Holy shit, indeed!

[...] written by KTK of Lean Left, but cross-posted here by [...]

OT, other than a mention of cross-posting. Sufficent Scruples appears to be down hard, at least for me.

Sufficent Scruples appears to be down hard

Yeah. I “upgraded”. Look what it got me.

You’re the only person in the entire world who noticed. Thanks for checking, though!

Working on it.

I wish I could claim that I noticed because of some loyalty or something. No, it was associative memory with the word “cross-post”.

“Holy crap! I knew Frank Schaeffer – son of widely-read drippy evangelical apologist Francis Schaeffer – had publicly broken with the right-wing religious extremists, but I never expected to see him take a clue stick and beat the living shit out of them like he did today.”

Then you do not know anything about him with these remarks. He has been bashing his parents and any folks who remind him of them for many years now long before he gets into the abortion and political issues. And I mean bash in ways no liberal would want their children to bash them or their parents to be bashed.,

He should talk about using inflammatory rhetoric. He does it himself regularly. The fact is he condemned in others (or even falsely accused others) for things he himself is guilty of: being hateful.

He does it to liberals in the past. He does it to conservatives now. His views may change, but his lack of character has not.

It is funny Franky has no problem with liberals who take shots at the previous President, but now finds it hateful that anyone take a shot at the current President. (I findi it wrong to disrespect either President, even though I may disagree with both to some extent..)

And let’s get real- if pro-lifers are such terrorists, how come there has not been an abortion doctor killed in the last ten years? How come only a handful has been killed in 36 years since Roe v Wade. That makes it like 1 out of every maybe 5 or 6 years TOTAL in all of 50 states. That is like 1/300 in a state per year.

If it makes pro-lifers terrorists because of some nut taking the law into his own hand, then by your logic, abolitionists are terrorists since a few took the law into their own hands and killed slaveowners.

Pro-lifers believe it is wrong to murder- be it the unborn or abortion doctors.

Apparently, abortionists believe it is wrong to murder only if it is not those they believe should be allowed to be murdered.

Franky has no problem with liberals who take shots at the previous President

Um, nobody did take a shot at the last President. What are you talking about? When Schaeffer refers to “taking a shot at our president”, he means it literally – because, as you may recall, somebody just did take a shot – fatally – at someone else who was also pro-choice and subject to the same demonizing vitriol by the same retrograde idiots.

if pro-lifers are such terrorists, how come there has not been an abortion doctor killed in the last ten years?

(a) Because the anti-choice wingers were in power during that time. They thought they could impose their values by law, so they laid off the murder (but not other forms of terrorism) until they lost power. Barely 4 months after Obama took office, and less than two weeks after Tiller decisively beat back the trumped-up legal harassment he had been enduring for years, the terrorist murders began again.

(b) What kind of asshole are you? A “handful” of deadly terrorist acts (8 murders, over a dozen attempted murders, hundreds of bombings and arsons) is no big deal? If al Qaeda had killed only a “handful” of people, would you not call them terrorists? (In fact, they were prosecuted as terrorists after the first, unsuccessful WTC bombing, which killed fewer people than the anti-choice terrorists have done, collectively. That seems rather obviously to be the right thing to do, in that case and in this.)

And the nonsense about “killing slaveowners” is moral perversion in the form of racist condescension. Slaves were not fetuses or embryos – they were persons, with thoughts and feelings and relationships and plans and desires for their own lives, all of that stolen from them by forcible imposition on their freedom to live their lives by their own choices and values. Fetuses have none of that; they lose none of that in being aborted. Slaves do not demand possession of another person’s body against their will; in fact, their own bodies were made the possession of others. Fetuses, notwithstanding they have no self, no experienced life, no moral status, still require the body of another person – to actually live inside that person’s body against their will – and every pregnant woman (or even potentially pregnant woman, which means virtually every woman, throughout much of her life) stands at risk that some misogynist yahoo will force her to take a living creature inside her body against her will and give over her body to its life, under threat of arrest or violence. To equate abortion with slaveholding is to equate slaves to fetuses – an analogy that is not merely stupidly backwards (it is the woman whose body is taken over; the fetus is the one in whose name it is claimed by others), but it reduces the entire moral substance of black persons – full persons with full lives – to that of a fertilized egg cell, as grossly racist a dismissal as any ever offered.

Christ, you people are fucked up.

The sad thing is, there are a number of psychologically unstable people out there that do stupid things.

What I can’t understand is how, when no one on the right is talking about killing the president (admittedly I do not listen to US talk radio so some nut may have done so), why does the left keep bringing it up as an inevitability? I have seen/heard several reports or comments from people on the left talking about how the president will be assassinated. How is that helpful? As far as rhetoric goes, I have heard more aggressive and vile things spoken about Bush, and before him, Reagan, so rhetoric is not limited to one side.

I would think that the left should counter with low-key reasoned arguments if they are truly concerned about Obama. Why? When dealing with an issue such as this, raising the emotional ante, as Frank’s blog does, simply makes someone who is mentally unstable more eager to lash out at those making them angry.

