So asks the Christian Science Monitor, saying that “John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings.” But — unless I’m missing something — none of the facts given in the story actually support the claim that he was a “right-wing extremist.”
The story does say that “writings by someone with his same name and birth date, posted on the Internet,” (1) “express ill will toward the government and the armed forces and question whether Washington itself might have been behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” (2) “express[] a determination to see justice served in the case of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in his California home in 1991″ (“a cause célèbre among extremists who consider that ruling a coverup by the government”), and (3) “expressed general hatred of Washington and added that exposing the Sabow case would be ‘a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolition.’” But where is the right-wing extremism in this?
I’m sure there are some right-wingers who dislike the armed forces, suggest that the Republican Bush (Jr.) Administration was behind the September 11 attacks, and conclude that the Republican Bush (Sr.) Administration covered up the death of a marine colonel. But those are hardly distinctively “right-wing” positions; if anything, I suspect they are slightly more associated with parts of the left wing than of the right wing. And expressions of ill will toward the government have been heard from the Left as well as the Right, just as expressions of militant or violent ill will have been heard from the extreme Left as well as the extreme Right. Is there some item I’m missing in the Monitor article that does support the suggestions in the headline, and the plain statement in the lead paragraph?
Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.
ruuffles says:
Just so we have a baseline going, do you consider McVeigh and OKC an example of right-wing extremism?
March 5, 2010, 2:21 pmmls says:
“Is there some item I’m missing in the Monitor article that does support the suggestions in the headline, and the plain statement in the lead paragraph?”
Not that I could find.
March 5, 2010, 2:22 pmAnthony says:
They seem to be making a connection with Patriot Militia groups, who are traditionally considered right-wing. I assume the link is James Sabow, whoever that is.
March 5, 2010, 2:26 pmB.D. says:
I guess hating the gubment and being paranoid makes you right-wing. We saw this kind of reporting with Joe Stack, too.
It’s fulfillment of the right-wing domestic terrorism prophesy of 2009.
March 5, 2010, 2:30 pmGuesty says:
Well he writes an awful lot about private property and a hatred of the monetary system. Doesn’t sound particularly left-wing to me. Next up: was Scott Roeder secretly pro-choice?
March 5, 2010, 2:33 pmcelticdragonchick says:
The guy strikes me as pretty hard to quantify as left or right wing. He almost comes off as an anarchist in some respects. If forced to make a choice, I would likely go with right wing (anti government shooters seem to really fall into that general category)…but I think it is something of a false dichotomy here.
March 5, 2010, 2:38 pmB.D. says:
I wouldn’t be surprised if he were an extreme libertarian/anarchocapitalist type. Technically right-wing, I suppose. But it’s such an imprecise term to use, especially when you don’t actually know enough yet about him or his views. Careless, sloppy journalism.
Why not just report the facts and let the reader make his own conclusions on labeling?
March 5, 2010, 2:41 pmSteve says:
“Communist and socialist governments that abolished or disregarded private property,” said Bedell in the recording, “created poverty, repression and murder on a truly enormous scale.” But, he continued, “Even in the United States, however, there has been a continual erosion of protection of private property justified by the belief that government is an efficient instrument for the positive direction of society.”
March 5, 2010, 2:44 pmmls says:
Guesty and Steve may be right about what this guy believed, but that information isn’t anywhere in the CSM article– at least that I saw.
March 5, 2010, 2:53 pmcboldt says:
I read that he was also a “Johnny Pot Seed” type, who planted pot all over, and advocated use of hemp as currency.
March 5, 2010, 2:55 pmGuesty says:
In a recorded manifesto called “Directions To Freedom”, the audio of which he posted online in 2006, John Patrick Bedell, of Hollister, California, praised private property as “the most successful basis for structuring society that humanity has ever known.”
from http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/pentagon_shooter_praised_private_property_rights_d.php?ref=fpa
March 5, 2010, 3:02 pmDangerMouse says:
I thought most Truthers were on the left. You know, Van Jones and all. To be a truther, you’d have to believe that Bush knew in advance or planned 9/11. That doesn’t exactly sound like the hallmark of conservativism.
