JB,

I didn't see a comment section in your previous post about the 10 books that most influenced you. However, I find it very to believe that none of them are works of fiction. Perhaps, disappointed. Everyone needs a little spice in their day. Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville is my favorite non-fiction book, but the practical observations of that wise Frenchman pale in influence to Death of a Citizen by Donald Hamilton. Life of an American spy. Intrigue, sex, violence, espionage, and mystery in under 200 pages. I love it, and I can't wait until my next reading. Kant has greater impact on my philosophy of duty and law, but he's got nothing on agent Matt Helm. It is shame you don't have a fictional piece on the list.

JP
 

As to Prof. Tamanaha's post, political scientist Archimedes might have said:

"Give me a Republican poll long enough and no principles to stand on and nothing will move."
 

I wonder if the facial skew of the cited percentages, even among putative Republicans, is an aberrant result of a bug in the online software platform Harris now employs. However, the metonymical question about "Wall Street", was worth a smile; Republicans recognize a friend of the finance system when they see one. Like Potter Stewart's famous cognitive statement.

The sequel survey of Democrats is going to be a laugh, as well. Harris always has a better instinct for verisimilar results when polling the majority party.

As for the question of the patriotism model of nationhood, perhaps it is a propitious moment for learning about topics with global impact. It seems that is where much work remains asking for our understanding.
 

The moderate center (wingnuts call us "leftists") is sandwiched between conservative plutocrats and the inchoate rightist rabble; the Sarah Palin fans who don't really know what she stands for or why they support her except that they resonate with a resentment of liberals.

The propaganda machines of our age are formidable. Scary times indeed. Although we can take some solace knowing that reasonable people just aren't as noisy as the rest.
 

***JB really ought to enable comments on his book post, for heaven's sake!
 

Sorry, but where does the Constitution speak about a "domestic enemy"?
 

Glenn,

I assume it is a reference to treason, which is mentioned several times.

John,

I do wonder whether there is something about the way the poll was run that led to surprisingly high numbers in several of these questions.

JP,

Jack does not read the comments to my posts, so your message won't reach him this way. He decided some time ago for his own reasons not to open the comments, as have other blogers.

Brian
 

It is good to post here again after a lapse of a couple of years.

I notice that several bloggers with my user name have posted here since. No relation.

The people on the right who are playing around in their teaparty tshirts, little tricorn hats, etc. seem like UFO cultists or other such enthusiasts. They have found something that gives their lives excitement and meaning and a whiff of dangerous anticipation. There might also be a sense of enhanced personal power in associating with "patriots" of the "Second American Revolution"

Really, they don't differ substantially from early fascists in other times and places. Right now there are behavioral thresholds to taking action that are still restraining them from violent excesses. Tragically, those thresholds, once breached, have no backups, chaos is let loose.
 

Instead of the earthtimes link in the post, I searchengined for the home page of the Harris organization. One of their sites offers a set of luggage, and other prizes for registering and participating. The overall experience was unanticipated, quite different from the Harris outfit which has been quite reliable over past years. Maybe they, too, are puzzling over whether they got spammed.
 

Brian:

Oh for heavens sake, get a clue.

The poll was commissioned by John Avlon to provide fodder for his new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America. A big flashing red light should have been going on in your noggin after reading the first sentence of the linked article. One guess as to what kind of respondent Avlon was commissioning Harris to poll.

Harris cooperated in full. I always start reading a poll by flipping to the methodology notes. Generally, polls this ridiculous hide their methodology, but Harris was actually quite detailed.

The poll was not random. Harris asked alleged adults to come to its online site. I would love to know what venues they used to advertise the poll.

The population was then extensively reweighed on several levels to make it approximate a real random poll. Harris did not disclose any real detail about its reweighting criteria.

The Harris or more likely Avlon stirred the pot by offering deliberately incendiary questions.

Harris ended their methodology comments with this telling passage: "Because the sample is based upon those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated." Translation: This poll has no statistical merit at all.

Brian, Harris was intentionally trolling for wing nuts and folks seeking to maliciously game the results for a book appropriately entitled "Wingnuts."

I am unsure whether it is funny or scary that you and nearly every other highly educated Dem here accepted this nonsense without question.
 

Have to say, now having actually clicked through, I think Bart's right. Pretty much zero validity.
 

Bart,

Thanks for giving me a clue.

I am skeptical of all polls, including this one (check my previous comment responding to John), because there are many ways to get skewed results.

Having said that, even if they were searching for wingnuts, as you suggest, the high numbers show that they did not have to look very hard to find them. So discounting the numbers does not mean the beliefs don't exist.

The point remains that a sizable number of people hold extreme views about Obama--believing that he is a traitor to the nation. And inflammatory rhetoric spewed by the right is fanning this paranoia.

This is scary because it increases the risk of violence directed at Obama. Rather than take this risk seriously, however, you dump on "highly educated Dems" as clueless or deluded for expressing concern about the implications of extremism.

Brian

(P.S. I should correct your assertion that I am a Democrat. I'm not, and have never been a member of either part. In my view both are substantially corrupt and do poorly for the American people. I guess that makes me almost a tea bagger!)
 

Brian,

We're you overly concerned when the lefties we're using similar rhetoric with GWB? There are in fact still a number of flash games where you can kill Bush easily accessible on the web. He was routinely called a traitor, racist, war criminal, criminal criminal, and accused by just about every commentator on Democratic Underground of being behind 9/11 and "keeping bin Laden on ice for the 2004 election" (remember that one?). In fact, in an actual scientific poll, 51% of democrats either thought or weren't sure that Bush was behind 9/11.

In reality, I don't think those democrats actually thought that when pressed and don't think these republicans think anything either other than heated rhetoric.

The moral of the story is there are plenty of whackadoodles on both sides of the aisle, in my experience, the more power the other side has, the louder and whackier the opposition is. It's been this way forever. I really fail to see how your post is anything more than a thumb-sucking lament that some large number of Americans really don't like your guy, and some of them are a bit over the top about it. So what else is new? How is this any different than what was said regarding GWB for the previous 8 years other than you dislike Bush and like Obama?
 

I share the skepticism about the reliability of the online poll, though I'm also skeptical that it was commissioned by John Avlon or anyone connected with him.

Even if the numbers are exaggerated, there's no doubt that views not well informed by fact and distorted by extremist sensibilities are a significant problem. It's not limited to one side, of course (as Avlon claims to make clear in his book). Republican extremism particularly scares liberals, but it wasn't long ago that the most influential progressive blogs were calling Bush a "fascist," claiming contrary to evidence that he sent soldiers to war in Iraq to benefit American oil companies, claiming Cheney was literally a sociopath, calling Palin a liar about whether she was the mother of her child, etc. Just a few weeks ago much of the Left was shaking with rage over Scott Horton's ill-founded death-by-torture-cover-up Guantanamo story for Harper's.

Such beliefs are especially incubated and propagated through polarized media that attracts people who like having their particular preconceptions and emotions reinforced. Extremists on one side tend to create and reinforce extremists on the other.

I suppose a patriot concerned about such things can avoid contributing to them by being fair, can support media that is fair and not polarized, and can answer unfairness and polarization with fair criticism and calls for sanity.

(PS--"tea bagger" isn't a proper term for Tea Partier.)
 

Scott,

You are correct that the left demonized Bush, including calling him a fascist.

However, I don't believe the left ever charged Bush with being a traitor or with being anti-American (or not an American citizen at all!).

Obama is seen as the enemy within. That is a dangerous view.

Brian
 

A recent poll of the Florida Senate race showed Marco Rubio, the more conservative candidate, opening up a 30-point lead over Gov. Charlie Crist in the Republican primary. Nothing remarkable there; Republicans are entitled to nominate the more conservative candidate if they like.

But the crosstabs were remarkable. Among Republicans who believe the President was born in the United States, it turns out CRIST is the one with a 40-point lead! Sadly for Crist, there's not nearly enough Republicans in that category to make a difference.
 

"Wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns (61%)"

So, 39% being wrong about that isn't too bad.

He defended the law in D.C. that got struck down in Heller. He has supported gun bans in Illinois. Favored keeping the 'assault weapon' ban, and expanding it. In short, he favors every last gun control law to ever be proposed.

And yet, he supports the 'right to keep and bear arms'. Yeah, right.
His position is pretty common among Democrats: He supports a 'right' which bears no resemblance to anything that deserves to be called a right, a 'right' which never gets in the way of anything gun controllers want to do.
 

Brian:

Every ideology has a lunatic fringe. However, they are relatively few. This poll was designed to fraudulently imply that one party is dominated by its fringe and your post bought into and advanced that fraud.

Harris can do the same thing to the Dems with the same methodology and a series of incendiary questions about George Bush. I am sure that the Freepers or some such bloggers would similarly buy into and advance that fraud against the Dems.

You are better than that. Withdraw the post or update it with the appropriate cautionary notes.

P.S. When was the last time you voted for a Republican? ;^)
 

That even the battiest of moonbats could hope to set complaints about and critiques of Captain Codpiece cheek-by-jowl with overt calls to assassinate the current President, well, it's a shame anybody feels the need to take such inanities at face value. The PNAC, through it's sock-puppet George W. Bush, actively pursued exactly the course of imperialist adventurism it advertised on it's site and more actively rolled back civil liberties than any administration in recent memory, and continues, via Cheney's daughter and the like, to forward an agenda of literal fascism, of paternalistic, corporatist, jingoistic militarism. Compare this with the Clinton-lite administration of Barrack Hussein Obama which has barely managed to push through a troubling and flawed health care bill. Merely disagreeing with Curious George was deemed treason by the moonbats, as contrasted with gleeful abandon to be witnessed by teabaggers and their ilk in all manner of opposition to the Commander in Chief. It seems the respect due that position is vastly less when there is a black Democrat holding it rather than the usurping son of an ex-chief spook who himself spent 12 years in the White House.
 

Bart, you ass, did you really issue a "correct or withdraw" order to your host? I begin to agree with that group of our hosts who find you have so fully fouled the comments process as to make disabling them the only smart move. What a pity.
 

Bart,

Since you asked, I voted twice for a Republican in recent years--Bloomberg for NY mayor.

I agree that both sides have their loonies, but you still appear to be evading/avoiding the core point: significant numbers of people (more than the usual kook fringe) hold these beliefs and, more to the point, they are especially dangerous because they portray Obama as a traitor to America.

Brian
 

"demonized Bush, including calling him a fascist"

If the people pointed out various things he did or supported that were "fascist," which I think in some cases was a reasonable allegation, he wouldn't have been "demonized."

The term seems to suggest some exaggerated act of some sort, not a valid description that can be done in a way that to me doesn't connote "demonize." That is, that he was some "demon" or anti-Christ rather just someone who did things that quite rationally can be deemed "fascist."

BTW, was a similar number of Republican district offices vandalized? A similar number of racist or sexist protesters around? Something akin to "Obama isn't a citizen" supported by various Democrat officials and a chunk of their constituents?

Maybe, Brian should join a coffee party?
 

How would our resident lunatic fringer (formerly the Backpacker) have responded to this Harris poll?

His directive to Brian:

"Withdraw the post or update it with the appropriate cautionary notes."

surely indicates he is the fringe on top of the surrey of his "idiotology."
 

I don't know why being called a traitor is worse than being called a fascist, with its Nazi overtones, but in fact Bush was called a traitor, and I don't doubt that many liberals would have answered a poll by agreeing he was a traitor. A few easily found examples:

http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=20228
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/14/804490/-Why-Do-I-Call-It-Bush-Treason
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/11/21/george_bush_traitor_and_liar_i/

He was also called anti-American, un-American, and every variation. He was indeed regarded by many as the enemy within, as serving as the result of an illegal Supreme Court coup, of putting personal interest above human life, etc. I remember liberals online expressing pleasure at the idea that he would die, that it would be good for the country and the world, that he was a murderer himself, etc. These liberals were seldom called on such talk by other liberals, more often cheered and egged on. And that was at some of the more reasonable liberal blogs, not the fringe.

People are naturally more sensitive to and disturbed by the rhetoric that attacks what they like. I've found liberals have a very poor awareness or memory of what some called Bush Derangement Syndrome, even though it was widespread and is still easily observed on the Left.
 