I think there is a non-negligible likelihood of a violent attack on Obama, and, more to the point, a whole lot of other people do, too, for reasons that are more than just hyperbole.

For one thing, there is the longstanding history of political violence from the right wing. Yes, you can point to examples from the left, but they have largely been constrained to particular political circumstances involving small groups: pro-union violence (largely in response to anti-union thuggery) in the 1900s; anarchist violence before WWI; anti-war bombings during the Vietnam war. And time has changed their tactics: those causes persist, but there is almost no violence involved today, and there have been no deaths or overt assaults by left-wing activists for many years. (The “Earth Liberation” assholes may be a counterexample, but they’re not supported.) Right-wing violence has been unending and pervasive, however, and is openly advocated – and practiced – today.

There were close to 5,000 lynchings in the US (including over 1,000 whites suspected of pro-black or pro-northern sentiment) over more than 100 years, conducted across the country, mostly by unorganized groups and often attended by ordinary citizens as public entertainment. Jim Crow was enforced by open threats and violence for decades, up through the Civil Rights Movement. There was a wave of assassinations and lynchings of civil rights workers and liberal political figures throughout the civil-rights years, clearly aimed at blocking the liberalization movement and intimidating or killing its supporters; there were scores of deaths, and few prosecutions. The FBI – the enforcement arm of the federal government itself – conducted an official, decades-long anti-leftist campaign that sometimes included violence and even murder; it also included an explicit, crude and repulsive attempt to force Martin Luther King, Jr., to commit suicide in the face of sexual blackmail. There are multiple, widespread, loosely connected right-wing separatist movements organized around “citizens’ militia”, “Christian identity”, “individual sovereignty”, or racist ideologies which openly advocate, and sometimes practice, anti-government violence and/or race war. There is a common and widespread streak of anti-government belligerence in the gun-rights community, where heated rhetoric about shooting “gun-grabbers”, or violent anarchy and the collapse of the government, are common themes; you can find open advocacy for shooting politicians or government agents on countless gun-related Websites. Major right-wing talk-radio hosts (including Gordon Liddy, once a top aide in the Nixon White House!) rage about “jackbooted thugs” and give explicit advice on how to shoot federal agents in order to kill them (“Head shots – head shots”). Conservative politicians joke that Democrats had better not visit US military bases for fear they’ll be shot (at least twice in memory, at least once involving Obama). The judge and lawyers in the Terri Schiavo case, and her husband, all received multiple death threats; Tom Delay then announced that, for any politicians who opposed the GOP-led intervention into the case, “the time will come for those responsible for [terminating Schiavo's treatment] to answer for their behavior”. And of course there are the thousands of terrorist threats and hoax attacks, hundreds of potentially-fatal bombings, and dozens of actual and attempted murders at women’s healthcare clinics. UPDATE: I suppose you could thrown in the pro- and anti-slavery violent clashes that marked the run-up to the Civil War. And while we’re at it, we have to note that, almost as this comment was being written, a white supremacist with a long history of crazed anti-government ranting and the usual Nazi-style conspiracy theories, who is also apparently an “Obama birther”, entered the National Holocaust Museum and shot a guard to death without provocation.

It is in this context that the first black president has been elected – a president within whose lifetime numerous black (and some white) civil rights workers were murdered, often openly by groups of racist terrorists whose identities were protected by the larger white community for decades afterward. (Ronald Reagan famously kicked off his first presidential campaign at the site of one of the most famous murders, giving a speech about “states’ rights”.) Obama has received unending death threats; a (very stupid) pair of skinheads was arrested just before the election, stalking him with weapons and a plan to commit over 100 murders of blacks, ending with Obama, in some sort of symbolic skinhead style; the Secret Service put Obama under protection earlier than any other candidate in history because of the threats. It’s well known that one reason Colin Powell stayed out of electoral politics is that his wife feared he would be assassinated. I daresay there is no black person in America who thinks that fear is outlandish or unreasonable.

There are hotheads on all areas of the political landscape, and all kinds of people do stupid and embarrassing things. (My search on “Obama death threats” turned up a threat against the life of a baker who sold cookies decorated with racist Obama caricatures labeled “Drunken Negro Heads” – it’s kind of hard to decide who’s winning the stupid contest with that one.) But the right wing harbors organized, widespread, persistent and unremitting, violence and terrorism, and has an uncatalogable history of lynchings, assassinations, murders, bombings, arsons, and other forms of terrorism directed at the left or supporters of liberal causes. Often the terrorists are known openly throughout the conservative (usually white) community, and sometimes the government. And this violence is very often triggered by race, and inevitably by one’s implication in causes or beliefs the right wing disapproves – on which count Obama is twice guilty. There is nothing at all crazy in thinking the crazies are out to get him. They’ve done it before, and they said they will do it again.

Not to nitpick because many of your points are valid, but I wonder: why do you say any events from the Vietnam War and prior do not matter when assessing the left wing violence (“time has changed their tactics: those causes persist, but there is almost no violence involved today”) and yet you go on to list a long string of things that occured prior to the end of the vietnam war as indicative of what the right will do.

