Glenn Reynolds talks about the words flying around from those wanting to accuse Gov. Palin and the Tea Part Movement of inciting the violence of a young man who has reportedly been obsessed with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for the last three years.
To be clear, if you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either: (a) asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?
Ed Morrissey quotes diverse sources on this topic, noting how many people want to restrict freedom of speech to their own ideological supporters. (via Books, Inq)
Is it just me, or is he leaping to conclusions of his own.
I agree wholeheartedly when he says that “I can’t think of anyone in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with” the power to censor “inflamatory” speech. But I also feel that Palin, like Biden, deserve censure (i.e. people should be upset, but do nothing legally about it) for encouraging people to dislike the other side on the basis of emotion rather than reason.
I don’t believe that Palin had any intention to cause an assassination when she put the cross-hairs up. But I do think that they were an open encouragement–whether she meant it as such or not (and again, I emphatically think “not”)–to crazies who feed off the most emotional of our political declarations. So I believe hat she was irresponsible for her rhetoric, and I feel I am right to criticize her for that.
I believe the point is not that you should not have your argument or that it is invalid to feel you can and should criticize Mrs. Palin or anyone for using such language. The point is that the murder was not motivated by political arguments at all, and for the pundits to jump to that immediate conclusion in light of the weekend’s news is irresponsible or worse.
President Obama said if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, speaking figuratively of political power struggles. Where were the outcries then or even the links from this tragedy to that statement? There shouldn’t be any, because the two have nothing to do with each other.
I, for one, don’t think such metaphoric language is bad for our political discussion. It’s natural and communicates. To suggest that a political leader’s talk of hitting back hard promotes fist-fighting is ridiculous.
I don’t understand the concept of purifying political debate so that it’s free of emotion. Much of the criticism of certain conservative public figures is that they appeal too much to emotion. It’s a mystery to me, particularly since I’m not aware of any left-leaning public figures who don’t appeal equally to emotion.
If the criticism is that people are using bad reasoning to appeal to ugly emotions, that’s valid provided it can be backed up with specifics. And I’d still be interested to hear a cogent case for how the right does this more than the left.
Emotion per se is not wrong. It informs wonderful things like patriotism, empathy, and courage. Some particular emotions are unattractive or useless in context. In fact, the fashion in the last few years of decrying the “emotionalism” inherent in the backlash against overweening government strikes me as pure emotionalism, in the sense of the anxiety and resentment of Big Government types unmixed with reason, evidence, or simple fairness.
Here is a post with emotion. See if you notice it.
It seems like dems have always been rather free with the VARNISHED truth. I recall how Kennedy’s folks created great reading for the masses about purity of that family of candidates. Teddy NEVER left the scene of an accident and he never abandoned his girl-friend to drown alone in a cold river…..
As we march through democrat history we find stories changing, rants against conservatives growing more and more vitriolic and finally with the Clintons, out-right lies are printed as pure truths.
The bigger the un-truth, the more it was swallowed. The press has always been liberal in it’s reporting… to the point they became an admitted tool for the dems.
Conservatives are evil, liberals/socialists/dems are pure as the driven snow.
Playing politics is one thing but verbal assassination as we see happening to Palin by the liberals and the press is just insanely too far!
How is it we all sit back and click our tongues, shake our heads and say, oh, gee, those nasty liberals are doing it again. What CAN we do?
IF we don’t do something soon, the liberals/socialist/dems are going to eliminate any of our free speech and our other constitutional rights. Conservatives and Christians will be done away with in due time. Liberals have all the rights they could ever want while conservatives or Christians are put down, soon to be imprisoned for just opening our mouths.
There is no Conservative leadership. There is no Conservative grouping that will organize us into a strong, effective force to urge real honesty in business and government.
We see there is no real conservative press. The Tea-baggers we thought were going to clean house, but all they did was get elected. Look how they behaved once they got to sit in the House. Just like their predecessors.
I thank the Lord daily that HE is in control of all this. He is what keeps me on an even keel. With Him I can walk on water… without, I am at the mercy of the world.
All they did was get elected? They just did that. How can you feel betrayed already?
Heard a guy who called the John Williams show on WCCO, accusing the conservative talk-radio programs for inciting violence by their rhetoric … “which is mostly lies or half truths.” Hmmm … speaking of rhetoric.
1.The new guys in the house, waving their flags, shouting to the roof-tops; “We’re going to bring down Obama-care. We will get it off the books and get things back to normal…for AMERICA!”
