On Saturday in Arizona, a 22 year old man shot 19 people, including U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Six people, including Federal Judge John Roll, were killed.
Minutes after the bullets were fired, liberals across the country began using the tragedy to their political advantage, blaming conservatives for the shootings.
Despite zero evidence that the killer was in any way connected to conservatism, the left replied “evidence, shmevidence.”
When enough evidence was so overwhelming that the attempt to tie the killer to conservatism was failing, left-wing commentators needed a backup approach. “Political discourse” and “toning it down” became code words for silencing all conservatives.
There is a myth in this country that “both sides do it.”
No. They don’t. Not by a long shot. With rare statistical aberrations on the right, virtually all of the hatred in this country emanates from the left.
The very leftists calling for civility are the ones spreading the most hate.
If one were to comb over thousands of hours of writings by Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, researchers would struggle to find an example of true hatred. It would take forever.
Yet finding leftist hatred takes only seconds. This very week while Glenn Beck was calling for peace, absolute bile was emanating from Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Joan Walsh, and Paul Krugman.
Now anybody can name names. Throughout this week I provided specific examples of what they said.
The left does not have examples on the right from the people they attack. Those examples don’t exist. The best they can do is a website by Sarah Palin that has rhetoric totally consistent with normal campaign speech. You are more likely to find dangerous rhetoric in a high school football locker room before a game against a crosstown rival.
The reason why people claim moral equivalence is because moral equivalence prevents people from having to do any analysis of the truth. It allows for laziness.
Growing up my sibling would drive me crazy. I just wanted to be left alone. Yet my parents would say “You go to your room, you go to your room.” The punishments were equal but the behavior never was. My sibling would laugh with glee because in her world, mutually assured destruction was victory. She has a mental illness, and the lack of parental willingness to see the real problem only enabled her behavior. Today she wreaks havoc on society, and will most likely commit an act of violent rage because nobody will lock her up. I was told that I could just “let it go,” and let her torture me. That was not an option. Society will not miss her when she is gone. It might be improved. Moral equivalence allowed her to run wild.
In college a fellow student physically attacked me. I defended myself. The result? The imbecile dean of students punished us both, rather than listen to other students claiming I was innocent. I was told I could have just “let it go.” That would have meant letting him punch me.
Does anybody think schools can save kids who are bullied? The choices are to get beaten up, or try and save your own life with self-defense and get criticized my some pinhead principle who thinks the kids should trust in the very school system that cannot protect them. It is no wonder violence explodes as schools remain clueless.
Look at Israel. It is totally black and white. There is no shade of gray anywhere. Palesimians are trying to murder innocent Jews so they can wipe them off the map and eliminate Israel and Jews everywhere. Israelis are trying to defend themselves. Israel retaliates and punishes the murderers, and they are told to just “let it go.” People bemoan the “cycle of violence,” too stupid to realize that a little short-term overwhelming violence can prevent long-term violence in greater amounts. Harry S. Truman understood this after Pearl Harbor.
Wars end when one side wins and the other side is crushed.
Now apply this to liberals and conservatives. The conflict is totally the fault of the liberals. The conservatives are virtually blameless.
So if I am going to make such a black and white statement, I had better back it up with sound analysis.
The left exacerbates the conflict. They love the conflict. They want the conflict.
The question is…why?
Why would they want this?
The answer is because of how they are wired, and the situation on the ground.
Conservatives want policy discussions. We disagree with liberals. Liberals want gutter politics. They despise conservatives with every fiber in their being.
How do I know this is true?
Because the explanation is sensible. There is a warm-blooded explanation and a cold-blooded one.
The warm-blooded explanation is God. There are many more religious conservatives than liberals and many more secular liberals than conservatives. If you believe in a higher power telling you to love your neighbor, feed the poor, house the hungry, and live honorably, you have a better chance of doing that.
I am going to steer away from this as an answer because it is flawed. There are plenty of atheists and agnostics leading good lives, and admittedly some religious people are hypocrites. The left would like to make people believe all religious people are phony, which is not true. Yet even a small amount of crossover can weaken this theory. The warm-blooded theory feels good to say, but the cold-blooded theory works better.
