has been from the MSM and the democrats
(and the violent inciters protected by DOJ under Holder)
Posted on 04/20/2010 3:53:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Former President Clinton reminds us, on the 15th anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma City, to police our discourse so as not to incite the "delirious" and "unhinged." Timothy McVeigh, he notes, "took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated … by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government … "
This is only the latest and most high profile installment of a long-running campaign by Democrats to malign their opposition. It worked very well for Mr. Clinton in 1995 -- the baseless insinuation that right-wing radio hosts had ignited murderous rage with their intemperate rhetoric -- and he's reaching into that seedy toolbox again.
By citing "the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government" as the chief motive of murderous terrorists, the former president implies that resistance to government overreach and encroachment is illegitimate; the province of extremists.
There are two problems with this. First, it is perfectly true that government can be a threat to liberty. This is so obvious that it hardly bears rebutting. Two examples: Alien and Sedition Acts, internment of Japanese Americans. No one understood government's capacity to constrain freedom better than the Founders, who designed a system so diffuse and balanced that power would be difficult (though not impossible) to abuse.
The second problem with Mr. Clinton's intimation is that his pious concern about a "vocal minority" protesting government threats to freedom was nowhere in evidence during the Bush administration, when many liberal commentators were caterwauling that President Bush was "shredding" the Constitution. A "vocal minority" certainly believed that the government was the greatest threat to American liberty (they thought Bush a far greater threat than Islamic extremism) -- but their saying so didn't trouble Mr. Clinton.
Nor was Clinton moved to speak out when anti-Bush protestors labeled him the world's "worst terrorist" and carried posters of the president wearing a Hitler moustache.
You can delegitimize all political speech you dislike by suggesting that it may inflame the violence-prone. The press attempts this again and again. Rather than openly debate, they smear. The 1994 election, which unseated the Democratic majority, was described by the press, without any evidence, as the eruption of "angry, white, male" voters. One fan out of 8,000 at a McCain/Palin rally was reported to have shouted "Kill him" in reference to Obama. Rafts of stories dwelt upon this revelation of the "ugly" side of Palinmania. A later investigation found no evidence that it had even happened. And of course the tea party movement, a spontaneous, widespread upwelling of grassroots dismay at the direction of government policy, has been falsely and savagely maligned as racist, violent and primitive. (The best poster spotted at a tea party rally: "It doesn't matter what I put on my sign because you will accuse me of racism anyway.")
Actually, Democrats are reduced to warning that certain attitudes can lead to violence because there hasn't been any actual violence at the tea party rallies. All have been remarkably orderly and even friendly. You can almost feel the Democrats' frustration at this.
By contrast, many, many left-wing protests and demonstrations have sparked violence. Just last year, at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, rampaging protestors broke shop windows and scuffled with police, who used batons and tear gas to subdue them. A 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle was so badly disrupted by anti-globalization fanatics, who smashed windows and shut down the center of the city, that the governor had to declare a state of emergency and call out the National Guard. (President Clinton failed to assail those who criticize corporations as inspiring the violence.)
In 2007, several hundred protesters who descended on Washington, D.C., during the International Monetary Fund meeting turned over trash cans, smashed windows, threw bricks, and pushed a police officer off her motorcycle.
In 2008, as John Hinderaker of Powerlineblog recalls, anti-Republican protesters at the convention in St. Paul: "threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below." The violence was only fleetingly covered in the press and went unmentioned by leading Democrats.
Republicans have been very quick to condemn violent acts or even intemperate words by right-wing individuals or groups. They've even condemned some that didn't happen -- like false account of racial slurs shouted at members of the Congressional Black Caucus. While it's important to police one's ranks, it's also necessary to expose the Democrats' persistent and malignant libels.
prisoenr6
Bubba must have missed that speech.
Exactly. They are full of hate, but accuse us of it
“Exactly. They are full of hate, but accuse us of it.”
Is that the Communist dialectic in action?
IMHO
And the reason there is no violence is because everyone at the tea parties agrees with each other....it’s the government that is the enemy....
and mr. bjob was both impeached, and disbarred for lying why would anyone but a fool listen to him
I am amazed that the media has sold it’s soul to these dems who will turn on them the second they need too......and they will replace all these ass kissers with their own people as soon as they can, just like they put that jack ass Clinton supporter George Stsdfgtyhjukl in ABC....the same thing will happen to Chrissy and kline et al....
I don’t wish the rats harm. In fact, I wish them long lives....without the possibiliity of parole.
If he attended a backyard barbecue in a trailer park, think he'd get any respeck?
To quote the immortal James Carville, "Drag a hunnerd-dollar bill through a trailer park an' no tellin' what you'll find."
Waco. Ruby Ridge. Elian Gonzalez.
Why would Americans fear their government?
and lie.
If they put as much energy in to fighting the terrorists we would not have to be herded in to planes like cattle.
Aside from it being a deliberate scare tactic, their fear of our violence stems from their guilt at non-representing representatives passing a law that is intended to control a heretofore free people.
"I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, 'We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration."
And Democrats fear the TEA Party who doesn't even leave a scrap of paper on the ground after their rallies.
democrats are so busy with them selves they do not see the revolution under way at this minute because it is peaceful. But the changes will be the same
Its all the same old Democratic play book. You smear anyone who disagrees with you. The tea parties have Democrats scared so they must smear them by branding their attendees as racists, homophobes, extremists and now trying to somehow link them to “domestic terrorism”. Of course the sycophant MSM is in lockstep with this and goes out of its way to find examples or simply makes things up.
Should read MSM and Democrats Hate That Tea Parties Are Peaceful.
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