March 5, 2010, 3:02 pmCannoneo says:
TPM’s story cites more right-wing themes to his libertarianism, such as dislike of public education, elevation of private property rights above others, praise for the profit motive as against government planning, etc.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/pentagon_shooter_praised_private_property_rights_d.php?ref=fpa
March 5, 2010, 3:11 pmSteve says:
I’m not surprised someone like DangerMouse has trouble understanding the difference between “conservatism” and “right-wing extremism,” but here’s the thing. Right-wing extremism does not mean that someone is just a really really partisan Republican. Right-wing extremism does not mean that someone is just a really really passionate defender of President Bush and his policies. In fact, the further you go to the left or right, the more the two major political parties come to look exactly the same to you.
There are extremists and extremist groups on both the left and the right, and they bear very little resemblance to mainstream Democrats and Republicans. You don’t see me, as a mainstream liberal, trying to argue that the Weather Underground was really a right-wing organization because they believed in gun rights or whatever. So why do so many conservatives waste everyone’s time trying to argue that a right-wing extremist is really on the left because he believes Bush planned 9/11, or that Hitler was really a liberal because he was a vegetarian. It’s tedious stuff.
March 5, 2010, 3:14 pmHistory Punk says:
He might be an example of fusion paranoia, which marked by the acceptance of all manner of conspiracy theories regardless of the source. Start off with some conservative ideas and idiocy, mix with left-wing conspiracies and agit-prop, simmer in a subpar psyche and the result was this tragedy.
But was B.D. point out, left wing and right wing are terms of dubious worth and descriptive usefulness.
March 5, 2010, 3:16 pmptt says:
Credibility in its worth as a reliable source of the news.
March 5, 2010, 3:17 pmpc says:
Alex Jones is probably the most high profile truther and he isn’t a leftist. Bedell sounds like another run of the mill right-wing crazy. I don’t think it’s too surprising when a certain type of person is told over and over that government is evil, he will take matters into his own hands. Preach hate, get hate.
March 5, 2010, 3:17 pmSenator Christmas says:
I dunno, why to so many liberals do the same?
March 5, 2010, 3:19 pmKen Arromdee says:
Because conservatives can tell a smear when they see one. Most leftists who call some extremist “right-wing” are doing so to tie the extremist to non-extreme rightists. Plenty of people connected the IRS guy with tea-partiers, for instance. Pointing out that the extremist holds positions held by the left will help rebut the smear.
March 5, 2010, 3:23 pmSteve says:
I dunno, why to so many liberals do the same?
They don’t, from what I can see. Who claims that the Weather Underground was really a right-wing group? Are there best-selling liberal books arguing that the Soviet Communists were really on the right?
March 5, 2010, 3:25 pmSteve says:
Because conservatives can tell a smear when they see one. Most leftists who call some extremist “right-wing” are doing so to tie the extremist to non-extreme rightists.
Right, like the report on right-wing extremism from the Department of Homeland Security that was derided by conservatives as a smear job, without realizing that there had been a similar report on left-wing extremism or that both reports were commissioned under the Bush Administration. It’s easy to cite your track record at detecting smears when you see everything as a smear.
March 5, 2010, 3:28 pmGuesty says:
There’s a more serious reason why people deny ties between extremists and mainstream right-wingers: the mainstream doesn’t want to be held accountable for its rhetoric when its listened to. Bill O’Reilly wants to whip people up in a fury about George Tiller and then act surprised when someone takes him at face value. Glen Beck does the same now with Progressives. They’re not dumb. They won’t incite violence directly. Instead, they want to create a climate where their ends can be accomplished through the use of some nutjob on the far right – and then they can shed crocodile tears.
March 5, 2010, 3:30 pmMark Field says:
I’m not sure what the question is here. Is it
1. Whether the CSM provided enough evidence to demonstrate that he was a right winger?;
or is it
2. Whether he was in fact a right winger (based on evidence dehors the article)?
March 5, 2010, 3:30 pmsputnik says:
he was libertarian or RW radical.
March 5, 2010, 3:36 pmAlmost the same thing
The Drill SGT says:
The wacko continum stretches normal space and time. Once you get 2-3 Standard deviations of wierdness to the left or right, things start to wrap around.
March 5, 2010, 3:42 pmDisagree says:
DangerMouse, the teaparty candidate for governor in Texas (hardly a “leftist”) also had “truther” tendencies: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/02/11/texas-tea-party-favorite-a-911-truther-disillusioned-glenn-beck-threatens-to-french-kiss-rick-perry/
March 5, 2010, 3:44 pmanomie says:
To be a truther, you’d have to believe that Bush knew in advance or planned 9/11.