Brian,

Well, this could go on all night, so I will just bring one more point and leave it be. Actually, plenty on the left charged Bush with being a traitor (heck Russ Baker even wrote a book suggesting GHWB was somehow involved in JFK's assassination!). Michael Moore said he was treasonous (Treason and Nothing Less: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/treason-and-nothing-less

Gore Vidal actually wrote an article called . . . wait for it . . . The Enemy Within! actually accusing Bush and Co of being complicit in 9/11 (This was in 2002 I think). Now these are three examples of public left figures, not someone in their basement cooking meth. Michael Moore was invited to Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic Convention in 2004 if I recall, Gore Vidal has always been a darling of the left to the point Hillary and Chelsea Clinton made it a point to make a pilgrimage to Italy to kiss his ring a few years back, and Russ Baker, well I actually can't remember much about him other than Bill Moyers and Dan Rather like him.

Long story short, yes, the left has accused Bush of treason (I think being involved in the assassination of a president and murder of 3000 citizens counts) and it is mainstream figures on the left. Sure the right has their Coultures and Malkins, but that just proves my point, both sides got their nuts.
 

Brian:

These questions are rather cleverly phrased to start with conservative conceptions about Obama to get them to want to say yes and then push the position one or two steps further to make a yes answer sound loony. And like any good propaganda, there some or even complete truth in the positions.

Obama is in fact a socialist and many of his policies are socialist. I have posted on this extensively before and am 150 pages into writing a book on the subject. However, because of the McCarty CW, calling someone a socialist or worse a communist is allegedly bigoted.

Obama does in fact support firearm prohibition laws and came out in support of DC in the Heller case.

Obama has repeatedly argued in favor of ceding measures of American sovereignty to world bodies, but the questioner cleverly inserts the "one world government" phrase of the LaRouchies to make it sound crazy.

Many of Obama's policies are of questionable constitutionality: Start with the individual mandate.

Does Obama resent America's heritage? Is he a racist? It does not appear so if you limit yourself to Obama's public statements. However, Obama's friends and mentors certainly have those resentments and Wright is a raving racist. Is it crazy to believe that you cannot sit in the pew of the Right Reverend Wright's church for 20 years and not walk out in disgust without sharing some of Wright's whacked out black liberation views? Even if Obama simply attended to maintain his street cred, which is the most likely reason, putting yourself in that position certainly raises legitimate concerns among casual observers.

"Does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do?" I am surprised that a substantial percentage of Dems do not express this view given that I read this refrain most often in the lefty blogosphere. Given the disparity between his populist rhetoric about greedy bankers and his cautious policy approach, one can reasonably assume he is deferring to the bankers.

The birther thing is perhaps the greatest urban myth in the GOP ranking up with any number Dem urban myths about Bush stealing the election. I wondered for awhile why Obama does not simply put this to bed by telling Hawaii to release his long form birth certificate. However, I think Obama actually wants this urban myth to endure so he can discredit political opponents.
 

The "domestic enemy" question is almost a double entendre to conservatives. The legal term means someone who seeks the overthrow of the Republic through force. However, what if the person wants to overthrow the Republic by lawful means or at least legal process. We conservatives see most of the progressive political project as a direct assault on the constitutional checks and balances meant to limit government and preserve our liberties. Obama is very much advancing that project. Does that make him a "domestic enemy" to our limited government Republic? Words have different meanings to different groups.

Want to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers? This is taking legitimate concerns about Obama's talking down the economy at the beginning of his term, implementation of economically harmful policies and nonsense like giving Miranda to al Qaeda one step too far. This is a good example of the technique of appealing to conservative preconceptions to get to yes and then going one step further.

Is doing many of the things that Hitler did? This is a cute question mean to invoke images of Hitler as conqueror and mass murderer. In fact, Avlon has done his research and discovered conservative blogosphere comparisons of Obamas statist economic programs and youth programs with those of the Nazi and Italian fascists.

I personally think that Obama's statist economic programs more closely resemble Peronist Agentina, but there are parallels with especially the Italian fascists.

What is more disturbing were the real life videos which made their way around the conservative blogosphere showing public school teachers leading students in songs praising Obama and a really disturbing video for young people made by Demi Moore where various Hollywood lefties chanted: ""I Pledge To Be A Servant To Barack Obama" The parallels to North Korean and Nazi indoctrination techniques is far too close for comfort.

One of the most disturbing things to arise from the Christian "end of days" movement's entry into politics is that they have merged their search for the anti-christ with their opposition to the secular leftist politics to label political opponents as the anti-christ. Interestingly, they only grant this honorific to successful Dems like Clinton and Obama. This is pretty far out there stuff, but no more so than Obama's own black theology ranting mentor. America can get really interesting sometimes. If you don't tar the entire GOP with the end of days crowd, I won't call Obama a raving lunatic racist because of Rev. Wright.

BTW Bloomberg is perhaps the ultimate RINO. He is far closer to Pelosi than to Reagan.
 

Hitler had a youth program; Obama has a youth program! It's like a Jon Stewart parody.

"How dare you smear conservatives by claiming they believe these outrageous statements... most of which, now that I think about it, I believe as well."
 

Our resident apologist for all things Bush/Cheney for its inglorious 8 years reports that he has 150 pages of his work of friction [sick!] on Obama already written and this well before half of Obama's current term. Perhaps when our yodeler is ready for self publication (literary masturbation?), he will commission a Harris poll to promote his tome-lite.

By the way, has our yodeler provided proof that the Harris poll of this post actually:

" ... was commissioned by John Avlon to provide fodder for his new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America."

When that book is published, let's check the index for any reference to our resident fringer.
 

Baghdad, are you trying to debunk that poll or confirm it's accuracy?
 

BDP:Words have different meanings to different groups.

Just remember that the next time you're defending originalism!
 

I remember liberals online expressing pleasure at the idea that he would die, that it would be good for the country and the world, that he was a murderer himself, etc. These liberals were seldom called on such talk by other liberals, more often cheered and egged on. And that was at some of the more reasonable liberal blogs, not the fringe.

I'm not afraid of blogs, even supposedly reasonable liberal ones where people threaten the President. Blogs may be all the rage, but they aren't attached to party leadership.

When you have eliminationism being promoted by "conservative" media figures with TV and radio shows, it's a radically different scale than the comments at "reasonable liberal blogs." Hatred is fanned by these people exaggerating and misrepresenting opposition viewpoints, and then they suggest violent courses of action to their listeners/viewers--is it really any surprise that people are throwing bricks through windows and making death threats?

At what point, if any, does eliminationist rhetoric cross from "free speech" to inciting a riot/assault/murder?

If I have millions of loyal listeners, can I say that "my only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the NewsCorp Building?" If someone subsequently blows up the NewsCorp Building, am I responsible or is it solely the fault of the unstable person that set off the bomb?

How about if I use my show to say something like: "we shouldn’t kill all conservatives. We should leave enough so we can have two on every campus -- living fossils -- so we will never forget what these people stood for."

If the Democratic Party dismisses me as an incendiary and ugly entertainer, it would certainly be warranted. However, if they retract that statement and issue an apology to me, does that constitute tacit support of my viewpoint?

Who is culpable when people begin killing conservatives because they are conservatives?

And if the liberal fringe is consigned to the blogosphere, but the conservative fringe is consigned to mass media, is it really acceptable to issue a "you guys do it, too" statement and feel that all is well and balanced in the world? It's akin to calling Chile a world seapower just like us because hey, they have boats, too.
 

PMS_CC said...

BDP:Words have different meanings to different groups.

Just remember that the next time you're defending originalism!

As soon as I made that post, I knew someone here would take the open shot. You did not disappoint. ;^)

Original meaning does not argue that words mean the same to every person, but rather than they have generally accepted meanings at the time they are used.

When you have eliminationism being promoted by "conservative" media figures with TV and radio shows, it's a radically different scale than the comments at "reasonable liberal blogs."

What precisely is "eliminationism" and provide actual examples of "conservative" media figures employing it.

Intentionally soliciting others to commit crime is itself a crime in almost every state.

A statement along the lines of "Will anyone rid me of this meddlesome priest" is not generally a crime nor should it be.

However, correctly noting that our present government is acting autocratically and corruptly in enacting law opposed by the People is hardly an incitement to violence.

Even more provocative statements like Obama is a threat to our Republic is hardly an incitement to violence.

If one starts calling statements of political opinion such as these a crime, then I would suggest that that person is the threat.
 

But aren't items 1, 3, and 5 on your original list arguable propositions, and didn't Democrats believe many equally outlandish things about Bush?
 

PMS_CC, if I understand your comment correctly, you find conservative extremism more troubling not because its content is worse but because it's more efficiently disseminated. That's a valid concern, but it doesn't make the problem more acceptable on the liberal side, as far as I can tell. It's a good reason to oppose extremist mass media and be glad liberal extremism isn't better disseminated.

As for who is culpable when there is violence, similar issues arise in regard to violent pornography and video games. I think there are reasons to worry they may all raise the risks of violence, but many disagree.
 

But aren't items 1, 3, and 5 on your original list arguable propositions, and didn't Democrats believe many equally outlandish things about Bush?

I don't know what "socialist" means here. Those people who want the government to keep their hands off their Medicare apparently don't think "socialism" involves that. So, it's hard to tell.

I don't know how it is "arguable" that a long practicing Christian (who before that was something of an agnostic) is a Muslim. Nor what similar thing people said about Bush on that front. Their support of controversial religious figures would be a different matter.

I don't know what "many things" they speak of, especially if they think Bush and others didn't do the exact same thing. Also, yes, I think it is not "equally outlandish" to say Bush did many things unconstitutional. It helps that the SC agreed on that front.

Also, the list has more than three items. You have to look at the whole and the percentages.
 

At what point, if any, does eliminationist rhetoric cross from "free speech" to inciting a riot/assault/murder?

Under Brandenburg v. Ohio, speech can be prohibited if it (1) is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and (2) it is "likely to incite or produce such action."

While I think the rhetoric is irresponsible, I don't think it has yet crossed this line. But the Republicans are playing a dangerous game indeed.

That's a valid concern, but it doesn't make the problem more acceptable on the liberal side, as far as I can tell.

This strikes me as false equivalence. I'm sure there are individual nuts who made suggestions of violence on some liberal blog somewhere. There are some important differences, though:

1. There's far less immediacy to internet comments than to radio addresses or speeches. This has to do with the different ways we react to speech v. words.

2. The people calling for violence are much more obscure and have no influence.

3. The sheer quantity of the calls for violence matters. An isolated blog comment is bad, but likely not serious as a threat. Dozens, possibly hundreds, might be. The protests against the Health Care bill included FAR more violent rhetoric, whether in speeches, signs, gestures, or other ways, than I've seen since the 60s.
 

Mark, your points don't suggest to me that liberal extremism is more acceptable, only that it may be less effectual because of various factors not related to its content.

The kinds of comments I refer to among liberals weren't as isolated as you seem to think. They appeared repeatedly at mainstream liberal blogs, from well accepted members of the communities that build up around blogs.

Liberals worried about conservative extremism won't get much traction with the nonliberals they need to reach if they only talk about conservative extremism or spend their effort trying to argue that liberal extremism isn't as bad. Even if there are reasons to worry more about extremism on the Right at the moment, any whiff of partisan bias in condemning extremism will inevitably lead to arguments about bias instead of about extremism. Better to recognize extremism wherever it's found and condemn it uniformly.
 

Mark:

Violent rhetoric? Let's review the Tea Party demonstration at the capital last Sunday:

We chanted "kill the bill." No discussion of killing Obama, Pelosi or any Dem.

The claims that the protestors were alternatively chanting the N-word with "kill the bill" were exposed as lies by three videos with clear audio taken of the Black Caucus accusers walking through the protest. No N-word, no spitting, just smiling Congress critters and shouting Tea Partiers.

Our signs included such inflammatory slogans as:

"Kill the bill"

"Don't tread on me!"

"Party like its 1773"

"Stop Spendin!"

"We the People, not You the Government."

"Remember Massachusetts"

Amidst all these signs, the Dems found one that said: "If Brown cannot stop health care, a Browning can." This sign does not quite rise to the level of Thomas Jefferson's warning to the governing class that: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." However, it does represent the same sentiment.

