Posted on 10/26/2008 9:05:33 AM PDT by jazusamo
There's battle lines being drawn Nobody's right if everybody's wrong -- Buffalo Springfield
What is happening to us? What explains the boorishness, hate and even violence that increasingly mark our politics?
No, this isn't another prissy commentary on "negative" ads -- another high-sounding homily on how we ought to focus on "the issues," by which the writer means "the issues that I think voters should focus on." Nor is this a screed against demonstrations, however boisterous, or some young fools' lawn-sign stealing. There's no interest here in trampling on free-speech rights or spitting into the wind of what must be a rite of passage.
What troubles me -- what should trouble us all -- is the outbreak of largely liberal intolerance we've seen over the last few elections, and especially this one.
Something's happening here, and it's getting scary.
We've had two 23-year-old males here tossing Molotov cocktails to burn down Gene Scrutton's John McCain sign in the Sellwood neighborhood.
In Minnesota, graffiti messages ("u r a criminal resign or else") were spray-painted on the garage of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's St. Paul home.
A 23-year-old Michigan man, a Democrat, has admitted to plotting to detonate a homemade bomb in the tunnels near the Republican convention.
In the Washington, D.C., suburbs, a motel with a McCain sign on its lawn received threatening calls and a McCain-signed pumpkin patch was vandalized.
In central Florida, the Republican headquarters manager told police he believed that his home with two McCain signs was shot up because of his support for McCain.
It doesn't involve physical violence, threatened or real, but "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's "[expletive] you" to Sarah Palin in a recent comedy (?) act suggests how far we've gone in the age of the unhinged.
Yes, I know this stuff runs both ways. Here in Oregon, we had the hanging of an Obama cut-out at Newberg's George Fox University. The Washington Post reports that Obama signs in Alexandria, Va., were painted with racist epithets. We learned Friday that a McCain campaign worker's claim that she was beaten up and had the letter "B" cut into her face because her car had a McCain sticker was a hoax. Such deranged doings are just as appalling when it comes from the right, though my sense is that this hate-filled intolerance more often comes out of left field.
I also know we're a big country, and a few goof-balls do not a national trend make. But I don't think I'm committing sociology based on a few incidents. We're talking about more than a few beer-addled goofballs here.
A young friend of mine was working for the Bush campaign in 2004. One weekend he left his car outside a friend's Eugene house for safekeeping while he was out of town. Upon returning, he noticed the "W" sticker had been removed from his car. Hey, buddy, you were supposed to take care of my car, he said to his friend. Oh, yeah, his friend said, my father did that when he was here this weekend. He couldn't stand a student having a Bush sticker on his car.
Now, mind you, this wasn't a practical joke. The father was dead serious, and he wasn't some ne'er-do-well with a six-pack of beer aboard. He was an immaculately credentialed Portland professional who also headed a major community organization.
I love politics and public policy, but the ugliness, the anger, the coarseness and even the threats of violence I've experienced as a conservative opinion-writer in achingly "tolerant" Portland have contributed to my decision to leave the business after this election. My heart was starting to harden -- do we conservatives not have hearts, do we not bleed? -- and I didn't want that to happen.
I joked at first about some of it. When a reader sent me my column covered with dried feces, I looked on the bright side. He could have said he wouldn't .... on my column. I took comfort in the fact law officers visited the Iraq War foe (a peace advocate!) and the liberal critic (a Portland public school teacher!) who threatened my family. But the constant expletive-laced rants, the nifty Nazi-Hitler-German references, the holier-than-thou hate for any opposing view from the half-informed -- well, it's not what our public discourse should be about. It wasn't in a better age. If I sometimes responded in kind (and I did), forgive me.
What accounts for this rage? Maybe it's that so many feel the White House was stolen from them eight years ago. Maybe they just feel entitled to rule. (Dude, where's my country?) Maybe it's the Iraq War. Or George Bush, though many lefties have worked themselves into the same derangement syndrome over Palin. Maybe the cause is deeper. I don't know. I only know it's not a good thing for civil society.
Obama's not my candidate -- McCain is -- but, if he's elected on Nov. 4, Obama will be my president and I'll be happy to cheer two things. One, the fact that the United States has, at long last, elected an African-American president. Two, the possibility that Obama's election might deliver us from this nastiness. I think it's called the audacity of hope.