Which just puts you someplace else politically than whatever position is occupied by Bush. It doesn’t necessarily make the truther liberal or conservative, of the right or of the left.
March 5, 2010, 3:45 pmegd says:
And here I thought Hitler was a left-winger because he was a socialist.
March 5, 2010, 3:46 pmAF says:
If it’s (1), it’s a pretty trivial question. And based on evidence cited above, the answer to (2) appears to be “yes.”
March 5, 2010, 3:48 pmFederal Dog says:
Hollister voter registration rolls reflect that the guy’s a registered Democrat.
March 5, 2010, 3:49 pmJRL says:
Of course he was a right-wing extremist–he had a gun.
March 5, 2010, 3:55 pmJust Dropping By says:
Material Bedell (the shooter) posted on Wikipedia suggests that he was interested in Austrian economics and “full reserve” banking in particular, which is rather inconsistent with being a “leftist”. See http://mediaelites.com/2010/03/05/j-patrick-bedell-on-wikipedia/
March 5, 2010, 3:56 pmcboldt says:
– Hollister voter registration rolls reflect that the guy’s a registered Democrat. –
March 5, 2010, 3:57 pmLOL. Man, that’s going to harsh a few buzzes (if true, that is).
B.D. says:
- His facebook page shows that he admired the Ludwig von Mises Institute: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/4408406069_ab871e021c_o.jpg
- His blog contains the word “Rothbard” in its address: http://rothbardix.blogspot.com/
- He was a cannabis enthusiast.
So yeah, an anarchocapitalist type. Economically “right-wing”/socially “left-wing” . . . he basically hated any government intrusion into life.
March 5, 2010, 3:58 pmDangerMouse says:
And here I thought Hitler was a left-winger because he was a socialist.
Heh. That’s true. Hitler was definitely a socialist.
You don’t see me, as a mainstream liberal, trying to argue that the Weather Underground was really a right-wing organization because they believed in gun rights or whatever. So why do so many conservatives waste everyone’s time trying to argue that a right-wing extremist is really on the left because he believes Bush planned 9/11, or that Hitler was really a liberal because he was a vegetarian. It’s tedious stuff.
First, if the Weather Underground were active today, I’m not so sure that the MSM would paint it as a left-wing group. They’d probably try to tie it to the Tea Party or something. Yes, they are that biased.
But secondly, more to your point: it’s not a waste of time. It’s appropriate to constantly point out that Hitler was a part of the left-wing spectrum, because the entire context in doing so is to blunt the ridiculous MSM charge that anyone who thinks their taxes or gov’t spending are too high is somehow a radical, violent, racist, sexist, enemy of the Messiah, or something. Don’t you see what MSNBC, for instance, is saying about conservatives on a daily basis? It’s not all puppies and sunshine.
March 5, 2010, 4:23 pmJRL says:
Isn’t the foundation for 9/11 Truthers anti-Semitism?
March 5, 2010, 4:27 pmwfjag says:
So, folks who dislike the military and suspect that the Bush 43 administration was behind 9/11 is a working definition of “right-winger.” That makes Rosie O’Donnell a “right-winger”. Dang! Learn something new every day on VC.
March 5, 2010, 4:31 pmEH says:
I think the simple fact to be gleaned here is that there is no such thing as a right-wing extremist, at least in the US.
March 5, 2010, 4:53 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Steve,
Are there best-selling liberal books arguing that the Soviet Communists were really on the right?
Well, no.* OTOH, as I recall it, back in the days of the Kremlinologists, Politburo members who opposed reform/glasnost/what-have-you were routinely described as “right-wing,” “conservative,” &c. You would’ve thought that an especially doctrinaire Communist would be to the left of one amenable to reform, but that’s not how the lingo had it.
*(Golly, was Liberal Fascism actually a best-seller? I didn’t realize.)
March 5, 2010, 5:07 pmSarcastro says:
It is vital we determine which side has to own the latest crazy person! Also, all historic crazy people must be associated with one side or the other!!
March 5, 2010, 5:09 pmI don't get it says:
Why do we even bother to try to figure out what this guy’s political leanings were? (Or those of the IRS airplane guy.) I mean, who cares? Do the rantings of someone who had documented mental issues and committed attempted murder really tell us anything about the left-wing/right-wing ideologies in which he may or may not have believed?
Let’s say he committed the crime while wearing an “I Love Obama” T-shirt. Does that mean the Democratic Party platform is wrong in some respect? If so, please explain. By this logic, let’s survey all convicted criminals for their political views, so I can adjust mine accordingly.
