Please! No more violent rhetoric!
Read Time:1 Minute, 43 Second
It boggles the mind to think that anyone in America’s airwaves would still be preaching hate and violence, but that is, in fact the case. Just listen to the bloated Limbaugh, Bawling Beck, and other Right Wing Talkers. Don’t listen for an apology or an acknowledgment of responsibility, partial or otherwise from Republican politicians. You are not going to hear one. Instead you will hear the likes of Sarah Palin’s minions denying most vigorously what is obvious to all over the age of five. Those are cross hairs on your map Sarah, they aren’t simple “survey markers.” Read this story by Amy Arkawy:
I thought maybe, just maybe, the fright wing bloviators like Limbaugh and Beck would tone down their vitriolic acts in the wake of last Saturday’s rampage in Tuscon. But no, if anything the conservative commentators and Tea Party people are playing a fearless game of defense, calling out liberals for politicizing the tragedy, and boldly sticking their hot heads in the sands of denial. “I don’ use vitriolic language, ” Glenn Beck actually audaciously uttered on both his radio and Fox News shows Monday.Commenters on this site and elsewhere insist the incendiary rhetoric is doled out in equal measure by both the left and right. One guy had to dig up a single comment Barack Obama made at a campaign rally in 2008 to prove it. For their part folks like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann have been quietly hunkered down, waiting out the backlash, letting talkers like Beck do their bidding. If Palin doesn’t have the courage to offer even a thoughtfully measured response demonstrating something akin to introspection and maybe even contrition, how can she expect to seriously make a bid for the presidency?
Meanwhile, it has been those of us on the left calling for a national rhetorical tonal re-haul. Let’s counter words of vitriol and hate, with messages of healing and hope.
Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter.
Many thanks to News Junkie Post for the block text and the video.
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The problem I see is that it seems some consider any disagreement with their political views as “violent rhetoric”.
I have posted comments to websites saying that I oppose the health care mandate. I did not say anything about race, or skin color or anything but an opinion on a goverment policy.
So why then am I attacked in posts and called a racist and bigot and a hater? Why can’t I simple have a different opinion on a health care policy?
But instead, if you disagree with the Obama adminstration on any policy, someone will say it is because your a racist, a bigot and you hate Obama!
I truly beleive this is because to liberals there is no way you can oppose their polcies, their policies are absolutely and unquestionably wonderful for all mankind, so of course your opposition has to mean your a racist and you hate Obama!
And lets be real, Palin has said “lock and load”, but Obama did make the statement “if they bring a knife, we will bring a gun”. Now really, which of those two statements is more likely to get some crazy unhinged person to bring a gun to a rally? The one where the person says to lock and load, or the one were the person actually says “we bring a gun”!
Heather, I agree with a lot of what you have said. BOTH sides need to step back and stop the hate speech/violent rhetoric.
I have always thought it was absurd to call people who are against Obama’s policies racists or bigots. Unless of course they give a REAL reason to call them that. However, I have seen more than a few people give intelligent, thought out arguments against his policies. That doesn’t make them a racist or bigot, it just means they disagree with “that” side.
I am going to now support your position, Heather, but you may not feel like I am.
I am a far left liberal who has defended conservatives both on this site and others on this specific issue. I wrote a response to this very article detailing my attempt to supply a greater defense to the conservative position. I probably posted close to a dozen smaller responses to the whole “hate debate” that escalated over the past few week, mostly in defense of conservatives. I stopped trying to prove that conservatives are not more violent-natured, as I am tired of soundly losing that debate. However, I still argue, and still believe, that there is not more hatred in conservatives than we find in liberals.
“I truly believe this is because to liberals there is no way you can oppose their polices, their policies are absolutely and unquestionably wonderful for all mankind, so of course your opposition has to mean your a racist and you hate Obama.”
The above quote is the exact kind of attitude I have defended against when liberals say similar things of conservatives. The technical term for this is a “Composition Fallacy.” You have decided that liberals are bigots because you found some liberals who irrationally suggested conservatives were bigots (and racists).
Some conservatives are racist and bigoted in their expressions. Most are not. Most are just people with opinions. Rush, Beck, etc. pretend to be somewhat bigoted to push their positions to the extreme. I do not intend to support this with evidence and I hope you will charitable enough to tolerate the deficiency this leaves in my argument. If not, I understand.