It makes sense to include pre- or post-Vietnam activites for both but to include pre-vietnam activities for one group and ignore it for another is simply indicative of a built in bias.

As far as death threats go, it seems Bush had plenty of them too. I guess the right wing nuts were out to get him as well?

Do I discount the possibility of an assassination attempt? No. But I also don’t see how wild rhetoric, name calling and verbal abuse of anyone on the right will help the situation. Perhaps you could clarify that for me.

As I said, “[left-wing violence has] largely been constrained to particular political circumstances involving small groups . . . .Right-wing violence has been unending and pervasive, however, and is openly advocated – and practiced – today.” I didn’t say left-wing violence up until the Vietnam war “doesn’t matter” – I said that’s almost all there is of it, and it was never a constant or widespread phenomenon. Right-wing violence has been a constant feature of US politics, and has never ended.

The point is that there is an ongoing, and continuing, history of right-wing violence against liberals, minorities, and women that has persisted in an essentially unbroken stream – with different features at different times – since before the Civil War, and there is no such history of violence from the left. (It might also be pointed out that the cumulative effect of violence from leftists pales in comparison to that from the right, or even any single one of several distinct waves of violence from the right.) Right-wing violence and terrorism are more than just historical aberrations or occasional outbursts; they are part and parcel of right-wing political tactics at all times, though to greater or lesser degrees and with differences in intensity and focus. Nothing like that has ever been true on the left, and organized left-wing violence is almost unknown today. So when it comes to the likelihood of violence now, against a member of a class that has historically been the target of focused, widespread, and openly approved violence of the most vicious kinds, you’re in a very different ballpark from just receiving scrawled messages from crazies with a celebrity fetish.

Consider: organized mass violence against a hated minority, authorized or at least ignored by the legal system, predicated upon group prejudices that once defined the country’s social structure at its most basic level, and are still the source of festering resentment and prejudice today, fomented by radical groups with openly racist ideologies dedicated destruction of the existing social, and often legal and economic, system. Who do you think is likely to be at risk: Obama, or George W. Bush?

As for “wild rhetoric”, nobody has said anything about the right wing that isn’t true, and I hardly think that giving them even more preferential treatment is going to ease their resentments any. The problem is not that the left has pointed out that the right is riddled with vicious crazies spouting violent creeds; the problem is that the right is riddled with vicious crazies spouting violent creeds.

“To equate abortion with slaveholding is to equate slaves to fetuses – an analogy that is not merely stupidly backwards (it is the woman whose body is taken over; the fetus is the one in whose name it is claimed by others), but it reduces the entire moral substance of black persons – full persons with full lives – to that of a fertilized egg cell, as grossly racist a dismissal as any ever offered.”

I guess you will have to accuse Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s niece then of racism.

But obviously, you miss the whole point. I did not even equate abortion with slavery. Nice lie there.

I was pointing out slaveowners try to use the few instances of violences against them to paint abolitionists as all extremists and even terrorists.

“And the nonsense about “killing slaveowners” is moral perversion in the form of racist condescension. Slaves were not fetuses or embryos – they were persons, with thoughts and feelings and relationships and plans and desires for their own lives, all of that stolen from them by forcible imposition on their freedom to live their lives by their own choices and values. Fetuses have none of that; they lose none of that in being aborted. ”

By your logic, then babies just born also should be allowed to be rid of, since after all they have not grown up yet to have relationships, desires for their future, etc.

If anything, your attempted illustration at how slaves were mainly adults and the aborted are those babies who do not have their powers only show how much more heinous abortion is then slavery.

No, I did not compare slavery to abortion, but rhetorics of those who wish to discredit folks against those things then and now.

But since you want to bring up the comparison, we believe that babies born or unborn are human beings, and the fact they lack the capacities of adults like you say to do things or desire things only make their murders even more heinous and wicked. After all, that makes them the more defeneseless.

Your response is basically the sort of thing you accused others of – engaging in hateful rhetoric. So if a Christian gets killed because someone thinks they are f- up based on what you say and decide then to kill a Christian or two, does that make you responsible?

No, I do not believe so. But logically, by your own rules, you would be.

And since you want to bring up attempted murders, you mention about 12. 12 combined with 8 is 20.

That is still less than 1 combined crime per year in the whole US since Roe V Wade. In fact it is close to a rate of .5 combined crime per year in the whole US since Roe v Wade.

The fact of the matter is that pro-lifers are opposed to murder of anybody, be it abortion doctors or unborn or born babies etc.

The fact some unstable souls go about murdering abortion doctors is not reflection of what pro-lifers believe or think.

And let’s dispense with your rhetoric the only reason why pro-lifers did not attempt to murder an abortion doctor the last ten years is because they are in power. In two of those years, Clinton was in office. And also, the pro-life movement is no so naive to believe just because Republicans are in power, that mean anything to their cause. Eight years of Reagan and no progress with our laws at the national level is proof of that.