Native Americans were here first. So were the Spainish offspring of native peoples. And while slavery was a horrible institution as was segregation, the Japanese citizens went to relocation camps in the 20th Century.
If the news-media was balanced in their articles pertaining to the candidates; BO would not be in the running. Instead the news-media is stabbing America in the back.
If BO is elected my flag will fly upside down and at half mast. I will continue to give Heil Obama salutes to individuals wearing BO identification.
Leftists act that way because they have no morals, are power mad, and their greed and lust for power without the bounds of morality influence them to do anything to win. Since they think killing of the unborn, and now the sick and aged, is perfectly fine, then the next step is “anything goes” and they prove that every day.
They are like rabid dogs. And it will only get worse until they are stopped. If Obama wins it will not get better, it will get worse, way worse. Fire is stopped with water, not with more fuel, and their anger is like fire.
It is possible, if one believes the polls, that a Third World coup is in the process of occurring. Over the last 40 years the Anglo American appears to have accepted the doctrines of peace, love, harmony, room at the table, the big tent, tolerance, acceptance etc. The Third World hates you as you were the masters. Well most of the Anglo Americans seem to want to abdicate responsibility for governance. This means the Third World members shall govern. There is no greater superiority on this earth than one man or group making the law for another. That is what the Third Worlders will be doing, making the law for people they hate.
When Lenin and Trotsky left Russia, at a time when they were unable to manage a successful uprising, that did not mean an abandonment of their loathsome Marxist ideology. They were simply biding their time for the right moment. When Hitler abandoned the tactics of trying to launch violent revolution in a beer hall, after serving a jail term over the incident, it did not mean that he had abandoned his ultimate goal of a Monolithic Socialist Germany. He simply changed his tactics and bided his time.
Conservatives need to stop worrying about Ayers earlier tactics and focus on Ayers' & now Obama's continuing objective. For half a Century, too many have been dazzled by the ideological sleight of hand, that some of the few actually clever Leftists employed at the height of the Legislative investigations of conspiratorial Communism in the 1950s, to gradually desensitize Americans to what had actually been going on. The tactic has been simple but effective. Always focus on the "conspiracy" aspect at the expense of the actual ideology that the conspirators employed. Always imply that those discussing Leftist activity are paranoid--"Conspiracy Theorists"--that they see Communists "under people's beds." The tactic took a while to really gain traction, but in time it did, and lately to an extent where even Conservative radio talk show hosts are often very careful to distance themselves from any one who might be labelled a "Conspiracy Theorist."
Whether one wants to call the Obama association with known Marxist activists a "conspiracy," or not, is wholly irrelevant to the question of the direction that an Obama Administration would take! Would Lenin and Trotsky have been more acceptable to Americans, had they like Hitler in Germany, changed tactics and sought power through political manipulation? Was Hitler more acceptable to Americans, because he had forged the biggest voting block in Germany in 1933? Because he, like Obama, could draw vast cowds, filling great stadiums, cheering hypnotic, sloganized rhetoric, rather than firing into a beer hall ceiling and shouting "freedom?" Are we more concerned with the tactics of the moment or the future of the free societies that the Founding Fathers vindicated in the Revolution and sought to protect in the Constitution?
There is little doubt but that the "Changes" Obama wants for America are the same ones that his mentor William Ayers has been pursuing all his adult life. Obama made it very clear, when he was distancing himself from Rev. Wright, where he stood. He told us that while Wright had embraced the Conservative value of self-help--personal responsibility--that would never work until we "changed America." Self-help, personal responsibility, has always worked in America. It is the fundament for our history, for all our success, all our prosperity, all our hopes. Moreover, even from the standpoint of Black America--which is no part of Obama's roots--Booker T. Washington demonstrated to all who were paying attention, that the same ethic worked very well indeed. The decline in the well being of the Black inner cities of America, since the New Deal and Civil Rights movements, can be directly traced to the later rejection of Booker T. Washington's American values. (See our October Feature on Obama: Community Organizer.)
William Flax October 26, 2008
Hmmm - new signup date, lefties are nice people just like conservatives...
Funny. My family have all divorced themselves from me SOLELY because I am a conservative. No other reason. ALl the flaming liberals I know are angry mean people.