Your statement quoted above is an example of your exact criticism. Because some liberals cast you as a racist or a bigot because there are racists and bigots, you have decided that this is the behavior of liberals.
I now defend liberals by pointing out the use of the same Composition Fallacy I have been defending conservatives against.
Lastly, I agree with the spirit of what you said. Many liberals, more than I care to admit, are completely guilty as charged.
This comment is directed at this article, precisely, but at general theme in many recent articles.
I just read something that I was able to pull back up, from a conservative blog stating that violence rhetoric happens on both sides. I was also at a few liberal blogs with conservative apologists.
I think two things are going on. First, conservatives are being blamed for what happened, and not just Beck, Limbaugh and Palin, etc. but there is strong sense of guilt by association, a fact I am sure many liberals would not deny. The Republican Party is always cast as the party of hate because of their more hateful stance on most issues.
I do not agree with the implicit accusation that most conservatives are filled with significantly more hate for those who do not agree with them than most liberals are. Anecdotally speaking, I do not see this in real life. Liberals often hate conservatives and show it, just as conservatives often hate liberals and show it.
However, in the interest of “mushy-mouthed” balance, I did do a quick search to gather information in support of my conservative friends, and it was damn hard to find any support where the issue of violent rhetoric is concerned. One conservative blogger pointed to this:
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/03/30/violent_liberal_hate_rhetoric_fifteen_quotes/page/2
as a defense of the embattled conservative, but that only supported the left’s position. Every time Beck or Limbaugh opens his mouth in his own defense, he sink himself deeper into the quagmire, so hearing what he has to say is no help.
Here is what I am finding: The examples of violent rhetoric on the conservative side come from the top speakers for the party, the conservative media, the ones primarily in control of conservative thought.
With the exception of a comment made by Chris Matthews, there is nothing even close to the violent nature of comments we find on the republican side that conservatives can point to. Instead they point to obscure radio personalities and opinion editors on staff at obscure journals that probably have a circulation of 10,000 or so.
Clearly, the left is the more gentle and compassionate party. They are more socialist by nature. They generally do not have the fight-mentality. They do not want to defend their right to carry MK17’s on road trips. As Weasledog posted at Dave Dubya’s Freedom Rants:
“You take the right which loves violence and war in many varied forms, from football to dropping bombs on schools in Baghdad, and compare it to the left which is largely anti-war and full of cycling and jogging geeks, and there’s just no comparison.”
In the discussion of who is a greater advocate for violence as a solution to political disagreement, I find the Conservative position untenable.
However, I do agree that this fact is also causing conservatives to be cast as greater haters of political opponents than liberals are. I do not find this to be true at all.
I don’t think it is fair to conclude that members of either party typically hate their political opponents more than members of the other. I do think that the doctrine of the conservative party is more hateful by nature, as it is less tolerant. However, neither party tolerates the other, and that lack of tolerance is the source of this partisan hatred on both sides. The republican mouth-pieces are more violent by nature, and thus express their hatred that way more often. Still when we start talking about political opponents, the hatred seems pretty evenly spread, and in most cases it seems excessive and not very rational.
To summarize, passionate people on both sides hate each other equally. However, try as I man, and I did try, I find no logical refutation of the fact that the opinion-makers of the Republican Party advocate violence with far greater frequency than do those of the Democratic Party.
The fact that the a few high ranking members of the Conservative Media have uttered violent expressions is now being used to cast conservatives as haters (and worse), while presuming innocence for liberals. That, I do not agree with. We are all haters. The liberals are simply gentler and less violent in their hateful expressions.
Lastly, I agree. No more violent rhetoric!
“But what has happened to the debate is one person or one side–Republicans or Democrats, it doesn’t matter–they say, ‘I’m right and you’re evil.’ And that is what’s damaging this country.”
— Congressman Emanuel Cleaver quoted at Fair and Unbalanced.
P. S. Sorry for the rant. As I understand things, brevity is my friend and once again, I have forsaken him.
Please don’t apologize, I thought it was a very good rant! You’ve made some very good points here.
It wasn’t a rant. It was a well thought commentary that would have made an outstanding post. I don’t disagree with what you say. Hate doesn’t discriminate but I still believe that the Right, generally, seems to be more vocal than the left. Perhaps that is because they have Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.