In sum, the Tea Party movement does not even hold a candle to the Sixties riots, burning, bombing and general mayhem posing as civil disobedience. We are the folks who believe in law and order and property rights. The comparison is ridiculous.
 

Amidst all these signs, the Dems found one that said: "If Brown cannot stop health care, a Browning can." This sign does not quite rise to the level of Thomas Jefferson's warning to the governing class that: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." However, it does represent the same sentiment.

Jefferson's famous quote was, of course, the slogan on Timothy McVeigh's t-shirt the day he blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City. It has long been misconstrued by extremists as some sort of justification of violence. It's certainly not surprising to see someone like Bart, who perceives value in comparisons of Obama and Hitler, citing it in an effort to defend a sign that virtually all right-thinking people would condemn in a heartbeat.

I think a different part of Jefferson's "tree of liberty" letter is more pertinent here, and provides some needed context:

The people cannot be all, & always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.
 

What precisely is "eliminationism" and provide actual examples of "conservative" media figures employing it.

Selon Wikipedia: Eliminationism is the belief that one's political opponents are "a cancer on the body politic that must be excised — either by separation from the public at large, through censorship or by outright extermination — in order to protect the purity of the nation"

As for examples, there are hundreds, if not thousands. The "hypotheticals" in my post above were made by Coulter and Limbaugh (only, of course, the names were changed according to the change in POV)

One recent example fits the above definition pretty well. Glenn Beck called the progressive movement the "cancer that is inside both parties."

How does one excise the cancer?

Licenses to kill?

At what point is a person supposed to quit ignoring the rhetoric? A gunman opens fire in one of my sister churches and says he did it because he wanted to "kill liberals." Should I be worried? Should I write him off as an aberrant exception--an outlier in the continuum of self-control?

If Coulter says "we need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too," should I write it off as silly banter worthy of an obscure blog? Or do I need to worry that another listener on the far fringes is going to take the words to heart and show up at my church Sunday morning?

In short, given the pressure cooker nature of our current political scene, at what point does America become the fabled "crowded theater"?
 

Should liberals be defended if they suggest killing conservatives as a course of action? Absolutely not. They should be subject to the same scrutiny.

However, the majority of eliminationist statements aren't coming from the left-wing, which might put the lie to the Maoist and fascist labels that the right-wing has been so keen on deploying lately.
 

Wasn't it just recently that the right-wing talking point was that the problem with the left is that they don't want to kill their enemies, but rather to get them into therapy?

And now that the right wing has been shown to be a source of violence and the threats of violence, the right-wing talking point is that the left is just as as likely as the right to threaten violence to their enemies.

It's ironic, in my opinion, that so many of the right wing are so obviously in need of pharmacological aid, which is quite difficult to get in today's insurance world.
 

Mark, your points don't suggest to me that liberal extremism is more acceptable, only that it may be less effectual because of various factors not related to its content.

I'd call that a very partisan interpretation of what I said. I have no use for violence in this context, left or right. While I could be wrong, I haven't seen the violent rhetoric coming from the left (comparing apples to apples).

The sad fact is that, historically, violence has been the province of the right in US history except for a couple of brief periods (and depending on where on the spectrum you put anarchists). The KKK alone has perpetrated more violence than all the lefties in US history combined. That context is important in considering the recent irresponsible behavior of Republican leaders.

The kinds of comments I refer to among liberals weren't as isolated as you seem to think. They appeared repeatedly at mainstream liberal blogs, from well accepted members of the communities that build up around blogs.

Examples?

Better to recognize extremism wherever it's found and condemn it uniformly.

It seems to me that the condemnation has to be proportionate to the behavior. If not, the false sense of equivalence ends up blaming victim and perpetrator alike.
 

Helping to put this insanity in perspective is Bruce Bartlett:

Since [former Bush speech writer David Frum]is no longer affiliated with [the American Enterprise Institute], I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do....
The donor community is only interested in financing organizations that parrot the party line.

"The donor community", ie, conservative plutocrats.
 

PMS:

Beck was comparing progressivism eating away at the checks and balances of the Constitution to a cancer. This is an apt, if incendiary, analogy. See for example the pretzel logic arguments that declining to buy insurance is commerce granting Congress the power to order you to buy insurance.

Coulter is a polemicist who makes a very nice living saying outrageous things to drive folks like you nutty. You are citing a misquote that someone made up and was immediately spread around the nutroots. The correct quote is this:

"In contemplating college liberals, you really regret, once again, that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals by making them realize that they could be killed, too. Otherwise they will turn out into outright traitors."

John Walker Lindh was leftist punk until he converted to Islam and turned into a traitor al Qaeada. The point Coulter was rater brutally making is that we should have executed Lindh as a lesson to other leftists considering treason. She was not calling for a pogrom against liberals.

Rush Limbaugh has filled shows by playing segments of his past shows and then the gross misquotes of those segments which appear in the press without being fact checked.

You really should check the source material before you believe anything posted by the nutroots, especially anything about folks like Coulter and Rush.
 

PMS:

BTW, it is rather ironic that you are claiming Coulter is calling for violence against libs when a couple hundred leftists at the University of Ottowa just trashed their auditorium to keep her from speaking.
 

Mark, what you quote from me isn't an interpretation of what you said, only a comment on it, so it isn't a partisan interpretation. And since I'm a Democrat, I doubt the particular partisanship you think you detect in me exists.

I'm not surprised you haven't noticed the violent rhetoric on the Left. As I said before, people tend to notice it when it's directed against their side, and to overlook it otherwise. The sad fact is that most people only complain about extremism on the opposite extreme. The condemnation is less proportionate to the behavior than to the distance from one's own views. If anything it should be the opposite. People should take more responsibility for their own.

I gave my examples above. If you're asking for links to the violent rhetoric I recall on the left, I'm afraid it's more trouble than it's worth. Though I'm sure there are a number of conservative websites that have collected examples to show that it's really the liberals that are in the wrong.
 

For my part, I find overblown outrage at violent political rhetoric, whatever the source, rather amusing. Especially coming from anybody who wants more government, more law.

Folks, law IS violence. Take away the element of violence in it, and people would feel free to ignore it. Any time you say, "There ought to be a law!" you're saying "Heads ought to be cracked!", and are no better than those who'd crack the heads personally.
 

Folks, law IS violence.

Brett, sometimes you approximate a reasonable person. This isn't one of those times.
 

Yeah, right. Tell me where I'm wrong: What would government be, if you took the ever present threat of violence away? Got rid of the armies and the police? Closed the jails?

It would be nothing. Everyone would ignore it.

To urge the passage of a law, is to urge violence. To enact one is to threaten violence. To enforce one is to engage in violence.

You might think the violence justified, but don't pretend it's not there. Or engage in some kind of Orwellian doublethink, where billy clubs and guns, when wielded by agents of the government, have nothing to do with "violence".

Government IS violence, and anybody who supports government can not claim to be categorically opposed to the threat and use of violence to achieve political aims. It's just hypocrisy.
 

Brett informs us:

"Government IS violence, and anybody who supports government can not claim to be categorically opposed to the threat and use of violence to achieve political aims. It's just hypocrisy."

Considering the oaths of office, elected or appointed, required at federal, state and municipal levels of governance and for US citizenship via naturalization, Brett would have us believe these oath-takers are hypocrites. Perhaps Brett is an anarchist-libertarian at heart. But didn't he take a similar oath in becoming an attorney? Perhaps it takes a hypocrite to know a hypocrite. Of course, with anarchy, there would be no Constitution, no originalism, and no Wickard. And no Raich to proscribe joints. The road to ending violence is anarchy?
 

Tell me where I'm wrong

OK.

What would government be, if you took the ever present threat of violence away?

Brett, focus your mind for a moment please. Now, tell me, are you proposing to "take the threat of violence away"?

Allow me to suggest that YOU, as a vocal proponent of widespread gun ownership, are not the slightest bit interested in "taking the threat of violence away."

Focus your mind again, if you don't mind. Now, tell me, IS IT POSSIBLE to remove the threat of violence from human society? There now, I think we agree that it is not possible to do that. So WTF are you talking about?

To urge the passage of a law, is to urge violence. To enact one is to threaten violence. To enforce one is to engage in violence.

You are confusing several things, horribly so. First, you are confusing violence with the threat of violence. They aren't the same.

If I urge the passage of a law prohibiting murder and you protest that I am urging violence then the court of public opinion is not going to treat you very kindly, I dare say.

If I urge the passage of a law prohibiting theft and you protest that I am urging violence then... do you see the problem?

As for enforcing the law, most criminals are apprehended without violence. Getting handcuffed and escorted to the police station can be achieved, and most often is, without anyone getting injured. That's because the threat of force is not the same as the use of force. Thank goodness.

Government IS violence, and anybody who supports government can not claim to be categorically opposed to the threat and use of violence to achieve political aims. It's just hypocrisy.

This is, frankly, hysteria. You spout canards and accusations of "hypocrisy", but what you fail to do is actually listen to the opinions of people who differ.

Who ever said they were "categorically opposed" to the use of force? No one here that I know of. And yet you are so disrespectful of the other commenters here that you're willing to put words in their mouths that were never uttered.

"Government is violence"?

What would you call an absence of Government? Because I know what history calls it. Can you distinguish the lessons of history from the contents of your imagination?
 

James said...

JB,

I didn't see a comment section in your previous post about the 10 books that most influenced you. However, I find it very to believe [sic] that none of them are works of fiction.

Hey James, on the contrary, there are works of fiction in JB's list:

2. Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy. I also read this as a child. It gave me the dream of using science-- and especially mathematics--to try to predict and influence the future, the hope that patterns of history might make sense when viewed at the broadest levels, and the lesson that the vagaries and contingencies of history always confound our efforts to predict and control.

6. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. I could have listed any of the major novels. This final novel seems to sum up Dostoevsky's ideas. Faith and doubt, suffering, redemption, it's all there.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

In the spirit of the eternal Far Side, I give you "conversation stopping comments, 2010 version":

"Government is violence"

(Right up there with "Tax is theft", and "the draft is slavery")

"It is an arguable propositionthat Obama is a [socialist|muslim|dictator]."

"We (the teabaggers) are the folks who believe in law and order and property rights."
 

As I said before, people tend to notice it when it's directed against their side, and to overlook it otherwise.

I agree with this.

I gave my examples above.

Those aren't very persuasive. First, they aren't from similarly situated people. In fact, Larry Johnson (the only one I've heard of) discredited himself on the left, in part because of his propensity to make claims he couldn't prove. Second, while the rhetoric is overheated, they aren't calls for violence.

If you're asking for links to the violent rhetoric I recall on the left, I'm afraid it's more trouble than it's worth.

In that case I'll maintain my skepticism that there's anything comparable.
 

My point here is simply that you can't, reasonably, just say, "So and so threatened violence! Yah!", as if there were always something wrong with that. Anybody who advocates passing a law is threating violence, for all that they're farming it out to somebody wearing a uniform. Don't blind yourself to that, it's as stupid as pretending eating meat doesn't involve killing animals, just because you buy it neatly wrapped at the store.

You have to evaluate such threats on an individual basis for context, to determine if they're justified. Or are you going to take the position that resistance to tyranny is always wrong? If Congress had just passed a bill ordering some minority be shipped off to death camps, would threats of violence on the part of opponents be off limits? This HAS happened, some places.

Maybe most such politically motivated threats of violence will be found to be unjustified, when so examined. Many laws, if you take seriously the violence inherent in issuing orders people have to comply with or be attacked, are unjustified in that light. Just because something is a good idea, doesn't mean forcing people to do it is justified.

But you've got to do the analysis. Not just proceed as though it's a given somebody threating violence over a political issue is in the wrong.
 

When Brett says:

" ... it's as stupid as pretending eating meat doesn't involve killing animals, ... "

he seems to suggest that it is violence that sustains humans, whether vegan or not, in their survival, thereby supporting violence, with or without government. Is this Brett's radiating wisdom on civilization? Oh for the days of hunters and gatherers.
 

And: 40% of Americans stillbelieve Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks a poll found in 2007.

Well, I think we can identify where that illusion came from. And who benefited.