Conservatives want politics to be impersonal not because we are better human beings (although we are), but for a cold calculating reason. The cold-blooded explanation is much stronger.
We do not want to get personal because we can’t win that way.
If it becomes personal, we lose. Always.
This is a center-right country. If the discussion is about policy, we do fine. Americans by and large want higher rather than lower taxes. They prefer having more freedom and liberty than having every aspect of their lives regulated (not 0 regulation, limited regulation). Americans do not feel people should get something for nothing. The welfare state is not popular. Hand-ups are preferred to handouts. They prefer that criminals and terrorists be seen as the bad guys while law enforcement are the good guys. They prefer that the rights of victims be given greater weight than the bad guys. They support capital punishment.
Democrats like Bill Clinton have gotten elected by talking tough on crime, supporting welfare reform, enacting capital punishment, and preaching tax cuts.
Barack Obama ran as a centrist, doing everything he could to hide his liberalism. People in the middle who voted for him liked him personally. That did not mean they agreed with him on issues.
Since the left cannot win on policy, they have no choice but to engage in the politics of personal destruction. If they could win on policy, they would not need to destroy innocent people.
Palesimians do not see Jews as human beings. This dehumanization allows them to kill with impunity.
Liberals do not allow conservatives the benefit of the doubt regarding their humanity. Conservatives are either evil or stupid. Those are the tactics used to destroy.
One name mentioned in the last couple years is Saul Alinsky. I have no interest in calling liberals a bunch of radicals or socialists or even Communists. Those are just labels. The issue is that they use the tactics Alinsky teaches in his handbook “Rules for Radicals.” Two of the main tactics are “polarize” and “personalize.”
How can people possibly make the world a better place when this is a guideline for behavior?
How can the left credibly say we should all tone it down when their very electoral survival depends on taking conservatives and ripping them and their loved ones to shreds?
They can’t.
The words are definitional. To personalize means to make something personal. Sticking to policy is impersonal. To polarize means to push people to the extremes and divide people. It is the very antithesis of unity and coming together.
The left does this because from time to time…it works. Every time it works, like any bully, they get more emboldened.
Why debate policy when you can call somebody a racist, sexist, Nazi, Fascist, homophobic pig who wants old people to die and children to starve to death?
If the Palesimians put down their arms, there would be peace tomorrow because the Israelis would lay down their arms in a heartbeat.
If the left would stop the hatred, the right would love policy discussions.
Again, we don’t want a fight to get personal because we can never win that fight. It makes no sense to fight a fight we know we will always lose.
Many on the right hate the fight because their religious beliefs preach unity, love, and tolerance. Yet even if there was not a shred of decency in this culture, the desire to avoid conflict for strategic reasons would kick in. The left wins that fight every time because it is in their bloodstream. It is all they have.
If the left wants to prove me wrong, then try adopting some decency. Lead by example.
Stop calling conservatives all the various “ists” just because there are policy disagreements. Just stop.
Stop attacking individual conservatives unless you have a shred of evidence that they actually did something that crosses the line.
Alec Baldwin (liberal) once said he wanted to take the late Henry Hyde (conservative) and “stone him to death.” Has Glenn Beck ever said something like this?
Are there any attacks on Mr. Obama’s lovely children? No. Nothing comes close to the cheap shots at the Palin children. Even the baby with Down’s Syndrome was attacked.
No, I am not going to stop. I am not going to let it go. I have never gone after anybody on my blog or in my life unless they specifically did something destructive. I have defended myself and third parties.
Yet I would never attack Mr. Obama’s children. They have done nothing wrong. They are good kids.
There are good liberals out there, but they won’t stand up and criticize the bad liberals. Again, there may be decent Palestinians out there, but they won’t stand up.
When conservatives cross the line, I stand up. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and I loudly and unequivocally know the difference.
So my challenge to the left is twofold.
