to shift mainstream political discourse towards the extreme. I’m passing over this subject briefly but will direct your attention to Dave Neiwert’s seminal essay Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism: An exegesis (from which the transmitters link is taken) which exhaustively explains why and how American values are being transformed and corrupted by the right-wing extremism that the likes of Coulter and Malkin help to diffuse into every day discussion.
That’s right. No, you did not read it wrong. The author of a post skewering conservatives for name calling has approvingly linked to a post that refers to conservatives as fascists.
I am at a loss for words in trying to describe that kind of ignorance. It is beyond belief, beyond rationality. What’s worse, is that the post he links to by Dave Neiwert contains the jaw dropping notion that modern conservative issues have been stolen (or “transmitted”) from neo-Nazis and the Kluxers.
I took the time to debunk Neiwert’s idiocy here. I’ll give you the money grafs:
It is monstrous calumny to accuse conservatives thusly. Especially dressing his screed up, as Mr. Neiwert does in this piece, as some kind of psychological analysis of the motivations and deeply held beliefs of conservative bloggers. At bottom, the way conservatives are attacked in this piece says more about the arrogant, smug, self-righteous, self congratulatory left than it does about the people it seeks to deliberately defame.
What are we really discussing here? Nothing less than the ability to debate public policy issues without one side having recourse to use blood libel terms like “racist†in order to delegitimatize the thoughts, words, and deeds of one’s opponent. This is the reason “race†as a matter of public policy cannot be discussed rationally. The left starts with the premise that any deviation from its base assumptions on race is non-negotiable – an advantage they see as set in stone as the Ten Commandments. Hence, one cannot discuss reforming affirmative action because to do so is, by definition, racist.
Finally, not content with throwing a tantrum about conservative name calling (and then identifying conservatives as fascists) only one thing remains to be done in order to completely legitimize his argument; he must make liberals victims:
Coulter talks about “liberals” the way racists talk about blacks, the way the Nazis talked about Jews. Her “jokes” are predicated on the notion that the elimination of a set of humans are funny, her “jokes” are funny the way anti-Semitic “jokes” like this were funny, which is to say, they are not not funny. They are disgusting and deadly serious.In the clip of her appearance on the Tonight Show, Coulter mentioned that she let her “smartest liberal friend” whom she told would be “smarter than any liberal I’m going to be on tv with” read her book. Could her bigotry be any plainer? Substitute in any other group that’s been hated against in history and see how that sentence sounds.
Where does one begin to deconstruct this bilge? Why would we want to substitute the word “liberal” for the word “Jew” or “black” or any other racial or religious group ? How can anyone be so incredibly arrogant and self-righteous to think that mocking someone for their political beliefs are in any way, shape, or form similar to making fun of one’s race?
This is identity politics run wild. It should now be out of bounds to criticize or make fun of a liberal because he’s a…a…LIBERAL!
I’m convinced that the author of this piece is not serious, that all this highfalutin language and flowery rhetoric is just an exercise in comedy writing. May I suggest that if the poster wants to audition for the Stephen Colbert show that he pick another subject, something more illustrative of his talent and peculiar intellectual gifts.
I hear they have an opening at Hallmark Cards.
UPDATE: 6/22
To all those who have taken me to task in the comments (and especially Mr. Ghost who authored the the original piece) you have a point of sorts when you criticize me for engaging in the very thing I am criticizing in the author’s piece.
The point of my piece was not to point out that “liberals do it too” – and if you could put yourself in my shoes for a few hours and have to read the vile, disgusting, ignorant claptrap I get in comments and emails you’d know that, in fact, they do it in spades. What disgusted me about Mr. Ghost’s piece was his puerile attempt to put a psychological gloss on his critique. That, and the usual liberal whining about mean, nasty Republicans spreading hate when all the left wants to do is spread love and understanding.
BULLSH*T!
Politics is a game for grown ups. To equate making a joke about the intellect of liberals (people laughed at that statement on the tonight show – it was a joke Mr. Ghost) with the stereotyping of blacks and Jews is outrageous demagoguery and an extraordinarily cynical attempt to piggyback the faux, hand wringing, whining left on the victimhood of the truly oppressed. It is wrong. It is identity politics at its worst. Not content with calling people Nazis, now people like Mr. Ghost wish to enable the left to do it and then be able to cry “Victim” if someone dares respond.