You obviously do not know how pro-lifers think and you are engaging in the same hateful rhetoric you claim to moan in others.

Maybe you are F up.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/09/king-niece-angry-tiller-mlk-comparison/?feat=home_headlines

A comparison made Monday between the assassination of Martin Luther King and the murder of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller has one relative of the slain civil rights leader outraged.

Alveda King, a notable pro-life advocate and Martin Luther King’s niece, lashed out to The Washington Times about comments made by Dr. Tiller’s friend and colleague, Dr. LeRoy Carhart.

“This is the equivalent of Martin Luther King being assassinated,” Dr. Carhart said Monday of the May 31 slaying of one of America’s best-known late-term abortion providers. He also said protesters planting crosses was equivalent to actions by the Ku Klux Klan.

“For LeRoy Carhart to mention the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who worked through peaceful and non-violent means, in the same breath with that of George Tiller, whose work ended peace and brought violence to babies in the womb, is offensive beyond belief,” she said. “The analogy is just wrong.”

Ms. King has called abortion a “racist, genocidal act.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks have a much higher rate of abortions than any other race. In 2000, blacks made up 17 percent of live births but the share of abortion was more than twice that at 36 percent.

In his words Monday, Dr. Carhart also denounced pro-life protesters as hate criminals.

Dr. Carhart also speaks of hate crimes, Ms. King added. I would simply ask him, is it not hateful to regard an entire class of people as non-human because theyre unwanted?

– Kristi Jourdan contributed to this report.

The problem is not that the left has pointed out that the right is riddled with vicious crazies spouting violent creeds; the problem is that the right is riddled with vicious crazies spouting violent creeds.

More to the point, the mainstream right is riddles with such crazies, as evidenced by talk radio and Fox News. There will always be nutjobs in any movement, but the right actually gives prominence to its crazies. Ann Coulter talks about bombing the NY Times building, or about invading Muslim countries, killing their leaders, and forcibly converting their populations to Christianity, and she gets on the NY Times bestseller list and has a syndicated column! Michelle Malkin writes books openly defending internment camps and McCarthyism, which also wind up on the bestseller list, and is a regular guest on Fox News!

The closest thing I can think of on the left is maybe Ted Rall, and even though his rhetoric doesn’t rise to anywhere near that level, he remains a largely obscure figure.

Michael Moore? He’s viewed as somewhat of a god by the left here in Canada. How is he viewed down there?

He’s got a decent-sized following down here, but to my knowledge, no syndicated column, no regular appearances on cable news, etc. His movies generally do well, and he puts out a book every now and again. But again, even though he’s a provocateur, and a relatively prominent one at that, his rhetoric doesn’t rise to nearly the level of a Malkin or a Coulter or a Limbaugh or a Hannity.

Keith Olbermann would probably be the best example of a somewhat prominent left-wing blowhard, but again, his invective is kid’s stuff compared to what passes for discourse on the mainstream right each and every day.

And folks on the left talk about conservative women like Malkin and Palin being raped. And folks on the left blame America for 9/11.

The hypocrisy on the left is breathtaking.

A liberal (who writes for Advocate and New Republic) gives different take on this issue:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124398690567579389.html

By JAMES KIRCHICK
On Sunday, abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered at his church in Wichita, Kan. He was one of a handful of doctors in the U.S. who performed late-term abortions and for decades had been a target of virulent criticism from antiabortion activists. His clinic had been bombed and vandalized, and in 1993 he was shot in both arms in a failed assassination attempt. Tiller’s alleged killer, Scott Roeder, is a long-time radical antiabortion activist with reported ties to a militant antigovernment organization called the Freemen.

Within hours after the murder, every antiabortion group in the country denounced the attack. Robert P. George, a leading Catholic intellectual opponent of abortion, wrote that “George Tiller’s life was precious” and characterized his murder as “a gravely wicked thing.” He called on his fellow abortion opponents to “teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion.”

Even Operation Rescue, the extreme antiabortion group that organized a six-week blockade of Tiller’s office in 1991, issued a statement condemning the murder. “We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning,” Troy Newman, the organization’s president, said.

These unqualified reproaches are nothing new. The organized antiabortion movement has always opposed violence against abortion providers. That has never stopped opportunistic prochoice activists, however, from conflating their passionate rhetoric with the behavior of individual criminals. True to form, on Sunday, Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star accused anyone who had criticized Tiller as a murderer (Tiller aborted healthy, nine-month old fetuses) of being an “accomplice” to his death.

Over the past decade this argumentative tactic has taken on an even more insidious twist. In addition to fighting violent, Muslim jihadists abroad, some liberals argue that America must deal with its own, homegrown terrorists. These are not just people who commit violence but millions of socially conservative evangelicals and Catholics — “Christianists” — who comprise the base of the Republican Party and threaten the stability of the country.

In 2007, former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges published a book called “American Fascists” that compared conservative evangelicals to European brownshirts of the 1920s and 1930s. That same year, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour hosted a three-part series, “God’s Warriors,” that equated Christian (and Jewish) fundamentalists with Muslim extremists.