And we can likewise give a good account of where most of the illusions you cite originated. And who benefits.

What to do?

Make fun of it. Jon Stewart does a good job.

Point out who's benefiting.

And study it. It's worth a little analysis. Do some.
 

Folks, Brett is simply restating an element in Max Weber's definition of the state as the body with a monopoly on the use of violence. This is hardly a radical proposition.

Enforcement of all state action is premised on the threat of violence for noncompliance.

The only thing that distinguishes the police from a street gang is a government acting based on a majority or better yet a super majority will of the people.

This is why the the enactment of Obamacare against the will of the People is so disturbing. Government police power moves that much closer to being nothing more than a street gang.
 

This is why the the enactment of Obamacare against the will of the People is so disturbing. Government police power moves that much closer to being nothing more than a street gang.
# posted by Bart DePalma : 11:33 AM

Baghdad, "the will of the people" isn't determined by polling, it's determined by elections. Elections have consequences. Get over it.
 

Ah yes, the people are opposed. And Saddam was behind 9/11. Certain illusions benefit certain interests.
 

Mark, the links I gave weren't intended as examples of violent rhetoric. They're examples of a particular kind of extremist rhetoric, as I said, showing that what Prof. Tamanaha didn't recall did in fact happen. In addition, I did in fact on numerous occasions read comments of the more violent nature I reported above for which I didn't give links. If you were regularly reading the comments at liberal blogs in 2000-2008 I'm sure you did too. It would be difficult to find the particular examples I have in mind, but a quick Google search (which you could have done just as easily, took less than a minute) produces this, as predicted, which is more to the point:

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621 (with plenty of links, though oddly not the ones hosted at the website itself)

Your remark that you haven't heard of the authors I linked to, or that one was discredited, misses the point. Look at the websites. These comments were published at mainstream liberal websites, and were never disowned. Scott gave examples from more well known figures. (In my view, most pundits of every stripe are regularly discredited, so that would hardly set one apart. I already cited Scott Horton's deeply misleading piece on the 2006 Guantanamo suicides and the harebrained Palin-is-the-grandmother-of-her-child theories that were trumpeted as fact at Daily Kos and Huffington Post. Many liberals accepted both quite uncritically at the time.)
 

It's the cognitive dissonance, Bart: Liberals like to think of themselves as peaceful people, but they like lots and lots of government. Admitting that violence is inherent in government, and can be attributed to the people who demand government, conflicts with their fundamental self perception.

So it can't be true, even if it is.
 

A law ordering minorities to be shipped off to camps is just ridiculous...oh, wait, except that such a thing did happen to the Japenese during WWII (including families of soldiers serving!). And if i remember correctly, wasn't it the wonderfully Liberal and perfect FDR that signed the EO for this? SO, would it have been wrong for the Japanese-Americans (some of them 2nd and 3rd generation Americans) to pick up arms, or their friends? I would find it hard to argue against people forming armed resistance to such acts. So, don't act as though such things can never happen in this country, because they have and they can.
 

Liberals like to think of themselves as peaceful people

As opposed to Conservatives, who like to think of themselves as warmongering assholes?
 

I'm quite familiar with the idea that the state is based upon a threat of violence. I find that to be an implicit threat of a different quality than more explicit statements like "we need to physically intimidate liberals to show them they can be executed, too." Whatever the context, such a statement is inappropriate. If a government spokesperson (of whatever party alignment) said something like that in front of the cameras, the revolution would begin a lot sooner, I assure you.

Also, let's be clear: just because you get paid well for spouting threats and suggesting violence, it doesn't mean your actions are justified or excused. It's easy to ignore the person screaming "Fire!" in the theater when you know they're an idiot, but it's a lot harder to ignore the crowd as they trample you on the way to the exit.

***
Now, we've heard about the Tea Party organizer in Virginia who posted the address of a congressman's brother's house on a website and encouraged people to "drop in" and pay him a visit. Someone did just that and cut a gas line in their backyard, then set it ablaze and blew up the house along with 4 of the congressman's nephews and nieces.

You know what: we should hang this guy from the highest branch so that everyone can see that Tea Partiers always become traitors to their country and so conservatives will be intimidated away from becoming the traitors to America they all want to be.

People seem to forget what happened in the original Tea Party: protesters destroyed other people's property! They think the best way to destroy property is by targeting things that belong to the State. They want to do it so badly that they're becoming domestic terrorists. They think McVeigh is a hero--they quote him all the time. If the Tea Party gets into power, they'll burn our national parks and mine Washington D.C. for marble to sell to the Chinese in order to fix Social Security and fund the murder of doctors.

In fact, they keep having those little protests together, so why not take advantage of their natural urge to congregate? Let's send in the trucks, round them up, and put them in a camp somewhere where we can keep our eyes on them. It'll make our country safe from the traitorous vermin who think it's their life's duty to fire into church assemblies, cut gas lines, and plot to kill all liberals, starting with the President.

But we have to think of the budget crisis, so probably it would be cheaper just to use some bullets than put together a camp system.

The day is going to come when very unpleasant things are going to happen to a bunch of stupid conservatives and it's going to be very amusing to watch.
***

I don't see stuff like that in reasonable blogs, and neither do I hear it from the mass media that's supposed to have a liberal bias. I DO hear it nearly daily from the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Malkin, and their supporters.

Answer me one question: why is it condoned?
 

Mark, the links I gave weren't intended as examples of violent rhetoric.

Then we must have misunderstood each other.

If you were regularly reading the comments at liberal blogs in 2000-2008 I'm sure you did too.

I wasn't, and therefore didn't, but I'm not sure that is responsive to my challenge: to find people of comparable stature and importance making similar comments. Blog comments don't meet that test. Now, a blog post by, say, Kos could, but not a comment somewhere in a thread.

It would be difficult to find the particular examples I have in mind, but a quick Google search (which you could have done just as easily, took less than a minute) produces this

That's a wingnut website which I'm not inclined to give much credit to. However, there does seem to be a case made that some anti-Bush protestors used violent rhetoric. I'll accept that conditionally, subject to some qualifications.

That still doesn't meet my challenge.

Your remark that you haven't heard of the authors I linked to, or that one was discredited, misses the point. Look at the websites. These comments were published at mainstream liberal websites, and were never disowned.

That's not missing the point, it is making the point. The comments in Scott's comment, like the ones you now mention, are wrong, even delusional in some cases. But they don't use rhetoric associated with violence, nor do they come from people of comparable stature.
 

Now, we've heard about the Tea Party organizer in Virginia who posted the address of a congressman's brother's house on a website and encouraged people to "drop in" and pay him a visit. Someone did just that and cut a gas line in their backyard, then set it ablaze and blew up the house along with 4 of the congressman's nephews and nieces.

PMS, did I miss something? The gas line was cut but I haven't heard anything about fire, explosion or death(s). AFAIK, it's malicious mischief, not murder.
 

PMS:

Now, we've heard about the Tea Party organizer in Virginia who posted the address of a congressman's brother's house on a website and encouraged people to "drop in" and pay him a visit. Someone did just that and cut a gas line in their backyard, then set it ablaze and blew up the house along with 4 of the congressman's nephews and nieces.

:::sigh:::

Did you just fabricate this yourself or are you using someone else's fiction? Here is the latest on this story:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34934.html

I particularly like the Dem whopper that evil conservatives threw a rock through the window office of a WA Dem...on the 30th floor. Neat trick, that.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/03/oh-brother-lib-media-claims-rock-was-thrown-through-reps-office-on-30th-floor/
 

I think the parody went over everyone's head or something.

I admire Brett's anti-death penalty activism, but really, the concept that violence administered according to the rule of law is something different than punching your neighbor in the nose is pretty broadly accepted...
 

I particularly like the Dem whopper that evil conservatives threw a rock through the window office of a WA Dem...on the 30th floor. Neat trick, that.

The rock was actually thrown through the window of the Democratic county headquarters. I guess the right wing must be pretty bored if they have nothing better to do than obsess over someone's minor factual error. Imagine 100 blog posts about the fact that Bart believes Cincinnati is in Washington State, and the absurdity may become clearer.
 

Jim Bunning received death threats when he refused to vote for extension of unemployment benefits unless the money was not just borrowed, but taken from unspent TARP or cut from another program. Check the AP wire for that one. Plus, Cantor had a bullet shot through his headquarters last week- he opposed the Health reform Bill. It would appear that extremist violence occurs on both sides.
 

oh, and Stupack and his family were threatened when he was opposed to the bill (hard to blame that on tea partiers)
 

Tim,

Your careful adherence to the truth about Cantor's "victimization" is duly noted.
 

Jim Bunning received death threats when he refused to vote for extension of unemployment benefits unless the money was not just borrowed, but taken from unspent TARP or cut from another program. Check the AP wire for that one. Plus, Cantor had a bullet shot through his headquarters last week- he opposed the Health reform Bill. It would appear that extremist violence occurs on both sides.
# posted by Tim : 2:13 PM

Those threats were probably made by his own party's leaders.
 

oh, ok. A bullet flies through his office window within a day of a contentious vote and it is therefore out of line to think it might be tied to politics. OK, we'll take that one out. Instead, we'll just focus on Death threats made against two politicians who opposed democratic legislation. Does that count for less than threats made against democratic lawmakers who supported democratic legislation?
 

How about a movie and play that was about President Bush being assassinated? You remember this, right? Can you imagine such a movie being made about Pres. Obama? There can be a double standard and I am just pointing it out. You can spin and exaggerate facts and occurrences any which way to produce passion and animosity toward your opponent.

Personally,I think death threats and anonymous acts of violence are cowardly and despicable. That said, if the government violates your natural rights, there comes a time when you are justified in opposing them. If they use force to coerce or deprive you of these rights, you cannot say there will not be a point where a person is justified in using force to protect said rights.
 

OK, we'll take that one out. Instead, we'll just focus on Death threats made against two politicians who opposed democratic legislation. Does that count for less than threats made against democratic lawmakers who supported democratic legislation?
# posted by Tim : 2:37 PM

Yeah, I'd say that 2 threats count a lot less than what appear to be 100s of threats directed at Dems.

Does 2 = 100+ in wingnutland?
 

"Those threats were probably made by his own party's leaders."

Yes, yes, ignore the substance of the point and how it refutes your own and instead make a baseless retort. Hence, this is how "Right vs. Left" continues to argue without debating.
 

That said, if the government violates your natural rights

What the heck are "natural rights"? Did you mean to say "constitutional rights"?
 

Yes, yes, ignore the substance of the point

I'm not ignoring the substance of your point, I'm pointing out that your point has no substance.
 

Mark, again, you have missed the point of the earlier links, which was quite clearly not to meet your challenge, as you term it, so to keep saying they don't meet your challenge is only to continue missing the point. As I said, the examples I gave about violent rhetoric I didn't give links for.

Your challenge has little to do with the issue raised by Prof. Tamanaha, which is about the extremist views of large groups of people and the potential for violence from that, not from opinion leaders in particular. The examples I gave go directly to his points. I don't have any great interest in researching your challenge because (1) extremist views and threats of violence are no more acceptable for not being from opinion leaders, and (2) the "eliminationist" talk you appear to base your challenge on isn't a call for violence, or an incitement, by your own estimation, so it's not clear what you're getting at. Are you wanting examples of eliminationist talk from liberal opinion leaders? Have you looked for any yourself to see whether your challenge is even worth making? Tell me how much research you've done on it, and I'll match it.

The link you don't trust was chosen because it gives links to direct and clear evidence, so you don't have to trust it. You can examine the evidence to reach a form conclusion about its claims. It's worth skimming through the entire post. I assure you the post is no more "wingnut" than a great deal of what gets posted by Kos and others he gives a platform to at his website.
 

Hey here is something to think about, do you think both sides lie and exaggerate the facts to support their views? I am personally, a libertarian and think they both lie...a lot...and all the time. I agree with the Tea party movement only insofar as it opposes government waste, over-taxation of its citizens, and expansion if its influence over personal and private matters.

I am just sick of this crap about tea partiers being crazy because a few - a minor few - are racist or violent. Instead of focusing on the individuals that are acting in this way, an entire movement is being targeted.
 

Natural rights, ever read Locke? Jefferson?
 