March 5, 2010, 5:09 pmI don't get it says:
Dangit, Sarcastro. Beat me to it.
March 5, 2010, 5:10 pmSarcastro says:
Other good questions: was Bedell gay? What about Catholic? Was he a fan of the Twilight series? These are things we must dwell upon!
Also: I think DoJ lawyers might have hypothetically defended this guy, were they in a position to do so, and were the guy not dead! We should judge Holder accordingly.
March 5, 2010, 5:27 pmSarcastro says:
PROOF!
March 5, 2010, 5:30 pmMark Buehner says:
Indeed. We are arguing over the political leanings of a lunatic. Come on. If one of the Founding Fathers walked out of Liberty Hall and shot up a pub, would that invalidate the American political system?
March 5, 2010, 5:36 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
I don’t get it,
Why do we even bother to try to figure out what this guy’s political leanings were? (Or those of the IRS airplane guy.) I mean, who cares?
Well, no one ought to care. A lone crazy is representative of nothing but the voices inside his (or her) own head.
But there are people who want to collect dots just so as to be able to connect them. Just now there’s an editorial narrative going (most visibly in the NYT) according to which there is a groundswell of right-wing rage, the iceberg of which the TEA Party is the visible tip, and all the crazies of the last fifty years (white supremacists, John Birchers, survivalists, you name it) are about to break out again.
In that context, a crazy you can tag as one of your predicted enemies is an asset.
It’s rather like the climate-change narrative in a way. Weather isn’t climate, of course; but every unusual weather event these days is somehow tagged as connected with global warming — via obvious little jokes if it happens to be a hot spell, via elaborate explanations of how “global warming” is actually “global weirding” if the weather is actually freakishly cold rather than freakishly hot. Sensible people would just repeat to themselves “weather is not climate” and shut up about the frickin’ weather, but there are not many sensible people.
And so your basic crazy has to become evidence of something, as though you could view the whole political universe through the lens of one cracked mind.
March 5, 2010, 5:38 pmSteve says:
Michelle, that was a very good point about the Soviets. You’re right, the reformers are liberal and the defenders of the status quo are conservative in the normal vernacular, even if what’s being reformed is the most left-wing political system on earth!
March 5, 2010, 5:44 pmLester Hunt says:
I find it rather baffling that both the left and the right are so eager to prove that the latest psycho killer is from “the other side.”
Actually, I have a hypothesis: Two motives are involved. One is a desire to smear the other side as nasty and dangerous. The other is self-defense against the smear (“he’s not one of us! he’s one of them!). The result is a self-perpetuating spiral of self-serving talk.
March 5, 2010, 5:49 pmMatthew Carberry says:
Given the information we have, any bets on what caliber of bowcaster he used?
March 5, 2010, 5:53 pmbailey says:
Actually, it’s not a right v left thing. It’s more similar to the used to be standard practice that the political party of someone who got into trouble was only reported when it was an (R). Someone started to point out the double standard and it’s gradually begun to change. Besides, I read he was a registered Dem. You own him, fellas.
March 5, 2010, 5:59 pmDave N. says:
I think conservatives (or even moderate conservatives such as myself) get riled up because both Democrats and the media frequently use “right wing” to describe anyone to the right of Barney Frank, particularly if that person is also a Republican.
Thus, we have Republicans regularly described as “right wing” in the media. And then we have crazies described as “right wing.” And as a result, there is some sort of equivilence drawn: Right wing = Right wing.
So I will ask a serious question, when was the last time you saw a news story use the term “left wing” to describe a politician? Any politician.
March 5, 2010, 6:22 pmElliot says:
The violent student riots at UC and UW appear to be expressing ill will towards the government. Right-wing extremists?
March 5, 2010, 6:26 pm1040 says:
This is a serious question? Really? Can I get a timeshare on this lovely isolated island you’ve been living on? Or maybe you have excluded fascist and communist, which are used as synonyms for the left?
March 5, 2010, 6:50 pmNunzio says:
What does it matter what the belief system is of mentally-ill people?
Does anyone really think he wasn’t mentally-ill before he started globbing on to whatever anti-government, conspiracy beliefs he had?
Mentally ill people tend to have extreme thoughts, but does it really matter what the contents of those thoughts are?
Insane is insane. It’s pointless to attribute their views to political philosophies.
March 5, 2010, 6:51 pmerp says:
Elliott — well said.