The comparison between the religious right and Islamic extremists is invariably partisan so as to smear the GOP as being held hostage to forces as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah. “Even as the Bush administration denounces and battles Islamic religious zealotry abroad, fundamental Christian zealotry is taking hold here at home,” wrote Stephen Pizzo on the liberal Alternet Web site in 2004. On his popular HBO program, comedian Bill Maher frequently compares murderous Islamists to censorious Christians.

But if the reactions to the death of Tiller mean anything, the “Christian Taliban,” as conservative religious figures are often called, isn’t living up to its namesake. If “Christianists” were anything like actual religious fascists they would applaud Tiller’s murder as a “heroic martyrdom operation” and suborn further mayhem.

Radical Islamists revel in death. Just witness the videos that suicide bombers record before they carry out their murderous task or listen to the homicidal exhortations of extremist imams. Murder — particularly of the unarmed and innocent — is a righteous deed for these people. The manifestos of Islamic militant groups are replete with paeans to killing infidels. When a suicide bomb goes off in Israel, Palestinian terrorist factions compete to claim responsibility for the carnage.

There is no appreciable number of people in this country, religious Christians or otherwise, who support the murder of abortion doctors. The same cannot be said of Muslims who support suicide bombings in the name of their religion.

Yet speak of the disproportionately violent strain in Islam to a “progressive” person and you’ll be met with sneering recitations of millennia-old Christian crusades or Jewish settlements in the West Bank. As for conservative Christians’ contemporary political endeavors, lobbying to ban the teaching of evolution in schools or forbidding same-sex marriage simply does not threaten society in quite the same way as the genital mutilation of young girls or the bombing of the London transit system.

I happen to support a legal regime that would, in Bill Clinton’s famous words, keep abortion safe, legal and rare. I hold no brief for the religious right, and its views on homosexuality in particular offend (and affect) me personally. But it’s precisely because of my identity that I consider comparisons between so-called Christianists (who seek to limit my rights via the ballot box) and Islamic fundamentalists (who seek to limit my rights via decapitation) to be fatuous.

In the coming days, we will hear more about how mainstream conservative organizations and media personalities created an “environment” in which the murder of an abortion doctor became an inevitability. Just as talk radio was blamed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an attempt will be made to extend the guilt for this crime from the individual who pulled the trigger to the conservative movement writ large. But the Christian right’s responsible reaction to the death of George Tiller should put to rest the lie that Judeo-Christian extremists are anywhere near as numerous or dangerous as those of the Muslim variety.

Mr. Kirchick is an assistant editor of the New Republic

folks on the left talk about conservative women being raped. folks on the left blame America for 9/11. The hypocrisy on the left is breathtaking.

Very efficient! In just three sentences, we see at least three rules: Rule #10 (accuse the accuser), Rule #5 (make the particular stand for the whole), and Rule #4 (denounce the left, being sure to include the word “hypocrisy”). Well done!

Frank Castle,

WTF is “folks” on the left? David Icke claims that the ruling elite are actually reptilian shapeshifters. True story. Should we lump that in with being what “folks on the left think” as well? Is Art Bell and Coast to Coast radio the voice of “the left?” No. 999 out of 1000 people don’t even know who/what the fuck that is. The fringe left remains largely on the fringe. That’s been the point the whole time; I can’t fathom what the source of the confusion is there.

TG,
While I would agree that Moore is not utlra-extreme (he’s not a stritct anarchist, or Marxist, and he doesn’t advocate violence as a protest tactic, etc.), I think you’re shortchanging his following a bit. The guy won a fucking Oscar. Saying his movies do well and he writes a book now and then is clearly understating his reach and appeal. His books hit the NYT best seller list and camp out there like a faux-hawked hipster in red jeans waiting for some limited bullshit sneaker (Fuck the Air Yeezy!). His movies gross heavy, heavy bank too. Surprised nobody threw out Bill Maher yet – though he’s not all that hardcore left at all, IMO, he’s just passionately atheist.

Very efficient!

That’s obviously thanks to the deregulation of the comment section!

As for Mr. Kirchik, calling someone writing at the WSJ a “liberal” because he is an editor at The New Republic is pretty funny. But ultimately, his frothing, arm-waving attack on “partisan” “liberals” is simply a vapid denial of reality of the “change the subject” and “denounce the left” variety.

The simple fact is that the anti-choice crowd, as always when a tragedy occurs, is trying to deny the meaning of its own words. You repeatedly, persistently, for years, denounce someone as a “mass murderer,” a “baby killer,” a “monster,” you compare him to Hitler, to to al-Qaeda, to Pol Pot, you continue to do this even after his clinic is attacked, even after he is shot in a failed assassination, and then after all that when someone takes you at your words and shoots him down in cold blood, you want to scurry away into your ritualistic pro-forma assertions of a nonviolence you don’t otherwise advocate and deny any moral responsibility?

Not this time, you hypocritical, lying, bastards. Not any more.