It won’t wash. And even though most conservative bloggers don’t bother with in-depth fisking of people like Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Bilmon, Neiwert, and the cadre of liberals who regularly accuse conservatives of being hateful, seeing it as an exercise in futility, I firmly believe that a record must be made that attempts to counter their illogic, misrepresentations, and even out right lies. At the very least, it lets them know that someone besides their fawning, drooling, mouth breathing fans are watching.
UPDATE II: BOZO SPEAKS
Dave Neiwert has joined the fray with a typical post that misrepresents everything I say while claiming that he doesn’t think conservatives are fascists – they just walk, talk, think, breathe, eat, and fornicate like them:
Moreover, as I went on later to explore in depth, mainstream conservatism is not fascist in the classic sense; what it has done, instead, is gradually adopt a series of appeals and memes that are classically fascist, but overall it lacks certain major traits, especially the violent thuggishness that really is the beating heart of fascism.
Note, also, that while Moran is grossly mischaracterizing what I wrote, he neglects to provide his readers any link to the work in question so that they may judge for themselves the accuracy of his charge. This kind of brain-dead dishonesty is something I’ve encountered before with right-wing bloggers, and again lays waste to the rosy-lensed notion that the blogosphere is “self-correcting.”
Did I mischaracterize what he wrote here?
What was most disturbing was, even in 2000, the way the mainstream conservative agenda was beginning to resemble the politics of longtime racists like David Duke and Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations leader: bashing welfare recipients, attacking affirmative action, complaining about “reverse discrimination,†calling for the elimination of immigrants. Since then, this trend has only accelerated, to the point that old-fashioned haters like Duke and the National Alliance are finding their ranks thinned by followers who just become Republicans.
I see the error of my ways. I’m just not nuanced enough of an intellect to detect the subtle differences in logic on display here. Republicans believe what David Duke believes but hey! They’re not racists. Even if Duke defectors are now mainstream Republicans, I’m still not calling Republicans racists, says Davey.
What a joke.
And, of course, I linked to the post that quote came from at the very top of my piece debunking his childish, amatuerish, and vapid attempts at psychoanalyzing conservative motivations. The fact that Davey and Mr. Ghost both are oblivious to their stupidity only makes their earnestness and seriousness all the more laughable.
9:46 am
Hey Rick,
Great essay, but here’s a more succinct response to complaints of name calling from the politically disaffected: Grow up.
Regards,
-the Canine Pundit
1:36 pm
Oh Rick, you are just being an old poopeyhead!
1:43 pm
If I understand correctly, this guy wrote a post comparing Malkin and Coulter to Fascists. And then you said “No, that’s not true!”.
But what if you’re wrong?
1:53 pm
The guy wrote a post criticizing conservatives for name calling…while referring to conservatives as fascists.
What part of that seems a little out of whack to you?
3:11 pm
My question was not “are you wrong?”, my question was and remains:
What if you’re wrong?
3:50 pm
Rick writes,
“I am at a loss for words in trying to describe that kind of ignorance”
If only…
Look Rick, I guess you can’t see things very clearly here, but here is a clue. The sins of liberals that you describe here are exactly of the same type that conservatives engage in, every day, and you are no exception. Rampant hypocrisy, an addiction to over-the-top venting and namecalling, cherry picking examples of irrationality on the other side while ignoring the same, or worse, on your own side – it is all sympotomatic of a personality type found in people of all political persuasions.
If you want to criticize it, and not appear to be a blind fool, then you should start by forswearing such behavior yourself. But that you wont do of course, because you seem to take these habits as a source of pride, part of your identity. And so you subject your readers to these long (never at a loss for words, you) tedious essays that could so easily be written by anyone on the other side, just be substituting some names and quotes. I can’t imagine that you could really believe that you could win such an argument, given the drek that your side produces on a daily basis.
3:52 pm
You mean, what if it turns out that the right wing really IS a bunch of fascists? ...Pardon me while I go bang my head repeatedly against the wall – it would be far more productive than continuing this conversation.
It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: Grow. Up.
4:16 pm
get a brain, moran!
4:34 pm
And to continue the theme of all the previous posts:
You are all a bunch of poopeyheads!