Constitution doesn't grant rights, it protects rights you have as a human being. I hope you are kidding about not understanding this...
 

Constitution doesn't grant rights, it protects rights you have as a human being. I hope you are kidding about not understanding this...
# posted by Tim : 2:57 PM

I'm not kidding at all.

As near as I can tell, Nature doesn't grant any rights. Nature appears to spend most of it's time trying to kill us, not grant us rights.

If the Constitution doesn't grant our rights, what does?
 

As opposed to Conservatives, who like to think of themselves as warmongering assholes?

Heh. Actually the right likes to think of itself as a victim:

"This theme of victimization by [liberal] 'elites' is pervasive in conservative literature, despite the fact that at the time conservatives controlled all three branches of government, was being served by an extensive media devoted only to conservative ideology, and conservatives had won 6 of the previous 9 presidential elections."

This theme continues today with the bitching and moaning about having things shoved down throats. Oh, the humanity.
 

"As near as I can tell, Nature doesn't grant any rights. Nature appears to spend most of it's time trying to kill us, not grant us rights.

If the Constitution doesn't grant our rights, what does?"


OK, first, Natural rights = inherent rights. The word nature/natural can mean many different things.

Secondly, the constitution doesn't grant rights. It is a social contract, a protector of rights from the federal government. Were there no constitution, you would still possess said rights.

Typically, they are simplified into the famous "Life, liberty, and property" but can be even further simplified into "your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins" - you have the right to pursue your own personal ends as long as it does not interfere with my ability to do the same. This is a "reader's digest version" of an explanation of natural rights. I suggest you read about theories on natural rights by authors such as John Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, Rothbard and VonMises. I definitely think it will change your view about the constitution and separation/balance of government power as well as "social contract".
 

Mark, again, you have missed the point of the earlier links, which was quite clearly not to meet your challenge, as you term it, so to keep saying they don't meet your challenge is only to continue missing the point. As I said, the examples I gave about violent rhetoric I didn't give links for.

Congratulations -- that's world class dodge ball.

extremist views and threats of violence are no more acceptable for not being from opinion leaders

What a silly statement. Of course statements by leaders are less acceptable.

the "eliminationist" talk you appear to base your challenge on isn't a call for violence, or an incitement, by your own estimation, so it's not clear what you're getting at.

In the most technical legal sense, you're right (a point I made in my original comment). More colloquially, though, this is just false. Republican leaders are and have been inciting violence; that's irresponsible even if it's legal.

Are you wanting examples of eliminationist talk from liberal opinion leaders? Have you looked for any yourself to see whether your challenge is even worth making? Tell me how much research you've done on it, and I'll match it.

It's not so much that I want it as that you have an obligation to provide it. You're the one claiming that "they all do it". If you want to make that claim, then it's your obligation to provide the evidence.

I assure you the post is no more "wingnut" than a great deal of what gets posted by Kos and others he gives a platform to at his website.

That site was FAR more wingnut than anything I've seen Kos himself write. It's possible the side diaries contain comparable material, but I don't read them.

This was from your previous post which I meant to mention as well:

Your remark that you haven't heard of the authors I linked to, or that one was discredited, misses the point.

Again, you've missed the point. The point is that when nutcases spout their nonsense it's incumbent on the sane not to encourage it, and to discourage it if they make the mistake of encouraging it. That's what it means to be responsible, and it's why the example of Larry Johnson is so harmful to the right.
 

Mark, leaders may have additional responsibility for the effects of what they say, but that doesn't make it more acceptable for others to make extremist remarks or threats. It's not acceptable at all from anyone.

"Republican leaders are and have been inciting violence"

No evidence showing that has been given here.

"You're the one claiming that "they all do it". If you want to make that claim, then it's your obligation to provide the evidence."

I haven't claimed liberal opinion leaders in particular do anything. I've said liberals do, and I've given evidence already.

As I said, the *post* I linked to is no more wingnut than stuff Kos and those he gives a platform to have written.

Again, Larry Johnson's post is still at the mainstream liberal blog it was posted at, without any disclaimer. I don't know what you have in mind about this being harmful to the Right. Was he ostracized for saying Bush was a traitor? Will Michael Moore be ostracized?
 

OK, first, Natural rights = inherent rights. The word nature/natural can mean many different things.

Yes, I'm sure it can mean many different things. Most likely I suspect it means whatever you pull out of your ass.

Typically, they are simplified into the famous "Life, liberty, and property"

Simplified by who? You? John Locke? Rousseau? God?

What if I don't agree with any of those people, does that mean I don't have natural rights? What if I think I have the natural right to punch you in the face any time I feel like it?

Do you get the point?
 

I think that it point to your own ignorance. Your lack of basic knowledge in the area of government, politics, and philosophy. You are a moron who has exposed yourself as such and I think you would be hard pressed to find any intelligent people here who support anything you have written on this subject.
 

Obviously the building wasn't set ablaze. Neither is the health care bill that passed a shining example of fascism, but it's not the nature of such incendiary speech to be focused on getting the facts right.

Sanpete thinks that there is no qualitative difference between left-wing idiots who post comments on someone else's blog and right-wing idiots who have 20 million listeners and party support. When attempting to gauge a threat, I don't see how there is any comparison at all. Tying it back to the original post: when 20 million people regularly listen to people that make the same claims that are represented in that poll, why should it shock us if the response is high? Yes, the poll is statistically flawed, but that doesn't mean it isn't saying something.
 

I think that it point to your own ignorance. Your lack of basic knowledge in the area of government, politics, and philosophy. You are a moron who has exposed yourself as such and I think you would be hard pressed to find any intelligent people here who support anything you have written on this subject.
# posted by Tim : 4:27 PM

No, the point is that "natural law" is meaningless wingnut gibberish. The real law is defined by the Constitution, and if at any time you think those laws don't apply to you, you will have a big dose of reality shoved right down your throat.
 

PMS_CC, if left-wing idiots are less of a threat than right-wing idiots, as you suppose, that's great. Both kinds of idiots are still to be condemned. That isn't what happens. Rather each side concerns itself with the idiots on the other side. It's not an effective means to advance sanity; it's just part of the partisan squabbling that produces nothing but more polarization and more intemperate views.

I don't see much evidence that conservatives are more prone to extremist views than liberals. Someone earlier referred to survey data showing that 51% of Democrats either thought Bush was complicit in the September 11th attacks or weren't sure. I recall data from at least a coupe years after the attacks that showed more self-identified liberals than self-identified conservatives still suspected the government might have been involved, numbers that were shockingly high on both sides. (Independents were somewhat less paranoid; blacks and the young more.)
 

Bartbuster, I suppose you may be right, and that Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers believed in "meaningless wingnut gibberish." You do recall the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, right?
 

I don't see much evidence that conservatives are more prone to extremist views than liberals.

You've already distanced yourself with "extremist" vs. "eliminationist," so pardon me if I insist that we maintain control over our terms.

I don't have a problem with doing the research at all. Why don't you pick three liberal pundits from the mainstream media and I'll pick three conservatives, and we'll see what happens over the next week.

One point will be given to each pundit when they say something that:

1) literally dehumanizes those who have opposing viewpoints (comparison to cancer, animals, vermin, etc.)

2) characterizes their opponents as enemies of the state

3) suggests the removal of such people from society

or

4) advocates physical intimidation or harm as a course of action --even if they immediately call such advocacy a "joke."

Pick the pundits and the venues. We'll compare transcripts and see what the result is. Sound fair?
 

PMS_CC, what do you hope to prove that contradicts what I've said? My response is still what I said in the paragraph right before the quote you took from my post.

In any case, I'm not the one to ask about extremists in the mass media. I don't pay enough attention to them to know who would be best to track for your experiment. Try someone who has cable.
 

I've been reading Sanpete's comments at various blogs for lord knows how many years, and I cannot recall that he has ever made a single point that could not be reduced to "both sides do it." It's actually quite amazing.
 

Bartbuster, I suppose you may be right, and that Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers believed in "meaningless wingnut gibberish." You do recall the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, right?
# posted by Sanpete : 6:13 PM

What about those "inalienable" rights? Do the Saudis have those "inalienable" rights? How about the Chinese? Looking around the planet, those rights appear to be pretty "alienable".

In any case, when we finally implement a public option, and you decide that your "natural rights" have been violated, I predict that your attempt to use force to win back your "natural rights" will be short and bloody, with most of the blood being yours.
 

I've been reading Sanpete's comments at various blogs for lord knows how many years, and I cannot recall that he has ever made a single point that could not be reduced to "both sides do it." It's actually quite amazing.

Yeah, it's clear he has nothing to offer. Geez, Steve, you might have warned me. :)
 

Ah, I've missed the balkanized commenters.

Really, as much as I think PMS and Mark are correct in pointing out the disparity between the rhetoric of conservative leaders/officials and that of liberal leaders/officials, I don't think the 'you do it, too' argument is going to be productive.

We ought all to condemn calls to violence - icluding ones that some would excuse as 'not serious' - from and acts of violence by anyone.

I think what many of us 'liberals' find most disturbing in the current situation is that elected officials are (a) mimicking the rhetoric of violence and/or (b) not clearly condeming either the rhetoric or actual acts.

This is not about partisan affiliation, Gang. This is about the health of our democracy and our nation. Not incidentally, it may also be about the survival of some/many of our fellow citizens.
 

Liberals like to think of themselves as peaceful people, but they like lots and lots of government.

Well, you're right about the first point. And since I like laws that encourage peaceful, respectful behavior I don't know how that makes me a lover of violence. What kind of laws do you like?

But as for wanting lots and lots of government? I only want enough to get the job done. And I don't see how your vision of 'a machine gun in every home' is less dependent on the threat of violence than mine. Indeed, it isn't.
 

It is quite plainly about partisan affiliation when each side only focuses on the wrongs of the other. Most here haven't shown the slightest interest in the issue except as it can be interpreted in a partisan way.
 

One point will be given to each pundit when they say something that:

May I modestly propose adding:

5) is false to fact.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

"And I don't see how your vision of 'a machine gun in every home' is less dependent on the threat of violence than mine. Indeed, it isn't."

Indeed, it isn't. It isn't any more dependent, either. I'm simply pointing out that somebody who delegates their violence to government employees is no more a pacifist, than somebody chowing down at Outback is a vegan, just because they didn't whack the cow themselves.
 

what do you hope to prove [by doing research] that contradicts what I've said? My response is still what I said in the paragraph right before the quote you took from my post.

Your opinions are independent of and unaffected by observation of the actual real world. Interesting.
 

Steve, what you say is obviously false, even in this thread, but I'm glad you've gotten at least some ghost of a point, even if it's only in an effort to find some excuse to ignore it.
 

Bartbuster, I don't believe in inalienable rights, but neither do I think they're "meaningless wingnut gibberish." Of course Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers believed everyone everywhere had those rights. "Wingnuts" like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, most every winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and most of those who believe in and fight for universal human rights believe similarly.

I'm all for a public option.
 

"Your opinions are independent of and unaffected by observation of the actual real world. Interesting."

Um, no. Please read the thread and get back to me if you still can't figure it out.
 

I'm simply pointing out that somebody who delegates their violence to government employees is no more a pacifist, than somebody chowing down at Outback is a vegan

A) I'm a peace loving person. That doesn't make me a 'pacifist.'
B) Any law or code of behavior needs to be enforced. But it is ridiculous for you to suggest that all normative systems are equally fond of violence. Who would make such a silly claim?
 

I don't believe in inalienable rights, but neither do I think they're "meaningless wingnut gibberish."
# posted by Sanpete : 8:32 PM

When people like Tim and Baghdad Bart start talking about their natural rights being violated as a result of healthcare reform, it's nothing but rightwingnut gibberish.

most of those who believe in and fight for universal human rights believe similarly

The are free to believe what they want, the fact is that these rights are not universal at all. Every society has the rights that it considers to be important. Every nation gets the government it deserves.
 

Bartbuster, that you disagree with them doesn't make their views gibberish. The idea isn't that hard to follow and has a long and respectable history.
 

Sheesh, I don't believe in natural rights, either, in any strong sense, but that doesn't keep me from understanding that government violating a right isn't evidence the right doesn't exist.
 