LarryE> “You repeatedly, persistently, for years, denounce someone as a “mass murderer,” a “baby killer,” a “monster,” you compare him to Hitler, to to al-Qaeda, to Pol Pot, you continue to do this even after his clinic is attacked, even after he is shot in a failed assassination, and then after all that when someone takes you at your words and shoots him down in cold blood, you want to scurry away into your ritualistic pro-forma assertions of a nonviolence you don’t otherwise advocate and deny any moral responsibility”

I would fall into the pro-life crowd and I have done none of these things.
I know lots of people who (as far as I know) have done none of these things.
There are several pro-life groups out there who have done none of these things.
By using the word “You”, it becomes an all-encompassing word that then means EVERYONE who is pro-life (or in your words anti-choice).

Thus you are guilty of using (according to your own definition) rule #5 and more than likely will invoke rule #7 as a defense. Oh, and I also noticed an incredibly efficient use of rule # 4 as well.

Just as to the particulars of this article by Kirchick: He uses ‘progressive’ in scare quotes, and much more tellingly, he’s bought the line that Tiller aborted healthy fetuses. I suppose that if you want to quibble, you can claim that, but he’s certainly not aborted any healthy pregnancies. Concern trolling from the WSJ is still concert trolling (at least if anybody mistakes the WSJ as left-wing).

Also, my irony meter exploded when I noticed that the guy advocating vigilantism has chosing the pseudonym of Frank Castle. Thanks, Digg. I was need that later reading about creationists and academic freedom.

By using the word “You”, it becomes an all-encompassing word

That is utter and complete bullshit and I will not accept that you don’t know it’s bullshit. Use of the word “you” as referring to the general “one,” i.e., as addressing the people referred is common, everyday English and for you to try to treat it as something else is absolute nonsense and again I can’t believe you don’t know it’s nonsense.

You “haven’t done any of those things?” If that’s true, then that wasn’t about you, was it? All you’re offering is a distraction, again so very typically trying to change the subject by drowning it in minutia about precisely who said what when and whether the who in question said explicitly A or B.

Well, this boy won’t play that game any more. Until now, I have resisted considering you among those who prefer evasion to engagement and deceit to debate, but you are making it damn hard to continue doing so.

You want to convince me otherwise? I want to hear you, repeatedly over time and without prompting, condemn the extremist rhetoric coming out of such as Operation Rescue. I want to hear you condemn Bill O’Reilly for saying that Dr. Tiller was “so bad” that if he was “allowed to continue,” it would make it impossible to make moral judgments about anyone or anything. I want to hear you do more than just after the fact blink and go “Who me? Not me!” while trying (and failing) to nitpick at others’ words. I want to hear you cry out that the anti-choice movement should “cleanse” itself of its “radical” elements, just like the right yells that about the left at every opportunity. Otherwise, when you say “nothin’ to do with me,” the words will ring hollow – as, in fact, they do now.

Oh, and one other thing: Your sniggering (and sloppy) invocation of various of my rules serves again to emphasize your refusal to understand them or their meaning. Anyone can be accused of employing any of those rules and I expect at some point everyone has used several of them. But as rules, these do not point to isolated instances on anyone’s part, but to the consistent practices and standard behavior of the wingers in their fundamentally dishonest pursuit of non-debate. That’s why they’re called “rules” rather than “examples.” That point has been made so clearly and so explicitly that your continued refusal to understand it can only be considered deliberate.

LarryE > Perhaps you need to get a grasp of the english language. When your first sentenced references “the anti-choice crowd” and then the next sentence starts with the word “you”, the inference is that the entire group is being referenced. So don’t give me your spin garbage that “if I haven’t done those things then it wasn’t about me”. That is simply blind rhetoric intended to be, as you put it, fundamentally dishonest. And the fact that you then lump me in with the extremists simply because you have not heard me vehemently and vocally criticize them simply verifies my assumption. To you, anyone who does not aggressively attack the extremists is supporting them.

And as for invoking the “rules” I was doing so simply to show that they apply to your posting virtually every time. So it is not an isolated incident. It is indeed a “consistent practice” and “standard behavior” of yours. And my entire life I have seen the left use those identical things to attack those on the right consistently.

I understand that a significant number of right wingers in the US use those things consistently. What you seem to fail to realize is that so do a number of the left wingers in the US as well as the majority of the left wingers in Canada and the rest of the world. Are you so blinded by hatred of the right that you can’t see it? Or are you just not aware of what is happening outside the US?

AS far as the “radical” elements I’ve already said they are idiots. Unfortunately, due to freedom of speech and freedom of association, it is not possible to make them stop using the word “Christian” in their names or to even force them to stop supporting extremist causes.

My last on this because you pretty much just say the same thing over and over in different words.

No one with normal comprehension of English would have taken my statement as meaning every single person opposed in any way to abortion, hoo-hah, baby! To claim otherwise is utter crap. And you know it. Or at least damn well should.