(PS – michael andreyakovich – I gotta hand it to you. Great Comment! Your “bang my head” comment caused a coffee spew. Now I have to go clean my monitor.)
4:41 pm
Despite what Mr. Moran has written, anyone who actually bothers to read the Neiwert essay (and Neiwert has written a rebuttal to Rick’s criticism, here) will notice that Newiert explicitly states that the transmitters he writes about and the conservative movement he describes IS NOT fascist.
Additionally, it is a long and well-developed essay about the way in which ideas that originate in extremist fringes have migrated into mainstream political discourse. One is free to disagree with Mr. Neiwert’s thesis, but to call it ‘name-calling’ merely because the word “fascist” appears in the title is juvenile. That tactic is meant to get someone to not consider the evidence for one’s position, while a lengthy essay full of examples and citations can hardly be considered an attempt do that.
Then there’s the part where, if I’m reading correctly, Mr. Moran is suggesting that I’ve called him a racist and a fascist. How he interprets my comparison of Coulter’s hate speech to other forms of hate speech as a specific insult to him is beyond me.
But Mr. Moran demonstrates his inability to recognize bigotry for what it is with his comments regarding the Tongiht show comments of Ann. Joking about the intelligence of all “liberals” is not making fun of someone’s political beleifs. It’s demonizing “liberals” as unintelligenct.
What is sad is that this has to be a partisan issue. The things Coulter says should be denounced by anyone who values respect and civil discourse, regardless of politics. But as Mr. Moran has demonstrated, a call for decency and respect is something to be mocked.
4:57 pm
PC:
Your comment was deleted because it was non germane to the post. Stick to the subject.
5:13 pm
Um…Mr. Ghost. Does this qualify as “denouncing” Coulter?
She has descended into a black hole of necessity from which there is no escape; where she is forced to please her rabid base of red meat conservatives usually by going beyond the bounds of decency and proper public discourse in order to make a point that could have been made without resorting to the kind of hurtful, hateful, personal attacks that have become a hallmark of her war with liberals.
Make no mistake. Ann Coulter is a brutish lout, a conservative ogre who should be denied a public platform to spout what any conservative with an ounce of integrity and intellectual honesty should be able to see as unacceptable. To descend to the level of your opponents in order to criticize them is not an excuse. And for such a gifted wordsmith, Coulter does not have the excuse of ignorance.
I wrote that on June 6.
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2006/06/06/ann-coulter-conservative-lout/
I was not defending Coulter – unless calling her “vile” above is a word that has taken on new meaning.
Instead, I was making fun of you. Anyone arrogant enough to equate laughing at someone’s political beliefs with racism or anti-semitism needs to be called out to be shown as the pompous, ignorant ass they truly are.
And Neiwert can dress up his slanderous rants in all the pretty psychobabbling nonsense that he wants. The fact is, he accused mainstream conservatives of aping nazis and kluxers.
Also, “Joking about the intelligence of all “liberals†is not making fun of someone’s political beleifs.” Um…yes it is. Liberals say stuff about conservatives like that all the time, make gobs of money doing it, and laugh uproariously. Ever hear of The Daily Show? Stephen Colbert?
And did you plagiarize that first bit about the politically ignorant “friend” who was going to read Coulter to become “informed? Or did you just lie and make it up out of whole cloth?
I got an email telling me that they read the exact same story on another site. So which is it? Liar or plagiarizer?
5:18 pm
Rick,
Here is an example of what I mean by the need to identify an opponent as an outgroups as tribal logic.
Notice that when Dr. Pinsky begins to disagree with Hannity his immediate response is: “I don’t think you understand the conservative argument very well. I don’t really care how you, or Alan, or any liberal raises your kids. I think that’s up to you.”
To which Drew has to remind Hannity that he’s making an assumption that he’s liberal, with Hannity replying, “aren’t you.” Pinsky answered, “No, I’m not. I’m quite conservative.”
I watched that exhange. Hannity’s question was in the tone of an accusation. What he attempted to do was to hand-wave Pinsky’s beliefs away by labeling them “liberal,” despite Pinsky in actuality being conservative.
It’s this type of totalist thinking that divides the world into Us and Them. It is by its nature divisive. Yet a democratic society is based in compromise, on being able to find common ground.
