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.
The author is delusional. With an Obama win, you can kiss you freedom and possibly even your precious life goodbye.
The left has stoked this anger - starting with claiming that the election was stolen from Gore. Gore, unlike Nixon, wouldn’t leave it alone for the good of he country. They’ve had a concerted effort to rile up the country for their own benefit and the election of the marxist Obama would be the culmination of their plans. I don’t think we’ll ever get back to where we were if he is elected. This is it!
With all respect for the columnist, we need people who have enough principle to fight for conservative beliefs, not people who run in fright from defending them.
Some things are worth fighting for.
I wish the writer good luck and hope that he would rethink his future.
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
—Barry Goldwater
Yep Got family members like that as well. started after 2004 election.
“The author is delusional. With an Obama win, you can kiss you freedom and possibly even your precious life goodbye.”
We conservatives will be the Jews in the Obamafuhrer’s liberal, fascist police state.
I think that perhaps you do not really know very many liberals. I was raised in an ultra leftist family and was a leftist myself until my 20s, with residual psychopathology lasting a little bit longer. Finally around 30 I was clean.
I am now almost 60 and have studied leftism and leftists (not solely, most of my energy is elsewhere) intently.
They are morally bankrupt and do not think rationally. The “fringe” you speak of is mainstream and has a veneer of nicey nice which is quickly becoming unglued. Conservatives and liberals are not just two different wings, or two different ideas or parties.
There’s even been a study or studies done which found that people who identified as Democrats were much more immoral than those who identified as Republicans - more prone to lying, cheating, stealing and violence.
Leftist want power, and they have absolutely no qualms about using fraud, deceit, outright criminal acts and violence to get what they want. And if Obama wins, it will get so much worse that those like the author of this article will rue the day he spoke the namby pamby words at the end.
What’s going on right now is a sort of “Quiet Revolution” of the lefitsts. They aren’t herding anyone into gulags or lining people up next to pits training machine guns on them. But by outright and shameless lying, fraud, deceit, theft and criminal acts they plan to win. And the fault of conservatives is that we (in general) have been fearful little scared rabbits - scared of hurting feelings, standing up for truth, being “unpopular” and so on. We (in general) have LET them win.
Leftists are not like conservatives. If you think they are you are either not a conservative (and I don’t want to impugn you, I just read some of your comments and as a lawyer and I think you said judge you are obviously a highly intelligent man) or just don’t know any actual liberals.
I could have accepted Hillary but not Obama - he won’t be my President, ever.
Excellent points. Being the enemedia is in the tank for them it has enabled them to get to this point. Fortunately the print media is going broke and if BO is defeated it will hopefully be the beginning of the end for them.
“...if he’s elected on Nov. 4, Obama will be my president”
“He won’t be mine.”
Mine either. I will never refer to Obama as my “President”. I will use the same term I coined for Clinton - “Current Occupant” - which, by the way, the odious Garrison Keillor stole from me. He must lurk here to get ideas for his unhinged leftist BDS rants.
His father was born in Kenya, but his family was of Arab descent. Same as if a person was born in America but his family was Arab. Location of birth does not convey genealogy.
I dunno. I’d say 90% of the attorney’s I have known are liberal. And I retired to CA some time ago. I tend to be the odd man out in any political discussion. And in all my years in practice and on the bench I have interacted with thousands and, basically, I have found us to be pretty much the same notwithstanding our political views. And I do find that both “sides” accuse each other of pretty much the same character traits.
Still. notwithstanding my long held beliefs, I have just found that those with opposing views (and like I said I am usually the minority) to be pretty much like those who adhere to my philosophical bent.
...”His color is his only qualification for the presidency.”...
Since when did skin pigmentation become a “qualification” for the presidency? I believe you meant that Obama is the first Affirmative Action candidate, because he obviously has got as far as he has by virtue of his 50% African descent.
I could not disagree more, see my comments to Klepto (sp?) above.
On another thread you said:
“Being divisive hurts us. Controversial statement over.”
This is bullshit. Conservatives haven’t been divisive enough - the reason there are so many brainwashed useful idiot leftists is because conersvatives have not been courageous enough.
The truly committed leftists like Ayers will never be “re-habilitated” but they would not have the power over others that they have if conservatives had been MORE divisive and stood up for conservative principles.
Your comments sound like Kumbaya/harmony/leftist drivel to me.
You cannot give these people one inch.
This is not a "fringe movement" - it is mainstream. ACORN is huge. The mainstream media is huge. The enemy is not a handful of communist idealogues - it is several million people, conspiring in lockstep to steal this election, and to intimidate those who dare speak out against Obama. The fact that they've illegally sought information on Joe the Plumber from secure government documents indicates that the enemy is large and embedded in our institutions.
We can see that the ballot box is obviously tainted with hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots being cast for Obama all over the country.
We can see that the soap box is tainted, with a left-wing media so obviously slanted in favor of Obama, and with dissenting opinion being silenced through intimidation and ignorance.
It's quickly becoming clear that the only remaining method of destroying the socialist/communist coup that is occurring right now will involve the cartridge box. Sadly, its becoming clearer and clearer that it will take a civil war to get this country back to constitutional republic that it once was.
It isn’t a small minority. It’s the whole lot of them.
All leftist’s are crooks and dishonest.
It isn’t a small minority. It’s the whole lot of them.
All leftist’s are crooks and dishonest.
all this silly hyperbole that this time it’s different and if 0 wins we will never get a chance again is just downright idiocy.
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Do you really think so? I am not at all sure that it is idiocy to believe that this nation will NOT survive as anything remotely resembling the America I knew as a boy. It hardly resembles it now. Yesterday I went to the fair for the first time in years, I am fairly certain it will be my last time. I got to the gate and was told that I could not carry my pocket knife in so I took it back to the car, my wife had a small knife in her purse which she also left in the car. When we returned to the gate we had to empty our pockets and go through a metal detector, I don’t know why I didn’t just turn around and leave but I wanted to see the agricultural exhibits so I paid twenty dollars admission for the two of us and jumped through the hoops. Believe me I was made well aware that this is not the country of my birth and I see very little chance of improvement. We are sliding into the abyss and the only difference I see regarding this election is that we will slide much faster with Obama at the helm.
If we still had the kind of citizenry that is capable of resurrecting this nation after Obama destroys it we would not have an Obama running for president in the first place.
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