Do not attack a single conservative ever again on a personal level unless they specifically say or do something beyond the pale. Campaign rhetoric practiced for decades doesn’t cut it. Otherwise, the song “We Will Rock You” would have to be a death threat. Unless you have specific examples, knock it off and stick to policy.
My second challenge to the left is to stop making excuses for their own hatred. To say like Ed Schultz did that he is “passionate” is nonsense. We are all passionate. That does go both ways. Don’t whitewash your own behavior. Most importantly, do what the right has done for decades.
Renounce violence.
No excuses. No equivocations. Renounce any and all violence in the political arena.
I do. It is wrong. Outside of defense of human life, renounce violence.
If you see a guy kicking an animal or pushing a child out of a wheelchair, yes, you can and should exact justice, which may involve violence. Be honest about whether you are defending goodness or being an aggressor bully. Liberals have beaten wheelchair bound conservatives, and beaten up conservative minorities at tea parties. There is no conservative equivalent on any equally measurable scale in the modern political climate.
Like Israelis and most Jews, conservatives preach that violence is wrong.
Like Palesimians, liberals say that violence is “not always helpful.” What that means is violence will be lessened when it is counterproductive, but absolutely used if it works.
This is why conservatives have their cars keyed and their lawn signs stolen. This is why liberals run over conservatives with their cars. Conservatives do not do this. Yes there are statistical aberrations, but if every one of these crimes was calculated, the left would have committed most of them. I would be happy to get stats if this is tracked.
We have no reason on the right to do this. We simply do not hate the left. We see opposition. They see enemies. We don’t.
When the left gives up any and all violence, verbally and physically, they will be surprised how peaceful the right will be.
Yet this potential lovefest will never happen.
The left wants warfare. It is the only way they can win.
The ends are so important that they will use any means, no matter how destructive.
That is what allows them to take the tragic murder of innocent people in Arizona and blame it on political conservatives.
We could blame it on them, but it would require us getting into a gutter so far that we would never get our souls back.
That is leftism, and I want no part of it.
The only solution at this point for conservatives is full throttled self-defense.
This war the left wants will end when the left surrenders and finally concludes they will never win using warfare. Only then will they come to the table and dialogue.
As long as violence works for them, they will keep burning the entire village and then wonder why there is destruction and ruin all around them.
eric
Oh my God! You’re still going on about this! And you still keep saying that almost all violence comes from the left, and you show no evidence whatsoever! Aren’t you even a little bit taken aback by Palin’s use of “blood libel?” Most liberal pundits are not blaming the right for this! All they’re saying is that this would be a good time to reflect on the level of our national discourse. Is that such a bad thing? Is it so terrible to be responsible for our speech? To be honest, as opposed to throwing endless bombs like the lie that liberals are the cause of most violence? Because that is a lie, ya’ know.
JMJ
Update: This morning I read the “blood libel” comments in their full context. I am totally supportive of the comments and in complete agreement. I regret not coming up with the analogy myself.
I keep comparing Jews to conservative Republicans and Palesimians to liberal Democrats. This fits in perfectly. Palesimians are accusing Jews of murdering small children (by poisoning the water) to gain political advantage and wipe Jews off the face of the Earth. Liberals blame Sarah Palin for murdering a small child to gain political advantage and wipe conservatives off the face of the Earth.
Sounds right to me.
eric
That is exactly the sort of twisted, over-the-top rhetoric that this country needs less of. I’m quite disappointed.
JMJ
“and you show no evidence whatsoever! ”
yeah right.
You’re either a lisr, or really stupid.
I’ve shown you lists upon lists giving examples of leftist violence to which you could not match.
This guy was a nut, period. Had no political affiliation.
But theres no doubt the left media, Tuscon law enforcement, and on the hill picked the blame ball anmd ran with it ASAP.
You guys are like freaking pirahnas
Over the top rhetoric ?
Oh, just shut up, would you ?
I’ve been to your blog many times so dont start bitching about ” over the top rhetoric” when your own is rife with anger