5:35 pm
“Instead, I was making fun of you. Anyone arrogant enough to equate laughing at someone’s political beliefs with racism or anti-semitism needs to be called out to be shown as the pompous, ignorant ass they truly are.”
I dont’ equate lauging at someone’s beliefs with racism or anti-semitism. I equate demonizing an entire group of individuals, joking about their deaths, fantasizing about their elimination from the populace, scape-goating them for all societies ills with the same sort of bigotry behind racism and anti-Semitism.
“Ever hear of The Daily Show? Stephen Colbert?”
Are you kidding? You want to compare Coulter to them? They mock specific views and such. Coulter generalizes in nothing but mean-spirited nonsense and accuses all Democrats of treason. Please, provide an equivalent example from either Colbert or Stewart.
“I got an email telling me that they read the exact same story on another site. So which is it? Liar or plagiarizer?”
Please. What am I supposed to say to this? I didn’t make it up. I didn’t plagiarize it. If you don’t believe it, I’m not going to waste time on you, as I’m already regretting attempting to engage you since civility seems to be a bit beyond your grasp.
5:44 pm
You equate laughing with demonizing. Grow. Up. Calling a liberal stupid is not the same as calling a black man a n**ger. To believe it is the same marks you as, well, stupid.
I am not comparing Daily Show to Coulter. What’s this with Coulter? I think she’s a witch. Daily Show lumps Christians, conservatives et al and skewers them. Some of it is pretty funny. How’s that for Tribal Logic?
5:56 pm
No, I equate demonizing with demonizing, which I just said. You seem to believe that unless someone is stereotyping a race or religion it is not bigotry. Well, that’s not how bigotry works, Rick.
6:09 pm
This has been an amusing set of comments and they have run their course. Can we agree on one thing? The eagerness in which parties of both the left and right attack each other has reached a point of no return. It has gotten to the point where both sides are searching for new ways to slam the other. Boy, and look at me calling the kettle black and all. I am among the worst offenders attending this blog.
And, at least partially, a point that can be made here is the difference I see between the Left and the Right. Ann Coulter got slammed by left and the right for comments she made – and rightly so. But I have seen equally outrageous comments come from the Left and all I hear from that side of the fence is applause. (You want examples? Go see about “Screw Them” Markos. Go see any number of Cindy Sheehan rants. Etc., Etc.)
When you cross the line, you need to get stomped for it. But not only from the guy on the other side of the fence but also from your own. And when I see that type of commentary – both sides governing their rhetoric – then we may be able to see what you mean Ghost when you state “A democratic society is based in compromise, on being able to find common ground.”
But you all still a bunch of poopeyheads!
6:13 pm
I would also add that when I refer to tribal binary logic, I’m referring to a type of thinking. I don’t believe it to be a specific trait to the people I identified.
Actually, I believe its part of the inherent way in which our brains are hard-wired, and its something that takes effort to overcome. Which is why I find Coulter’s outgroup politics so distasteful (which you by admission agree that it is distasteful).
Outgroup/tribalistic thinking has been behind some of the worst atrocities in history. Its something that should not be taken lightly, nor given sanction.
9:18 pm
A major problem with all of the leftist comments is that you are comparing leftist statements by your politicians with rightist statements by rightwing pundits. If you compare apples to apples, your confusion clears up a bit.
3:48 am
Rick…....
Sometimes the hypocrisy in my left-minded opponents is to the point of being sickening. I wonder if 26 years in politics and supporting social causes is worth the aggravation.
During the last two presidential campaigns, I worked hard, behind the scenes for the President. Through editorial writing and postings in political forums, I spent hours a day. The arguments and positions were all fact based and well thought out. The responses I invariably received were ugly at best. Most contained four letter words and personal attacks. Many were laden with the self-righteous, intellectual elite air that is the trademark of those who rely on urban myth more than historical, factual research.
I write a blog also, and have had dozens of e-mails filled with demeaning pronouncements of my lack of intellect and worse.
I am a Christian, and have had to endure the most vile remarks from those who have never stepped foot into a church, but glean a line or two from what they think the Bible says. They conclude that I must be a disappointment to Jesus.
My point, from too much experience, is that when it comes to taking the proverbial high road and low road, those who are more conservative or Christian or both tend to make arguments on principle, while making only joking reference to their ideological opponents.