Well said. I too believe it’s been brewing for many years.
I find this guy hand-wringingly naive, I must say.
Today’s lefties, from Barney Frank, through Pelosi and Reid, and on down to their proteges, the out-of-state students who were just forced to withdraw their illegal ballots in Ohio, are descended in a straight line from both Mao’s Red Guard, and the kind of brutal operatives, (apparatchiks) that Stalin installed after WW2 all over the Eastern Europe he was handed. Look into the history of Romania’s Ceascescu, then imagine someone better dressed, less likely to have to perpetrate literal murder, and just as much aided and abetted by a slick media, and you have today’s Democrats. Look into the entire history of Fanny and Freddy and you have a perfect example of how, through the patented smooth talk of intimidation they are able to get too many people to go along with their socialist designs, and how deftly they managed to cram socialism down our throats, break the system, then demogogue the entire issue as if it the Bush Administration’s fault, and propose themselves, the Socialists, as if THEY are the solution to the collapse they themselves created.
Actually it’s his color PLUS his racist marxist thug beliefs and actions.
Alan Keyes was a great man and didn’t have a white mother, and the idiots and fiends who support Obama hated Keyes.
Obama’s election won’t deliver us from this nastiness.
Liberals are NEVER happy, they never stop, they are like spoiled children throwing a temper tantrum, Republicans are the indulgent parents who finally give in just to make the noise stop.
If we lose this election (we won’t) you will only see them become more aggressive, believing they have a mandate for “change”. The change will be a soft communism, it will be a challenge to get America back on track, once government programs begin they only grow, try to even stop the rate of growth and they will scream that it’s a “cut”.
If Obama gets in, we are in for trouble, trouble that could be long-lasting and have far reaching implications. If he loses, there will be trouble, but it could lead to the splintering of the democrat party.
I predict enough dems vote for McCain to destroy Obama on election day, there will be an ugly aftermath, far uglier than 2000, and the people will turn against the democrat party.
——The animosity from the left has become so virulent that the left is ready, willing, and with Obama in the White House, able, to deny fundamental constitutional freedoms to what it views as obstructionist conservatives. The ‘tolerant’ left will not tolerate criticism or dissent. If we don’t cling to our guns, religion and freedom to speak, we will lose them all in the next four years, and no one on the left will bat an eye or raise a finger in our defense.-—
Absolutely true and well worth repeating.
It’s sad people have to relocate because of this but I fully agree with you.
Yeah, I think it’s tougher in families. I am certainly the most conservative one in mine, but we do make the effort to argue as objectively as possible and never make it personal. Once you take out extremists (a very small number on either side I do believe) then you have people who are really looking for many of the same things, security for their family, happiness, an answer to life’s big questions, etc. If we (and the world) could stop acting as a mob I do think we would find we are not so different.
But, getting rid of extremism is astoundingly difficult.
With O as our Dear Leader it will only get worse.
The sound of gunfire ringing out as squads of Obama Brownshirts come door to door rounding us resistence to Socialism to send us to re-education camps and the hard core of course will need to be eliminated. What was Ayers estimate, 25 million of us? Hell I think it will be double that number.
God save our republic.
But I fear the tree of liberty is about to be watered with the blood of patriots and tryants.
Lock and load deer season is almost here.
Yes! I'm also disappointed he's decided this, maybe he'll reconsider.
YOU are wrong, the left is exceptionally nasty, an obama presidency will punish those of us who have not shut up and drank his koolaid.
There looks to be a strong possibility that if obama wins (or rather cheats enough to have more votes counted) America will be in danger from its enemies, our freedoms will be diminshed and us on the Right will be particularily in danger which could ignite a serious split or conflict in the USA.
You have to read all the way to the end to discover that Reinhard is a fool.
YOU are wrong, the left is exceptionally nasty, an obama presidency will punish those of us who have not shut up and drank his koolaid.
There looks to be a strong possibility that if obama wins (or rather cheats enough to have more votes counted) America will be in danger from its enemies, our freedoms will be diminshed and us on the Right will be particularily in danger which could ignite a serious split or conflict in the USA.
I'm sorry David, but you are wrong. He is an Arab-American. Daddy was of Arabic descent.
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