It was a general assertion, and as a general assertion, an overall observation, that the anti-choice crowd on the whole is trying to deny the meaning, the impact, of its own words, it is accurate, no matter how fast you try to run away from it by nitpicky distractions involving parsing of the meaning of the word “you.”

so do a number of the left wingers in the US as well as the majority of the left wingers in Canada and the rest of the world

Okay, prove it. And remember, you can’t just show that it has happened – as I already said, I expect that everyone has been guilty of some sins against logic and fair debate at some point – but prove that it is standard operating practice by “the majority of left wingers.” Put up or shut up.

AS far as the “radical” elements I’ve already said they are idiots

“Idiots?” Oh, well, after a denunciation that strong, how could I have doubted you? Calling people who describe certain doctors as everything from “butchers” to “mass murderers,” who scream at and attempt to intimidate women seeking abortions, who enable, promote, set the stage for, provide the justification for, the shootings, the bombings, the arson, well, calling them “idiots” is just such strong language that I bet their ears are ringing even now.

Or was it not those people you meant, but those who actually carried out the shootings, the bombings, the arson? You surely can’t mean that; “idiots” can’t be the strongest term you can apply to them. So just who are the “idiots?” Don’t just say “the radicals,” give some examples, You don’t have to name every one, but enough so we can get a sense of who you mean.

due to freedom of speech and freedom of association

What an incredibly lame cop-out! A cheap dodge. The issue is not what you can legally force some anti-choice person or group to do, but your association with them and how you describe them and how you regard them . It has to do with whether or not you make efforts to insist before a violent assault makes it politically necessary that the movement of which you are part reject all violence.

And more to the point, it has to do with if you will call out other anti-choice people and groups on their extremist rhetoric and demand that they stop using inflammatory, violence-encouraging expressions like “baby killer” and “mass murderer.” And do it, again, without being prompted.

So the bottom line:

To you, anyone who does not aggressively attack the extremists is supporting them.

Yes! That is exactly what I say. “Silence is consent.” It is one thing to be silent due to ignorance. But when something is shoved in your face over and over for years on end, such as the violent, hateful rhetoric of much of the anti-choice crowd (and in this I include such as Operation Rescue and Randall Terry) has been, and still to remain silent, well, that is an endorsement.

And if you don’t endorse it, it goddam well is your responsibility to denounce it and to do so before it becomes politically expedient.

Finally, as for your personal opinion of me, it’s of no concern to me. I’m more than content to have others read what I have written here and elsewhere and judge for themselves if I am “fundamentally dishonest” in argument.

Interesting.

You rant at me but seem to see me as unreasonable.

You demand I provide evidence, while at the same time making it clear that nothing I present will suffice. Instead of being so lazy, go check out the last 40 years of Canadian history, especially the last 5 elections run by the left-wing Liberal Party and you will see PLENTY of evidence of what I said.

You say silence is endorsement but I have never read anywhere where you suggested the same standard for muslims and the extremists and seem to recall on this site that some have said it is unfair to link the moderates with the extremists there. Why the double standard?

As far as my personal opinion of you, I haven’t shared that. The fundamental dishonesty comment was based on what I have seen you present (or at least the slant with which you presented it). Nothing personal at all. I can’t really say I have a personal opinion of you as reading a person’s blog doesn’t reaaly provide me with enough to develop a personal attachment. From a simply pragmatic point of view, you listed a number of rules about right wingers and then proceeded to prove that you are adept at following most of them. That provides evidence to me that if you are representative of the left then you are proving my point.

Big U,

I won’t interject too much, as Larry doesn’t need a “hype-man.” However, it is pretty clear throug reading the back and forth here, that you present yourself as suffering from a persecution complex.

Again, I’d second Larry’s request to specifically indentify who you classify as “idiots.” Does that just apply to those who engage in the incendiary rhetoric that provide the intellectual, moral underpinning of the extremist fringe actors? Or are you classifying the actors themselves in that way as well? Tiller’s shooter is not an idiot; he’s a fucking terrorist! Unless of course, you’re willing to stop at calling terrorists idiot.

Mohamed Atta, that guy was a real idiot.

Okay, to spell it out to those here: Those who engage in wild rhetoric are idiots. Those who kill are murderers and in some cases terrorists. Is that clear enough for everyone or do I need to lay out specific names and groups and show how I categorize them?

And Digg > as far as the persecution complex, I would tend to disagree. I have no expectations that anyone is out to get me or out to hurt me. A close review of LarryE’s responses both here and on other threads would clearly indicate that he makes use of the tactics he accuses the right of. It’s really quite simple.

I was referring to your grouping of yourself within the “you” that Larry was quite clearly referring to in his post. It was clear who he was talking about, and it was clear that those who do not fit that description don’t apply. You kept saying, “not me” when it was clear that he wasn’t talking about you.

Imagine a world without pronouns.

The interesting thing, Digg, is that I showed the paragraph in question to some people, including my daughter’s English teacher because I was questioning if I was actually being biased in my understanding of what he had written. Everyone I showed it to said that with the way it was phrased, they understood it to mean he was saying that everyone who is anti-abortion was guilty of those things.