On the other hand, those on the left, tend to approach these debates with a hateful, vengeful manner. I can count on one hand, the number of times that someone with a liberal viewpoint treated my opinion with any degree of respect.
Conservatives have always been too nice. Our opinion has been lost in the airwaves of a million news broadcasts, over decades, which told one side of the story. When our viewpoint finally emerged into a world that had been preprogrammed, it may have sounded crass.
Fox News and Ann Coulter are part of a new generation that speaks a language previously not heard. If Ann Coulter sounds vile to anyone, or comes across like a junk yard dog, lets not forget the thousands of Ann Coulters on the other side of the ideological divide. I have had to listen to them for many years.
Name calling and worse is the province of the left. Finding psychological malady in conservative bloggers is the province of the left. Factual argument won’t work, so those who are not like-minded must resort to the lowest form of disagreement.
Sometimes I would like to shove my size 12EEEE foot down the throats of those who condemn my viewpoint as ill informed. They don’t care about common ground….....that might require being civil.
4:27 am
Nicely said. I doubt that it will change many minds, but I for one agree with you. Years of lef-wing news has insulated them against anything approaching opposite-view (ie. right-wing) and they still rebel with all their pundits. I don’t expect much change except with force….
7:40 am
When Ann Coulter shares a VIP box with a former President at their national convention, you might have a point. For now, though, I see her shunned from both sides in the way Micheal Moore should have been, but wasn’t.
11:49 am
I consider myself a moderate- which, I take it, makes me a tepid fascist poopeyhead. I have been castigated from the right and the left in threads over the last year. Not more than a few weeks ago, a Rightest accused me of behavior unbefitting a citizen of the United States- because I expressed doubts about how the War will eventually play out.
I’ve decided that it’s not worth the energy and consternation arguing with people who don’t listen or who aren’t engaged in some level of intellectual honesty. Name calling, in that context, would be more emotionally satisfying- but I’m too lukewarm to try it.
2:41 pm
I think both sides of the political spectrum have acted like monkeys flinging crap. The only difference is that there is a greater media presence for the left. Therefore, we hear how childish the left acts more often. This may seem like a suggestion for a hippy drum circle, but I think this will help the overall cause. We are all Americans before political idealogies. It is because we are Americans we hold different beliefs in the way the country should be run. To say one administration is without fault is absurd. It is just as foolhardy to not see any value in an administration even if it adheres to a different value system.
4:54 pm
I consider myself staunchly independent, preferring to analyze every issue based on its merits without regard for partisanship.
From my perspective, I see name calling and hypocritical behavior from both sides of the divide. Both sides are quick to point out the hypocrisy and logical fallacies of the other without considering that of their own.
In fact I had a blog titled “Fools to the Left, Fools to the Right…” but abandoned it because I suck as a blogger.
I just want it all to stop, so we can engage in meaningful nuanced dialog. I hate to think where we are headed now. No one is talking to each other, they are just yelling over the top of each other. Too bad—for both sides have some important things to say and the calm rational people trying to say them are being drowned out by the polemists.
On the other hand, I recently refrained from reading any blogs or watching any “news” programs on TV for about 2 weeks. It was wonderful in a sense. Ignorance can be bliss (temporarily). I think we as blog readers get ourselves all worked up in this because we are constantly in the foul trenches, but in real life, regular people for the most part “just get along” regardless of political stripe.
I have never read Moran’s blog before, but I would think that one goal of blogging is to change the mind’s of those who hold what you believe is an incorrect view.
But how one expects to do that through excessive name calling (for which in the post above there are many) and overly polemic writing? You can’t.
Who here would contemplate any valid points offered by an adversary if every other word was an insult?
The net effect is that polemic bloggers are wasting their intellect on preaching to the choir when instead they could be truly engaging people they disagree with and changing their minds with regards to important issues.
-alan
“I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”—Thomas Jefferson, On Political Parties, 1789
6:40 pm
You act as if I pulled that Coulter bit on the Tonight Show out of thin air. As if it’s just an isolated statement, to be divorced from every column, every appearance, that she has made for, what? 6,7,8 years now, where she demonizes “liberals” equating them with Communists, atheism, terrorism, and any other number of things. She consistenly “jokes” about killing “liberals.”