Everyone knew of course that the new guys had no chance at this as there was no way to get past the democrat senate and the president’s veto…until or after a major republican victory in 2012.
2. There are too many to name, but check and see how many of the newbys voted with the dems in “across the isle cooperation”. I believe one commentator said there was more “lame-duck” legislation passed in 2010 than in any other time in history. Without the new tea-baggers and their not so strong “campaign promises”, that wouldn’t have happened. Even some of the dems said they were shocked at how eager the new Tea-party guys were to sign on to the liberal/socialist legislation. (They of course left off the liberal/socialist part….)
3. We have one of the largest, if not THE largest
oil deposits in the world up in Montana, N. Dakota, and S. Canada.(Canada, of course, we have no control over…) The oil is good, low sulfur content, and under natural pressure that some tested drilling sights could produce approximately 9000 barrels/day or better. (I’m not an expert on oil production, but that sounds pretty good to me.)
Now, tell me why won’t anyone, including the newly elected tea-partiers talk about this. Wouldn’t it be nice NOT be dependent on Middle-East oil? Wouldn’t it be nice to have affordable gasoline? Which in turn lowers ALL prices!
The oil companies claim to get 44 cents per gal. out of each gal. of gasoline sold. They then NET 40 some BILLION dollars a year that way. AND THAT’S JUST ONE COMPANY!!!
Look how our government taxes each gal. of gasoline. Plus all the road and other taxes they force us to pay for it. How much money did the government NET for all that tax revenue????
I don’t hear the tea-baggers putting up a fuss about that either!
I am tired of all the negative, what’s wrong with our country stuff being said… ME INCLUDED…with NO ONE providing conservative, AND Christian solutions to all the problems.
Sara Palin, as nice as she is, will not win over the dems/socialist/liberals. We have no leadership worth mentioning…even in the Tea-Party.
This is why I feel betrayed. No one will stand up to be counted or to fight to confound the liberal lies that continue to bury us in trillion dollar debt!!
Read or listen to Chuck Missler sometime. He at least has some good thoughts on what to do.
I wonder if you have any idea how many people automatically stop reading when they get to the first “tea-bagger.” I don’t just mean stop reading this post, but stop reading any post under your name, permanently. It’s really a way of silencing yourself.
“We have no leadership worth mentioning…even in the Tea-Party.”
I’m hesitant to chime in again, but here’s a thought: I wonder if the aggressive rhetoric is the result of a lack of leadership.
Since Teddy (the most American president ever) has been brought up, I’ll use him as an example. No one would ever accuse him of using PC language, or knowtowing before his opposition, or in any way showing weakness. He also lived in a world where the odds were stacked against him–he fought the bosses, who not only had a major influence on the media but also literally bought their employees’ loyalty and votes.
Yet the one thing that he seems to have overflowed with, that I at least don’t see in the Tea Party, is an immense generosity towards his opponents. He never backed down on a thing he believed, but when he described his opponents he often seems remarkably eager to present their ideas in terms they would agree with (before, of course, tearing them apart.)
There’s not a lot in common between Obama and Teddy, especially in terms of their rhetorical styles. Such is obvious. But I think one virtue that Teddy had that Obama may have taken too far is an ability to listen to his opponents, and encourage others to listen to their opponents.
In Teddy’s case, it was because he believed what he said was right, and that if his audience heard both sides they would come to agree with him.
Or, barring that, he believed that if he was wrong, he should give the American people the chance to decide for themselves.
In comparison to him, both parties engage constantly in violent rhetoric, and the nation is impoverished for it. But I think that the Tea Party may be particularly guilty, as it often seems to me that they owe their existence to anger about liberals and moderates far more than enthusiastic about their core ideas and willingness to present said ideas to those who disagree with them.
Dear Texan 99,
I heard that term, (“tea-bagger”), used by a couple of democrats on the radio the other day when they were telling the world how violent Rush, Glenn and the “tea-baggers” are and they were actually to blame for the shootings in Arizona.
I assumed then, since dems can use this term that it is ok. The radio MC also seemed to agree with them.
Since I attend just about every Tea Party assembly here in my state, I even heard party members refer to themselves and others in the crowd as, “Tea-Baggers.” (These people seemed to have a sense of humor.)
Now if someone wishes to not read what I write, permanently, that is their choice in our free society.
You, Tex… well…. you don’t have to respect how I write, or what I write… You can be one of those who just stopped reading permanently…. See that was easy. Now you don’t have to expose yourself to someone else’s opinion.
I could go on…but, rats! I almost forgot… you might be one of those who has sto………..