Sanpete said...
Bartbuster, that you disagree with them doesn't make their views gibberish. The idea isn't that hard to follow and has a long and respectable history.

It has nothing to do with me disagreeing with them, it's simply a fact that huge numbers of people simply don't have the rights that they consider "universal" (see China). They might think those rights SHOULD be universal, but to call them universal is simply absurd.
 

that doesn't keep me from understanding that government violating a right isn't evidence the right doesn't exist.

So, even though Iraqis don't have the right to bear arms, we're violating their rights when we confiscate weapons? Is that the sort of violation of rights that you're talking about?
 

How about the fact that most states don't allow gay people to get married? Aren't we violating their natural rights? Or is marriage not a natural right?
 

talk of natural rights being violated as a result of healthcare reform is nothing but rightwingnut gibberish

Damned if that public highway system didn't violate my natural rights. It was paid for with my tax money, too. That's just wrong. It's Marxism, is what it is. Yeah.
 

Damned if that public highway system didn't violate my natural rights. It was paid for with my tax money, too. That's just wrong. It's Marxism, is what it is. Yeah.

I hear ya! It turns out that Eisenhower was a commie. Who knew!?!
 

"Eisenhower was a commie. Who knew!?!"

The John Birch Society. Easy question.
 

Yeah, that's it. He was a Red. And a Muslim. Betcha didn't know that.
 

Here is another interesting poll that one would think is surveying almost the same constituency as the one Brian Tamanaha references:

"Poll: ‘Anti-socialist’ Tea Party activists want government to create jobs

Tea Party sympathizers are against government "socialism" except when it comes to their own jobs, a new poll has found.

Seventy percent of those who identify as Tea Partiers -- a platform that strongly decries government intervention in public life -- want an interventionist government to create jobs, and only about one in three believe Medicaid and Medicare are "socialist" programs, according to a new Bloomberg poll....

'Fewer than 10 percent say the Veterans Administration is definitely socialist, 12 percent identify management of national parks and museums, and 36 percent say expanding Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor and Social Security amount to socialism,' Bloomberg notes.

Even 35 percent don't see Social Security as socialist: 65 percent said Social Security was 'either definitely or sort of socialism.' But 47 percent still wanted to keep it under government control (and just 53 percent supported Social Security privatization).

The Bloomberg poll was conducted Mar. 19-22 and included 1,002 Americans over the age of 18.

Given the results of the two polls, I believe one would have to say that many of the country's self-described "conservatives," Republicans, and "tea partiers" are a pretty ideologically mixed up lot.
 

This posting on the Blog is so nice, I appreciate for your work. Thank you very much for your information, nice job keep it up.
qualitative dissertation
 

Check out Colbert King's Op-Ed in today's (2/27/10) WaPo on these scary times with "Tea for Two" as background.
 

OOPS! Correction: 3/27/10 is date of WaPo column of King.
 

"So, even though Iraqis don't have the right to bear arms, we're violating their rights when we confiscate weapons? Is that the sort of violation of rights that you're talking about?"

Whether or not we're confiscating those weapons has no bearing on whether there's a right to them, because rights can exist yet be violated. Rather in the same way that my driving at 60mph doesn't prove that the speed limit isn't 55.

That doesn't establish that there IS a natural right to own guns. I'm simply pointing out that the brute fact that some governments violate a 'natural right' isn't evidence that it doesn't exist. Or that it does...

As I say, I don't believe in natural rights, in any strong sense. I believe humans have a nature, (That's why you can distinguish us from Marmosets, for instance.) and certain sets of rules you can call 'rights' are more conducive to human flourishing than others, due to the intersection of that nature, and facts about our environment. (Like a Nobel laureate once said of Marxism, "Wonderful theory, wrong species.) But you hit a sticking point, in that nothing forces somebody to concede that human flourishing is important.

The same old "can't get an is from an ought" problem, IOW.

But if you're going to reason concerning 'natural rights', you shouldn't be excused from reasoning correctly.
 

Shorter Brett's take on natural rights:

"Magnum Speak Loudly"

walking softly, but carrying openly. Perhaps he has Doonesbury on Starbucks in his sights while sipping an anarchist latte perched in a liberty tree.
 

While I admit to a general contempt for the "shorter" rhetorical tactic, (Altering somebody's argument before replying to what they didn't say is definitively illegitimate.) I have to say that effort makes most resorts to it look like solid logic.

I've got an old copy of Racter that does a better job of appearing to respond to what people say.
 

But you hit a sticking point, in that nothing forces somebody to concede that human flourishing is important.

Let's see if I can interpret this pearl...

"A human being is under no obligation to believe that his/her interests are in his/her interests."

Brett, when is your philosophy primer going to be published?? I'm on tenterhooks here!!
 

Stunned though I am to say it, I understand Brett's argument as to the concept of natural rights.
It is indeed a rich tradition and much of it is part of our own U.S. history.

Of course, it is a 'problem' for that view that a claim of moral right can be effectively silenced by force (or just being ignored). But, unless we are going to be Hobbesians and hold that there is no distinction between legitimate power and effective power, it is a problem for any view that does not simply equate effective power with legitmacy.
 

""A human being is under no obligation to believe that his/her interests are in his/her interests."

A human being is under no obligation to concede that other people's interests should be of any concern to them. An awful lot of folks don't feel any obligation to universalize maxims. They're content to complain when they're wronged, and not care if others are.

Rand got an awful lot wrong, but one thing she was right about: A theory of ethics, which if consistently applied would kill humanity off, is a bad theory of ethics. It has to be possible to follow, and without horrific consequences.
 

Whether or not we're confiscating those weapons has no bearing on whether there's a right to them, because rights can exist yet be violated.

# posted by Brett : 8:00 AM

I didn't say it did, I asked you if you thought we were violating their rights. Do you think that the right to own a gun is fundamental to human nature?
 

I think the right to self defense is, guns merely being an instrument by which people exercise that right.

And, yeah, I think we're violating rights over there. Be an odd war where rights didn't get violated. And the 2nd amendment being a right rulers particularly find offensive, our government hasn't promoted it abroad for a very long time.
 

ewastud said...Here is another interesting poll...

At the same time, 70 percent of those who sympathize with the Tea Party, which organized protests this week against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, want a federal government that fosters job creation.

Cute question and distortion of the answer. We in the Tea Party (and a heavy majority of the nation) share Ronald Reagan's view of how to foster economic and job growth: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” None of us is arguing for more government jobs as Bloomberg falsely suggests.

Tea Party supporters are likely to be older, white and male. Forty percent are age 55 and over, compared with 32 percent of all poll respondents; just 22 percent are under the age of 35, 79 percent are white, and 61 percent are men. Many are also Christian fundamentalists, with 44 percent identifying themselves as “born-again,” compared with 33 percent of all respondents.

It would be nice if Bloomberg linked to the poll results themselves. These demographics do not seem to jive with previous Tea Party polling and other polling of the demographics of adults in general.

The claim that 33% of all adults self identify "born again" is absurd and implies that Bloomberg's pollster was oversampling southern Christians to create the impression that the Tea Party is a conservative Christian movement.

Quinnipiac - a far more established pollster - found that the Tea Party movement has slightly more women than the national gender breakdown.
 

guns merely being an instrument by which people exercise that right

Here "merely" is a myth. The reallity is otherwise.
 

Bart de Palma:

You don't mean "jive;" you mean jibe. "Jive is African-American slang for a lie or falsehood. Look up "jibe" or "gibe" in the dictionary and you will see what I mean.
 

I think the right to self defense is, guns merely being an instrument by which people exercise that right.

# posted by Brett : 12:52 PM

There are plenty of ways to defend yourself without owning a gun. Which brings us back to my question. Do you think that owning a gun is fundamental to being human?
 

"Do you think that owning a gun is fundamental to being human?"

What a moronic question; Were there humans before guns were invented? Yes. Hence, the answer is no. The question is, where do you think this line of questioning is leading? I can't see it leading any place significant.

Similarly, ownership of printing presses can not be a fundamental to being a human. It is merely an instrumentality for communication, which IS fundamental. As is self defense.

To respect a right, means respecting ownership of it's instrumentality. Today guns and printing presses, tomorrow Krell machines.
 

The question is, where do you think this line of questioning is leading?

Tim seems to think that the healthcare law is close to violating our "natural rights". You seem to think that everyone should be allowed to carry automatic weapons. I'm just trying to see if there is any limit to the crazy.

communication, which IS fundamental

The Chinese certainly don't seem to think it's fundamental.
 

The claim that 33% of all adults self identify "born again" is absurd and implies that Bloomberg's pollster was oversampling southern Christians to create the impression that the Tea Party is a conservative Christian movement.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, widely considered to be the gold standard on these matters, "34% of American adults considered themselves 'Born Again or Evangelical Christians' in 2008. Sounds like Bloomberg's poll was spot on. Also sounds like Bart is in denial about something.
 

To respect a right, means respecting ownership of it's [sic] instrumentality.

Ah, yes. The right to shoot oneself in the foot. Instrumentality, obvious. Or haven't you been listening?

Such pompous crap. Instrumentality, rights, respect. Try instead, oops. Gosh. The completely predictable happened again. The gun shot someone in the home, not any attacker. Oops! I did it again.
 

Norm Ornstein, long a resident scholar at American Enterprises Institute, provides a historical review this Palm Sunday in the WaPo (with illustrations) of doings in Congress going back to the late 18th Century titled: "Foul mouths in Congress? Big [expletive] deal" similar to the cat-fight at this Blog. Norm at least has a sense of humor, in addition to much wisdom on Congress. I don't expect that AEI will fire him, as it effectively did David Frum, because of Norm's support for HCR. Norm over the years has from time to time called a pox on Congress, both parties. One might say that Norm has exposed the "Cane Mutiny." Of course the cane can be used as a weapon (aka arms) both for self-defense and for a plain (Palin?) vanilla assault upon a victim. Canes don't kill people (unless their hurricanes), people do. That's according to the National Cane Association.

And Charles Blow's blows on the NYTimes OpEd page yesterday add to the focus on the current brouhaha. With the potential for so many to get hurt by this 'haha, HCR is timely.

This is Palm Sunday. As a pre-teen in the late '30s, early '40s, I remember well attending services on Palm Sunday and my peers and I would smite each other with the palms handed out. But this smiting was with a spirit, not to harm, but to heal. By the time I was a teen, I stopped going. But I remember that spirit. Where's Rodney King when you need him?
 

Steve M:

Thank you very much for the survey. I stand corrected. This figure used to be around a quarter of the population, now it appears to be over a third of the population and nearly half of all Christians

That is a very interesting development which means that this self identification has gone well beyond its Southern baptist roots and had truly gone national.
 

A human being is under no obligation to concede that other people's interests should be of any concern to them.

To me this sounds the same as, "people are not obliged to be virtuous." So, I wouldn't quibble with you there, Brett. But I would add that a person who is concerned about the interests of others is more likely to be effective in the service his/her own interests.

Or to put it another way, a selfish person is merely stupid when it comes to getting what he/she wants. This, btw, is the thrust of all major religion and embodies the collected wisdom of humankind. It's nothing new, but neither is it new that lot's of people become ornery when reminded of traditional wisdom. Jesus Christ is an apt example of what can happen to outspoken moralizers.

An awful lot of folks don't feel any obligation to universalize maxims. They're content to complain when they're wronged, and not care if others are.

I swell with pride at the mere thought of it!

A theory of ethics, which if consistently applied would kill humanity off, is a bad theory of ethics.

You lost me there.
 

A major line of reasoning in Rand's philosophy was that a system of ethics for humans had to WORK for humans. It had to lead to human flourishing if humans followed it, not to some dystopian nightmare. Further, a system of ethics for humans had to be such that humans COULD follow it. Simpler form of utilitarianism, for instance, fail on that score, being computationally impossible; Figuring out the 'right' thing to do requiring omniscience and impossible computations.

To which I'd add that a system of ethics has to obey the principle of non-contradiction; It can't at once demand that you do X and not-X. This isn't a trivial demand, it effectively rules out any system of ethics involving positive rights.

"You seem to think that everyone should be allowed to carry automatic weapons. I'm just trying to see if there is any limit to the crazy."