You’ve dismissed Neiwert’s thesis of transmission as absurd, yet Coulter’s new book is full of the sort of claims that have been standard issue for the Religious Right for the last 30 years. That’s not the far right piggy-backing mainstream views. That’s Ann Coulter piggy-backing the Religious Right.
You called her a keen mind. In her new book, she says that biologists aren’t really scientist, and that an evolutionary biologist is about as credible as an ESP biologist. Some mind, there.
I stand by my original point. I’ve engaged in countless discussions where I’ve witnessed someone immediately respond by labeling the opponent (and as I said in my original post, which you glossed over as if the statement wasn’t there, this goes both ways.) I don’t even see how one can deny that the name-calling propaganda tactic, is frequently used by partisans to discount someone’s arguments.
You want examples? I can surf the net and bring example after example after example. I don’t understand what is so controversial about that.
8:40 pm
DEagle and richard needed to read tano’s post; its thesis is something all of us, left and right, need to take to heart. For example, taken from my gut point of view your points seem like near-intentional satire; I’ve never heard a right-wing personality come out against her, she gets tons of face time on GOPTV, and College Republicans across the country pay tens of thousands to have her come and publically mangle democracy. However, then I remember that I pay relatively little attention to right-wing intra-party politics and therefore could easily miss right-wing criticisms of people like Hannity and Counter—and, I remember that you are coming from the exact same place on the opposite side; plus, you are far more poised and vigilant for the shortcomings in the left than I, and the opposite is probably equally true.
Too long, didn’t read version: intellegent people, of which there are many on both sides, can and do criticise the hateful extremists on their own sides. The “yeah we have bastards but WE police them and THEY don’t” meme is common on both sides of the spectrum, and on both sides it is generally born of ignorance of said self-policing on the other rather than facts. The author’s piece on Coulter quotes here is a great example of the kind of excellent rightist self-policing most leftists will never see (even with the tired old Michael Moore equivalency cliche).
re: richard: You would undoubtably have received exactly the same kind of hateful and juvenile responces if you had been on the left working for Clinton as you did on the right working for Bush/Reagan/whoever; I imagine the the only major difference would be the replacement of arrogance with anti-intellectualism.
The writer of this blog seems unusually reasonable and intellegent for a rightist. Godspeed against all the mouthbreathers on your side—leftists who love this country like myself would much rather have competent opponents than bunch of bumbling and wrongheaded fools like the you-know-who administration. I’ll do my best on ours, although I fear it may be only slightly less impossible to do so…
completely off topic: I use google for spellcheck, and the first hit for “extremists” was a hitlist, with pictures, of anti-scientology activists. I don’t know what people in these parts think of Scientology, but I laughed.
8:56 pm
If somebody truly thinks that this type of name-calling is wrong, the first and best thing that one can do is clean up his or her own writing. That is to say, start with “the person in the mirror”, and make your own writing follow the standards that you wish others would adopt towards you. Refusal to do so makes one a hypocrite.
I am amused by people on the right and the left who say, “My side is saintly and nice and, though, there may be a few of us who step over the line, we are always ready to demand better of them. Your side is not.”
Has anybody ever noticed that people on both sides say this, and say so with equal conviction?
It’s because this is how bigotry works. They turn a deaf ear to the bigotry and hate-mongering of political allies. They don’t hear it. They only hear the bigotry and hate-mongering of political opponents. It is, then, no wonder that the bigotry and hate-mongering of political opponents sounds louder to them.
Ultimately, I hold that the “political partisan”—whether on the left or the right—is one of the lowest forms of creature on the planet and the cause of most of our ills. Anybody who places their identity in either the conservative or the liberal camp will inevitably blind himself to the moral crimes of others in his village, to the detriment of all.
12:32 am
Okay, I’m a glutton for punishment, but here goes.
I agree with Will that had I worked for Mr. Clinton’s campaign instead of the current Presidents, I would still have been on the receiving end of a lot of nastiness. There is not doubt that conservatives/republicans had no love for the former President, and to this day feel much the same way. I can only speak from personal experience though, and I still believe that the level of visceral hatred from the more extreme left today compares with nothing I have ever seen before.
It has been a great disappointment to go into political forums, armed with third party facts, and be assailed with every four letter word known to man. (and a few that were invented for the occasion).