And the following was an indication that he WAS including everyone who is anti-choice:

“To you, anyone who does not aggressively attack the extremists is supporting them.

Yes! That is exactly what I say.”

Holy shit, Big U. It’s getting much harder to justify to myself that this discussion is worth my time…

A. Did you show your daughter’s teacher (strange in and of itself) the paragraph in isolation, or did she read the entire comment thread? Context is important, ya know.

B. There are different levels of “support.” If you don’t disassociate yourself with those elements of your group you implicitly endorse them, practically speaking even if not intellectually. Again – context is key. And… seeing as you finally stated your position, that these guys are murderers, and in some cases terrorists, you’ve fulfilled your obligation and are no longer part of that group. You being lumped in there (to the extent any confused party may have done so) would have only been the result of your reluctance to stand up and pull yourself out of that group – you coulda nipped any of that potential confusion in the bud 30 posts ago! So, you’re off the hook you imagined yourself to be on (unless of course you are unwilling to actually register the same objections to those tactics to those who support that kind of rhetoric, and only do so to us, “the choir”)

Alright Digg, let’s look at context.

The word “you” is used to reference the person reading or being spoken to. Context would show that this thread had developed into a discussion between individuals, of which I was one of the main ones. There were only two people on the entire thread that could be remotely connected to being part of the “anti-choice crow”. LarryE, who is VERY specific with his wording did not use “they” which would have referred to people other than those reading or interacting in this thread. The use of the word “you” in the CONTEXT of this thread, would indicate that the comment was referring to the “anti-choice crowd” in this thread. There is no other context to look at the word “you”.

In B, you say I have fulfilled my obligation. I am no longer lumped because I finally spoke. And yet LarryE said if I had not done those things then I was not part of the group. And then he said unless I vigorously spoke out against it, I WAS part of that group. So forgive me for being confused when the guy who said it isn’t consistent with what he meant and you (Digg) said I have to prove that I am not part of the group being criticized in order to not be considered part of it.

I’m sorry, but I just have to ring in here one last time because this is so incredibly amusing.

BU, are you now seriously, I mean seriously, claiming that if I had used the word “they” instead of the generic “you” that it would not have triggered your persecution complex? That if I had done so you would not have insisted I meant to include you personally and specifically even though by your own grammatical argument “they” would refer to the “anti-choice” crowd of which you declare yourself part? And therefore by your own paranoid logic, it still would have referred to “EVERYONE who is pro-life,” including you?

And are you seriously still trying to argue that I meant you even though I specifically said that if you hadn’t done the things in question, then it didn’t apply to you?

That. Is. Pathetic. Bull.

And so is the latest, truly weird, attempt to parse the wording into an accusation against you personally. As you say, I strive to be “VERY specific” with my wording and I assure you that if I had meant you there would have been no room for doubt in anyone’s mind.

But then again, since you apparently can’t understand the difference between actually employing terms like “mass murderer” and silent endorsement of it even as you don’t use the terms yourself, your grasp of logic is visibly weak.

As something of a sidebar, that’s also demonstrated by your continuing misuse of “the Rules.” As I specifically stated in the post, these are not things done in debate, they are things done to avoid debate of the issue at hand – which in this case was the moral responsibility for the impact of their own words on the part of those who persistently use inflammatory rhetoric. That is a debate you persistently strove to avoid, including now with your lengthy whine about your supposed victimization at my hands, until you were nailed down to a specific answer on one (albeit central) point.

I’m sure we can in the future have good, productive discussions even with our disagreements. I still, as I said earlier, resist considering you among those who prefer evasion to engagement and deceit to debate. But on this topic, you are a waste of time.

Oh by the way, I consider the killing of Tiller to be murder also and wrong.

DAVID LETTERMAN’S HATE, ETC. !

David Letterman’s hate is as old as some ancient Hebrew prophets.
Speaking of anti-Semitism, it’s Jerry Falwell and other fundy leaders who’ve gleefully predicted that in the future EVERY nation will be against Israel (an international first?) and that TWO-THIRDS of all Jews will be killed, right?
Wrong! It’s the ancient Hebrew prophet Zechariah who predicted all this in the 13th and 14th chapters of his book! The last prophet, Malachi, explains the reason for this future Holocaust that’ll outdo even Hitler’s by stating that “Judah hath dealt treacherously” and “the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this” and asks “Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?”
Haven’t evangelicals generally been the best friends of Israel and persons perceived to be Jewish? Then please explain the recent filthy, hate-filled, back-stabbing tirades by David Letterman (and Sandra Bernhard and Kathy Griffin) against a leading evangelical named Sarah Palin, and explain why most Jewish leaders have seemingly condoned Palin’s continuing “crucifixion”!
While David, Sandra, and Kathy are tragically turning comedy into tragedy, they are also helping to speed up and fulfill the Final Holocaust a la Zechariah and Malachi, thus helping to make the Bible even more believable!
(For even more stunning information, visit MSN and type in “Separation of Raunch and State” and “Bible Verses Obama Avoids.”)

[just saw above thing on web. shocking?]