Bartbuster, I'm going to attempt some reason with you, for all that I know it will trigger a tourette like syndrome in you:

44 states have adopted concealed carry reform. Liberals like you predicted a bloodbath every time, and every time it didn't happen.

In much of the country, it IS legal to carry around machine guns. And there are about a quarter million of them in private hands. How often do you hear of mass murders, (Or murders period.) committed with legally owned machine guns?

A few hundred feet from my apartment, people drive around in 3/4 ton death machines, which could reap pedestrians like wheat at the driver's whim. But the pedestrians remain unreaped. Strange, huh?

It appears to me that liberals believe their fellow Americans are only a random twitch of a neuron away from committing mass murder. Why is this? Do voices in your head counsel you to kill, and you just generalize to everybody else? In any event, you should be able to see that this isn't true.

Yes, I think average people should be permitted to own machine guns. I also think they should be permitted to carry guns in public, as is the legal practice in most of the country. Does this mean I think they should be carrying machine guns in public?

No, not any more than I think they should carry bowling balls in public. It would be stupid to do so, for all that it would be legal. Wouldn't have much in the way of bad consequences, but it would be inconvenient.

My point here, Bartbuster, is that before establishing the limits of the crazy, you should take some time to establish the crazy itself. Here's a clue: Disagreeing with you isn't evidence of insanity.
 

Brett responds to Bartbuster:

"Yes, I think average people should be permitted to own machine guns. I also think they should be permitted to carry guns in public, as is the legal practice in most of the country. Does this mean I think they should be carrying machine guns in public?

No, not any more than I think they should carry bowling balls in public."

Equating bowling balls with machine guns seems right up Brett's alley. Let's see, a bowling ball is used in a bowling alley to knock down pins. A bowler who has his own bowling ball which he keeps at home will carry it in public to get to the bowling alleys. How much harm might that cause, whether intentional or not, compared to openly carrying a machine gun in public openly?

As to the machine gun owner, it's not clear what he/she intends to knock-over. If the machine gun is kept at home, the owner can use it for self defense, of course, as well as other purposes. If the machine gun owner carries it in public, whatever his/her reasons to wherever his/her destination, especially if carried openly, just might upset others using the same public facilities, who might be concerned with their own self defense in public and decide to carry their machine guns in public, openly.

But their seems to be a tad of a difference between bowling balls and machine guns carried openly in public. Perhaps Brett was influenced by Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" in coming up with this comparison. I hope we are spared a strike resulting from the open carrying of a machine gun in public. Let's set the pins on the right spots, Brett.
 

"How much harm might that cause, whether intentional or not, compared to openly carrying a machine gun in public openly?"

On the evidence, neither more, nor less, for all that liberals are more offended by the carrying of machine guns, than bowling balls.
 

Brett, if your idea of "reason" is to equate bowling balls with machine guns, you're really in no position to be accusing me of having "tourette like syndrome."

Now to establish the crazy...

There is a place that fits your ideal view of the world (weak government and everyone carrying guns), it is Somalia. And I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who prefers strict gun control to living in Somalia. You would clearly prefer Somalia, and that is clearly crazy.
 

I don't think they're "equal", Bartbuster. I think there's a serious lack of evidence that carrying one is more dangerous than the other. Rather, there's evidence the other way.

As I point out, the world suffers no lack of items which can be used for spontaneous mayhem, and yet the average person, (In fact, people several sigma out from average!) doesn't get it into their head to run over the pedestrians, as trivially easy as it would be. Why think they'll be any different with guns?

Especially since, a significant fraction of the population DO go about armed, thanks to concealed carry reform, and actually have a better record than the police, when it comes to wrongful use of those arms.

No, really, this spinal reflex you liberals have, "People carrying guns? The streets will run red with blood!" is pathetically anti-empirical. People do carry guns, the streets don't run red with blood.

People do carry guns without committing murder. Get over it. Stop pretending otherwise.
 

I don't think they're "equal", Bartbuster. I think there's a serious lack of evidence that carrying one is more dangerous than the other. Rather, there's evidence the other way.

So, in your world we'd arm the military with bowling balls?

No, really, this spinal reflex you liberals have, "People carrying guns? The streets will run red with blood!" is pathetically anti-empirical. People do carry guns, the streets don't run red with blood.

You should watch "Blackhawk Down". The streets look pretty red in your idea world.

People do carry guns without committing murder. Get over it. Stop pretending otherwise.
# posted by Brett : 1:57 PM

I don't have to pretend. Somalia really exists and you want to bring it here. Stop pretending otherwise.
 

Consider the violence involved with the slaughter of a lamb in preparation of an Easter feast, symbolically celebrating the rising following the violence of Good Friday. The message is not to celebrate violence but to learn a lesson.

Of course, a leg of that lamb could have been frozen and then used as a weapon by a wife to slay her husband, followed by defrosting the leg, roasting it, and offering the detective a portion as the latter investigates the homicide. You can't eat a bowling ball, or a machine gun for that matter, in celebration of an act such as the wife's here. But served pink, with classic mint sauce, the leg of lamb can be delicious and provide some comfort, demonstrating that all violence is not the same.
 

Well, if nothing else, Brett is generous with his disbursement of advice:

"Trust no one! Arm yourselves! Law is violence!" [dark circles under eyes]

Thank you, Brett. Duly noted.
 

If you can't argue your case without putting words in your opponent's mouth that they didn't utter, you probably should suspect that your case sucks.
 

If you can't argue your case without putting words in your opponent's mouth that they didn't utter, you probably should suspect that your case sucks.
# posted by Brett : 4:32 PM

Pot, meet Kettle.

No, really, this spinal reflex you liberals have, "People carrying guns? The streets will run red with blood!"

Besides, I didn't put words in your mouth. Your perfect country is Somalia.
 

I'm just enjoying the irony in Brett giving forth "It appears to me that liberals believe their fellow Americans are only a random twitch of a neuron away from committing mass murder" -- apparently in an attempt to convince us of his sanity and reasonableness.

Anybody who believes the above, as well as that "a significant fraction of the population DO go about armed" -- is smoking some powerful hallucinogens, considering that only five states have issued conceal and carry permits to more than 5 percent of the population (with the densely-populated South Dakota leading with 7.5 percent issued). Given that even those with permits do not, in my experience, go about armed much of the time, we are forced to conclude that, for Brett, about 1 percent is "a significant percentage".

Such beliefs may not be insane, but they are arguably held in defiance of reality as almost everyone would see it.

In conclusion, I would just like to point out that the attempts on the part of those defending the beliefs tested in the poll have not convinced me that the teabaggers are an informed and reasonable group. It is especially scary if, as we could surmise, those commenting here are among the more literate.
 

"Such beliefs may not be insane, but they are arguably held in defiance of reality as almost everyone would see it."

If that were true, why is it 44 states with concealed carry reform? Rather than 6?

You're in a real hurry to assume that almost everyone sees reality exactly as you do.

Fact is, in most of the country, if you want to carry a gun in public, you can. And it doesn't have bad effects. So who's delusional here?
 

Fact is, in most of the country, if you want to carry a gun in public, you can. And it doesn't have bad effects. So who's delusional here?
# posted by Brett : 4:49 PM

Still you. The "homicide by firearm" rate (almost 3 per 1000,000) in the US is appalling.
 

Brett,

I made no argument pro or con about the merits of guns, conceal and carry, or the "natural rights of man".

I simply pointed out that some of your stated beliefs, in particular that a significant fraction of the population goes about armed, are demonstrably false -- to the point of being ridiculous.

So, to answer your question, "So who's delusional here?"

The answer is pretty obvious.
 

If you can't argue your case without putting words in your opponent's mouth that they didn't utter, you probably should suspect that your case sucks.

Brett, it takes nerve for a guy who routinely makes unsubstantiated assumptions to make this statement. Especially when I was arguably entirely faithful to the spirit of your remarks.

Sure, it's too much to expect you to cop to your myriad misrepresentations. That's just what you do.
 

"I simply pointed out that some of your stated beliefs, in particular that a significant fraction of the population goes about armed, are demonstrably false -- to the point of being ridiculous."

That's a pretty weak point, if it depends on 1% rather than 5% of the population carrying a gun being "significant" being ridiculous.
 

Brett,

No, a "weak" argument would be pretending

a) the percentage of those carrying weapons is equal to the percentage of those with permits (anybody who knows people with permits knows that they don't generally carry that often.)

and

b) the percentage of permits across the country is anywhere near 5 percent (it's only 5 percent or a bit more in 5 states, representing -- to coin a phrase -- an insignificant percentage of the population.)

The actual percentage of people carrying weapons is far less even than 1 percent. It's not only not a significant percentage, it's barely even measurable.

What's also weak is being unable to admit it when proven wrong.
 

But I've not been proven wrong on this, we've only proven we disagree about what's significant. It's absurd of you to pretend a matter of opinion is a clear factual disagreement.

Indeed, that's the problem with a lot of the questions in that poll; Most of them are not the sort of question that can be factually wrong. They're sliding scale questions where there are fundamental disagreements about where to draw the line. On a scale from one to ten, where do you call somebody a socialist? Depends on where you are on that scale yourself. Naturally, Democrats are going to disagree with Republicans on THAT one.

Hell, on the "does Obama want to take your guns away" question, the only issue is whether you go according to his voting record, (Yes!) or his rhetoric, (No!).

Finally, I just found out: This wasn't even a freaking random sample poll, it was the usual internet poll where you volunteered to answer. No statistical significance AT ALL.
 

Perhaps our intrepid former backpacker and Brett might wish to transplant to Utah after digesting Chip Ward's TomDispatch.com 3/28/10 essay "Welcome to Glennbeckistan - Where the Tea Party Rules and Tea-hadis Roam." Chip is a Utahan, who remains there because of the fabulous scenery. It seems Utah is a mecca for not only the Tea Party but also for libertarians, especially of the anarchist variety.
 

I have a question. How come when anyone on here disagrees with a "liberal" point of view, they automatically painted as a Tea Party or Glenn Beck disciple? Have you ever heard of libertarianism? Any of the points being made in favor of the right to bear arms is a constitutional/libertarian view point. As is, the danger in an expansive and abusive government. Libertarianism is quite different from being a republican. Don't agree. OK. Gay Marriage is fine with me. In fact, government shouldn't regulate what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes. Sound republican? How about foreign policy. Libertarians believe in non-interventionist foreign policy. No Iraq war, no nation building, no blank check for NATO allies and Israel to do what they please and have our military backing. Here is some advice. Let's stop painting everyone as Red jersey or Blue jersey and debate points. Calling a libertarian a republican is like calling a dog a cat. Yeah, they both have four legs and fur, but that's about where similarities end.
 

Also, if police and military carry weapons and there are many documented abuses and unlawful actions by these individuals and organizations, is it not important for citizens to be able to protect themselves for these?

http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/23/another-senseless-drug-war-dea
 

correction:

"from these" not "for these"
 

Just as all libertarians are not alike and all conservatives are not alike, all liberals are not alike. There is no universal liberal view, just as there is no universal libertarian view, just as there is no universal conservative view. As for those who live in Glennbeckistan, they all look alike to me.
 

Also, if police and military carry weapons and there are many documented abuses and unlawful actions by these individuals and organizations, is it not important for citizens to be able to protect themselves for these?

# posted by Tim : 9:57 AM

Owning a gun isn't going to protect you from the military or the police. They have more, and bigger, guns than you could ever hope to have, or should have. Once the general public has more firepower than the government, you are living in Somalia.
 

Here is some advice. Let's stop painting everyone as Red jersey or Blue jersey and debate points. Calling a libertarian a republican is like calling a dog a cat. Yeah, they both have four legs and fur, but that's about where similarities end.

At least one self-identified libertarian has spent years on this site defending both the Iraq War and torture, so forgive us if we're quick to jump that way.

Also, the Tea Party may be a separate entity from the GOP, but they sure do have a lot of GOP speakers at their rallies. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin were Republicans long before they were Tea Party people, so don't be surprised if some of their reputation rubs off on the Tea Party. If Al Franken and Barney Frank were approached to be key speakers at Tea Party rallies, I'm sure the response would be similar on the other side of the aisle.

I respect the desire to open a third front, because both major parties are terrible in their own ways. However, I'd wager the voting habits of self-identified libertarians are much much closer to those of Republicans, regardless of rhetorical positions that should make them farther away.