I still refer to President Clinton as President Clinton. I hear too many people refer to our current President simply as “Bush” While that sounds like a meaningless observation, it still begs the question, “do you respect the office enough to put aside personal hatred for the individual?”
Where I live, it is not unusual to see people who have written hate messages about President Bush on the back windows of cars and SUV’s. That’s in addition to bumper stickers. During the nineties, I don’t recall seeing the equivalent public display of loathing for President Clinton.
With only a few exceptions, my entire family are Democrats. My grandfather was a respected party leader in Denver, and I still have letters from Democratic Senators and Presidents that were once his. My friends are mostly Democrats, ranging from moderate to some on the extreme left. I can’t even engage them in political discussion, because it results in name-calling and expletives.
I know I’m going to tick off a lot of folks reading this, who are of the more Democratic or liberal persuasion, but I can only relate experience.
Here’s an example…...recently, I wrote a piece on the awful depictions of Christ that were in the University of Oregon student newspaper. My point was that they were meant to be insulting to Christians, and quite frankly, they were painful to see. I realize that a lot of folks don’t understand this perspective, but it seems like it is open season on Christians with judicial rulings, ACLU actions and the general disregard for how Christian people might be offended. The posting was commented on by a local newspaper in Oregon.
After the piece ran, my e-mail was full of messages of insult, hatred and the most vile put-downs. You would have thought that I had written a pro-Hitler piece or supported the 9/11 terrorists. All I said was that I thought the University’s president, a former Republican politician, should have come out more strongly than he did against the newspaper. I did not call for his firing, as Bill O’Reilly did, but just suggested that the images in the paper were offensive and that the university’s top administrator should have said so. Am I deserving of dozens of pieces of hate mail? Should I have been called every foul word in the book, should my intellect have been called into question? This is the point I am making.
On 9/12/2001, every American, regardless of party affiliation or ideology stood united. That may be the only day that that has happened in the past twenty years. It is unlikely to happen again, unless, God forbid, we are attacked again.
On my blog, I usually send a response e-mail to those who comment thanking them for taking the time to comment. I respect their opinions, even if I disagree with them. This type of civility, that should exist, is mostly gone.
We can zero in on people like Ann Coulter as the extreme example of verbose, condescending hate-speech, but I can only speak from experience, and what I have learned is that there are many on the far left who make her look like June Cleaver.
12:41 am
Rick, better you than me brother. Frankly, I am so tired of the Left’s wasted verbiage that in a passive sense its like looking at that satellite photo of NKorea at night, no lights. In an active sense I can imagine that the right must look like the entire fly fishing nation. We’re all wearing hip waders and it ain’t because we’re fishing the Snake.
Let’s look at one of this nitwit’s propositions:
Okay. Well, which side has as its elder statesman a former Grand Beagle or Empirical Wizard or whatever they call those bed sheet fetishists? When David Duke found his Mother Teresa, was it Elizabeth Dole? Nay, he erected his shrine in dedication of Mother Sheehan. She of the “absolute moral authority” who is an anti-American, anti-Semitic worthless mother who traded fame on her son’s grave which she left like potter’s field (while pocketing his $250G life insurance) who is an icon for the Left. Is it the same David Duke that claimed redemption with the publication of that neo-con thinktank piece, “The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy,” penned by two prominent members from the AEI and Heritage? No it was Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer, from those bastions of liberal rectitude known as Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Chicago that published that anti-Semitic screed. See, being anecdotal in your case means asinine, and like, NKorea at night.
So call us bigots, racists, facists, house negroes, neo-cons (wink,wink), knuckle-draggers, what have you. In return, we won’t let you play in the White House or do anything that requires adult supervision. And, we won’t forgive you for taking away the comedians and debasing the worth of documentaries by slavishly classifying Leni Riefenstahl-style propaganda as such and awarding such with your most worthy narcissistic honors.
6:40 am
Rick, I think that this sentance you wrote is wrong:-
“The left starts with the premise that any deviation from its base assumptions on race is non-negotiable – an advantage they see as set in stone as the Ten Commandments”
Now the first part is indeed correct. As for the second part.
“Liberals” are quite clear that they never want to see the Ten Commandments set in stone.
BTW can’t we find another word to use other than “Liberal”, for these psudo-Marxists? As an Englishman, politically on the right, I still think of myself as a liberal.
7:48 am
Just passing through. Appears to be an appropriately named web site.
10:22 am
Okay. Well, which side has as its elder statesman a former Grand Beagle or Empirical Wizard or whatever they call those bed sheet fetishists? When David Duke found his Mother Teresa, was it Elizabeth Dole? Nay, he erected his shrine in dedication of Mother Sheehan. She of the “absolute moral authority†who is an anti-American, anti-Semitic worthless mother who traded fame on her son’s grave which she left like potter’s field (while pocketing his $250G life insurance) who is an icon for the Left.
Exactly. That’s why the Neiwert guy doesn’t try to claim Republicans are fascists or whatever based on their tangential associations with Duke or whoever else. Duke’s a douche, he latches on to whoever he thinks will get him attention. Neiwert’s point is the same point Umberto Eco makes about the “DaVinci Code” stuff. Before you latch on to some conspiracy theory, be aware of what the political motive for it is, because EVERY conspiracy theory has an ulterior motive.
Is the DaVinci Code guy a Nazi because he propogates the Priory of Sion conspiracy theory, which was created in its current form by a French fascist in the 50s as a tool in his anti-semitic campaign against Jewish real-estate developers? No, he’s just using somebody else’s pre-existing mythological pantheon as a short-cut in his dumb little book.
Same thing with Republicans and “Welfare Queens”. The racists did the work of spreading the legend because it backed up their age-old classic meme of misguided, wimpy white liberals being “used” by devious minorities to hurt the white race. The Republicans noticed that it worked just as well to back up a “big government sucks” meme, so they hijacked it and used it for their own purposes, thus saving them a lot of work. Nothing wrong with that, everybody does it.
Eco and Neiwert’s point is that the road to hell is paved with not-overtly-evil intentions. Just because your desire to shrink government isn’t racist doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to play into some racist’s plan by advocating it in a certain way. Is that your fault? No. Neither is running over some kid who dives into the road in front of your car, but you’re still going to be sorry after it happens. So when operating a dangeous machine like politics or a speeding car, pay attention to what you’re doing.
Michael Moore is actually a good example of operating the machine well. Fahrenheit 9/11 plays with the Fu Manchu meme all over the place, the overall structure of the movie is taken from the anti-semitic/ultra-nationalistic “King of the World” pantheon, there’s a little bit of underhanded misogyny, and he even plays into the “wimpy white liberals are race/class-traitors” meme a few times, but he KNOWS how he’s manipulating political symbolism, so he overeditorializes in such a way to restrict everything he brings up to feed into a relatively benign left-libertarian ideology. If he’d done it badly, like, say, This guy has, he probably could’ve easily funneled a couple thousand hippy college students right into the Militia of Montana.
7:11 pm
QUOTE: “BTW can’t we find another word to use other than “Liberalâ€, for these psudo-Marxists? As an Englishman, politically on the right, I still think of myself as a liberal…”
I call them: “Illiberal”. Because, they are not liberal in the true meaning of the word. Except on the issue of Abortion, but even then you have to be for it, or you can’t speak at their conventions. Their responses are illiberal when considering(?) opinions other than their orthodoxy.
3:31 pm
richard: FreeRepublic
If you want to keep up the equivalency, you can go to Democratic Underground; never been there but I hear it is similar.
Remeber, on the internet, anyone can say anything at any time largely annoynomously, which leads to a lot of people responding while angry with off-the-cuff ad-homs.
As for Bush hate, take on the perspective for a moment. As an example, I believe the evidence indicates that Bush willfully manipulated post-9/11 sentiment and all-but manufactured evidence to launch America into a costly and gratituous war that he then handled with unparalled uncompetance. In 2004, he was re-elected on a platform of homophobia and national defense. I am not a Christian and have homosexual friends and family members, so I consider the former position evil. I never bought the second, and felt sadly vindicated when Katrina showed the administration to have neither foresight nor ability in regards to protecting America. Yet, even though I sometimes deplore our willingness to be duped, I love America—the people, the culture, the land itself. From this perspective, being very, very, very angry at Bush is entirely legitimate. Not to defend your hate mailers—they shouldn’t indulge in writing pointless e-mails while pissed off and they should realize that their rage will never be taken seriously unless it is kept civil and directed to appropriate avenues.
But the rage itself? Entirely justified.