For example, what's your position on open borders for immigration?

For the record, at least a few of the liberals who appear in the comments of this site--myself included--believe the second amendment establishes an individual right to bear arms. We can still hold the opinion that 5% doesn't represent a "significant fraction of the population," but it may have more to do with the lack of an agreed upon statistical approach than any ideological factor.
 

Also, the Tea Party may be a separate entity from the GOP, but they sure do have a lot of GOP speakers at their rallies. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin were Republicans long before they were Tea Party people, so don't be surprised if some of their reputation rubs off on the Tea Party.

Not to mention George W Bush. It's funny watching all the teabaggers trying to pretend that they are protesting Bush's policies, given their total silence when those policies were actually being implemented.
 

I believe that a true capitalistic economy cannot survive without and influx of workers. I favor open borders, however, it is unsustainable to have entitlements that any immigrant can immediately qualify for. This is the fear of "healthcare for all" and then "amnesty". It is not affordable. We will go broke. With the situation we have, I think we should secure our borders and increase the amount of legal immigration 100-1000 fold from Mexico and Latin America. I have no problem, with foreign workers coming here to work and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Typically, they are the ones most willing to work and produce for their dreams as they mostly lack that opportunity in the places they wish to emigrate from. And as I have said earlier,(you can check my posts) my support of the tea party movement extends only to over-taxation and expansion of government.
 

Here is an interesting stat. Per capita, DC has the highest murder rate in the US. Until the ruling just a few weeks ago, all handguns were banned in the district. Gun laws do not keep illegal guns from people willing to do illegal things to get them. They only keep legal guns from people willing to follow the law.
 

"The study, which just appeared in Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (pp. 649-694), set out to answer the question in its title: "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence." Contrary to conventional wisdom, and the sniffs of our more sophisticated and generally anti-gun counterparts across the pond, the answer is "no." And not just no, as in there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, but an emphatic no, showing a negative correlation: as gun ownership increases, murder and suicide decreases.

The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser - in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence rates, are telling:

Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population)."

http://www.theacru.org/blog/2007/05/harvard_study_gun_control_is_counterproductive/
 

The biggest problem that I have with most conservatives and liberals is that they do not have evidence that supports their views. they either have a false belief that it does, or they believe what they believe in spite of evidence to the contrary.

I have no problem with someone who disagrees, but recognizes that consequences of their policies. ie entitlements and universal healthcare = high taxes, slowed economic growth, and lower quality of care. If you beleive that this is a fair trade-off, then fine, it is just difference in fundamental government functions. However, if you claim that you can have one without the other, you are out to lunch. And, when I get a chance, i will provide a conservative example so as to show that I do recognize the hypocrisy on both sides.
 

Ff you are a conservative you cannot believe in nation building and foreign intervention (world policing) and still believe in establishing a balanced budget, economic growth, and peace. Military expenditures steal a staggering amount of wealth form our country and our economy. Plus, every intervention in someone else's backyard will produce a tidal wave of political, economic, and social consequences that we don't often even realize until they wash over us. Example, our unlimited support for Israel and tyrants in Middle Eastern and Persian countries that create the hostility and hatred for us that is enough to convince people to strap bombs to themselves and murder our citizens.
They may hate our way of life, but they didn't kill themselves to punish us until we were over there and putting our finger in their proverbial pies.
 

Here is an interesting stat. Per capita, DC has the highest murder rate in the US. Until the ruling just a few weeks ago, all handguns were banned in the district. Gun laws do not keep illegal guns from people willing to do illegal things to get them. They only keep legal guns from people willing to follow the law.
# posted by Tim : 12:16 PM

Tim, banning guns in DC does nothing to prevent people from going outside DC to get guns.

What do you think would happen to gun related crime in DC if all firearms were banned in the US and people caught with guns were sent to jail for life?
 

I think then people would bring them in from Mexico and china and many other countries in which they are legal. Well, we will just get them to ban guns as well. Then we will all hold hands and sing "we are the world".

If all guns were banned, then knifings would increase %5000.
 

I think then people would bring them in from Mexico and china and many other countries in which they are legal.

Really? And risk spending the rest of your life in jail? That seems unlikely.

If all guns were banned, then knifings would increase %5000.
# posted by Tim : 12:48 PM

Which means the murder rate would plummet. It's a lot more difficult to kill someone with a knife than with a gun.
 

"I think we should secure our borders and increase the amount of legal immigration 100-1000 fold from Mexico and Latin America."

Ok, I'm confused: What's the point of securing our borders, and then immediately acting to legally replicate immigration statistics resulting from the brute fact that some people are in a position to walk across our borders illegally? We have a world of people beating down our doors, why not treat potential immigrants equally without respect to which country they originate in?

"Tim, banning guns in DC does nothing to prevent people from going outside DC to get guns.

What do you think would happen to gun related crime in DC if all firearms were banned in the US and people caught with guns were sent to jail for life?"

It would immediately spike during the resulting revolution, and then probably drop down to levels comparable to the rest of the country, once D.C. was forced to comply with the Bill of Rights.

You can't blame crime in D.C. on guns coming from outside, without explaining why the guns don't cause the crime outside D.C. Crime in D.C. is due to something in D.C., not spillover from low-crime Virginia.
 

It would immediately spike during the resulting revolution

# posted by Brett : 1:10 PM

I'm not worried about the revolution. The people who refused to turn in their guns would be dead, or in jail, relatively quickly.

You can't blame crime in D.C. on guns coming from outside

I'm not blaming guns for the crime rate, I'm blaming guns for the murder rate. Get rid of the guns and the murder rate is going to drop. Period.
 

You can't blame crime in D.C. on guns coming from outside

BTW, it's still quite comical that you had the nerve to accuse others of putting words in your mouth.
 

"I'm not worried about the revolution. The people who refused to turn in their guns would be dead, or in jail, relatively quickly."

Oh, right, you figure the government could set out to ship that portion of the population who are armed to concentration camps, and the resistance would be easily put down, couple of weeks max. Nuke a couple of states, saturation bomb the rural areas, piece of cake.

And the people answering that poll are supposed to be mad?
 

"Which means the murder rate would plummet. It's a lot more difficult to kill someone with a knife than with a gun."

But it hasn't plummeted in DC or Chicago where there are no handguns!

Plus, we can't keep drugs out of prisons, how are we going to keep all guns from the US!!!

It is not realistic and therefore, why not allow law abiding citizens to defend themselves against the people who have no qualms about murdering and robbing and obeying gun laws.

Also, guns level the playing field. I don't know about you, but if someone breaks into my home with a knife (or bat, or brick or whatever), I want my wife to have a gun to protect herself. Removing guns, means that large groups of people or the more aggressive and strong have an almost unlimited advantage over the weak or defensless.
 

It is all fine and good to have these utopian ideals until it is your family, or your property or your life that is on the line.
 

"Ok, I'm confused: What's the point of securing our borders, and then immediately acting to legally replicate immigration statistics resulting from the brute fact that some people are in a position to walk across our borders illegally? We have a world of people beating down our doors, why not treat potential immigrants equally without respect to which country they originate in?"

Because right now, the amount of people allowed to immigrate to the US from Latin american countries is absurdly low, despite its proximity to us. There waiting list is massive and those who wish to immigrate legally have no real chance. So, or course they then try illegally. Also, legal immigration has the advantage of preventing criminals, keeping stats, registering these people to pay taxes and get drivers license's. If we deport illegals, but make it much easier to immigrate legally, which path do you think people will choose. The problem now is that there is no legal path, it is virtually non existent.
 

Oh, right, you figure the government could set out to ship that portion of the population who are armed to concentration camps, and the resistance would be easily put down, couple of weeks max. Nuke a couple of states, saturation bomb the rural areas, piece of cake.

No, I figure that since most of those gun owners proudly proclaim that they are law abiding citizens, that they will also obey this law. The gun owners who take part in the "revolution" will face overwhelming firepower. Would you have us treat a "revolution" any differently?
 

But it hasn't plummeted in DC or Chicago where there are no handguns!
# posted by Tim : 1:46 PM

Except that there clearly are still handguns in DC and Chicago, you dimwit.
 

Tim said...
It is all fine and good to have these utopian ideals until it is your family, or your property or your life that is on the line.

There is nothing "utopian" about it. Lots of countries have much stricter gun laws than the US, and they usually have much lower murder rates.
 

Also, guns level the playing field. I don't know about you, but if someone breaks into my home with a knife (or bat, or brick or whatever), I want my wife to have a gun to protect herself. Removing guns, means that large groups of people or the more aggressive and strong have an almost unlimited advantage over the weak or defensless.

That's why we have police officers.

And I'll bet that the odds of your wife using that gun on you, or you using it on her, are much higher than the odds of anyone using it to stop a criminal.
 

"There is nothing "utopian" about it. Lots of countries have much stricter gun laws than the US, and they usually have much lower murder rates."

reread my post - research says the exact opposite

"Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population)."

http://www.theacru.org/blog/2007/05/harvard_study_gun_control_is_counterproductive/
 

Dimwit, you are the one who doesn't see that enacting laws and enforcing them are different things. There are already laws that say that illegal guns get you thrown in jail and they exist. That is the point, we can't enforce them, so why take the guns from law abiding citizens when they will be out there anyway.

And by the way, are the police going to camp out at my house and wait for a break-in? Police normally get there to draw the chalk line, not stop the crime.
 

"And I'll bet that the odds of your wife using that gun on you, or you using it on her, are much higher than the odds of anyone using it to stop a criminal."

Hence, the reason we have it locked and we have both have taken gun safety classes. you see, i don't need the government to protect me from myself. I am accountable for my actions and make the appropriate preparations.
 

reread my post - research says the exact opposite

No, it doesn't. Canada, Germany, Australia, Denmark, England, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, and Portugal all have lower gun crime rates than the US. In fact, it's tough to find Western countries with worse gun crime rates than the US. Whether some of those countries are worse than others is probably due to factors outside of their gun laws. For instance, the high murder rate in Russia is almost certainly due to the fact that Russia is currently a lawless hellhole.
 

Hence, the reason we have it locked and we have both have taken gun safety classes. you see, i don't need the government to protect me from myself. I am accountable for my actions and make the appropriate preparations.

If it's locked then it's of no use when someone breaks into your house.

Your training just makes it less likely that you'll miss when you shoot her, or that she'll miss when she shoots you.
 

Dimwit, you are the one who doesn't see that enacting laws and enforcing them are different things. There are already laws that say that illegal guns get you thrown in jail and they exist. That is the point, we can't enforce them, so why take the guns from law abiding citizens when they will be out there anyway.

Numbnuts, the reason we can't enforce them is that someone in DC can just go to Virginia to get a gun. That isn't so easy to do if guns are banned nationwide.


And by the way, are the police going to camp out at my house and wait for a break-in? Police normally get there to draw the chalk line, not stop the crime.
# posted by Tim : 2:49 PM

No, you are going to use an invention called a phone to call the police. They will then proceed to your house and capture the criminals. You can then change your underwear.

If the intent of the criminals is to kill you, having a locked gun won't help you. You are going to die.
 

You like to make blanket statements without support and in areas with which you have no knowledge, ie locked guns and gun safety, law enforcement etc (My brother is a police officer, I work as an EMT) and I can tell you have never had someone break into your home and know nothing of the likelihood that police get there before violence happens. I have. this means that I waste my time debating with stupid.
 

and to C2H5OH

"C2H50H said...

Tim,

Your careful adherence to the truth about Cantor's "victimization" is duly noted."

Article:

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the suspect in custody is a Philadelphia man who made anti-Semitic threats against the congressman. Cantor is Jewish.

The arrest is the latest development in the escalating nastiness following the enactment of President Obama's health care initiative.

Update, 3:26 p.m.: The FBI's Philadelphia office has identified the suspect as Norman Leboon, 33, of Philadelphia. The FBI said that Leboon "created and then transmitted a YouTube video to Google over the Internet, in which he threatened to kill Congressman Cantor and his family." The federal investigators did not indicate any links to an earlier complaint by Cantor about gunfire outside his district office.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/03/fbi-makes-arrest-in-threat-on-gop-congressional-leader/


care to retract?