I heard on the hard left blogs they’re saying that those Berzerkly protesters are part of the VRWC and are demanding the end to AA and entitlements.
Just a word on labeling the crazies. The media immediately dubs nutcases as right wing (remember Clinton tried to pawn off McVeigh on Limbaugh) and pre-internet, we had no way of refuting their outrageous assumptions.
Now we do, so they can’t get away with it anymore.
Ain’t progress great.
March 5, 2010, 6:55 pmDave N. says:
1040:
Point to a news story that calls ANY Democrat “Socialist” or “Communist.” Just one will do. A link would be nice. And I don’t mean as part of a quote because some loon said it.
Or better yet, point a news story that calls ANY Democrat “left wing.” Just one will do. A link would be nice.
March 5, 2010, 7:01 pmJohn Moore says:
This is exactly right… once one gets too far out there, the association with right/left is just silly. By the MSM standards, we should we label Ted Kaczynski a left-wing extremist, when he really a certified nut (schizophrenic).
Given the economic and political conditions, we may still see a true right-wing extremist do some terrorist act. At that point, the distinction between these recent nuts and a right wing extremist will be more clear. McVeigh is a real example.
Unfortunately, at that point the media and the left (redundant) will do their best to remove the word “extremist” from the description and paint the nut as representative of the right, or caused by right wing rhetoric (already seen in this thread).
Meanwhile, we have left wing extremists who have been engaged in acts of terrorism for years – extreme environmentalists and animal-rights loons. However, they are clever enough to target only property, and since the left wing media has little respect for property anyway, they get a pass.
March 5, 2010, 7:10 pmJohn Moore says:
A lot, actually. Delusions have to come from somewhere, and schizophrenics, paranoids and other psychotics are certainly strongly influenced by their environment.
This is one reason that modern Jihadism is so dangerous. It is attractive to depressives and people with social adjustment issues. Richard Reid may not have been psychotic, but he was clearly unbalanced.
March 5, 2010, 7:15 pmJust Dropping By says:
Only if you’re blaming Jewish people for it.
March 5, 2010, 7:15 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
1040, Dave N. is correct. The last time I saw anyone in a newspaper label someone on the left of the American political spectrum a “fascist” was an editorial in the Berkeley Daily Planet by someone who was convinced that the entire directorship of a local public radio station had been co-opted by “fascists.” (These were people to the left of most of the American public, and even the Berkeley public, but to the right of the previous management.)
No major newspaper is going to call anyone on any side a “fascist,” or a “Communist,” or a “socialist,” unless the people referred to define themselves so. And I’m with Dave N. also in this: I have never seen “left wing” used in a major American newspaper about any sitting politician. “Right wing,” sure.
March 5, 2010, 7:17 pm1040 says:
Who is a loon? Bush? Newt Gingrich? Anybody in the republican faction? What about the RNC? Google is your friend. Search for “democrat left wing fox news” or “democrat socialist fox news”. And I am heading out now, but I’m sure there are even NYT articles that describe some dems as left wing.
March 5, 2010, 7:20 pmDave N. says:
By the way, in answer to my own challenge to “1040″, using the Google search term “left wing Democrat,” I found the first American news story on page 7 of the Google search. From 2003. Quoting Joe Lieberman.
On the other hand, using the Google search term “right wing Republican”, the first story (from the New York Times) appears on page 2 of the search. From this year. Being, well, the New York Times.
March 5, 2010, 7:22 pmThe Dude Abides says:
As usual, the thread is way off topic. The point was that the article gratuitously associated the nutcase with the right. Liberal rags if this type do so without the barest pretense of objectivity. The liberal commenters here are clumsily attempting to redirect the conversation away from the obvious.
March 5, 2010, 7:27 pm1040 says:
False. It describes Republicans as conservative and moderate. It says the right-wing faction of the party. If you are seriously telling me that you can’t find a single story saying left-wing faction of the Dem party, you clearly aren’t looking.
Let me help you out. Even in your favorite bugbear, the NYT, this is an article that took me all of 2 seconds to fish out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/health/policy/19leaders.html
search for left wing. You can do that in Firefox by going to Edit -> Find, in case you’re having trouble.
March 5, 2010, 7:27 pmMark Field says:
AFAIK, nobody does this. That’s because the terminologies are different. Those on the left are nowadays called “liberals” or “progressives” by the mainstream media. Those on the right are called “right wing”.
I think there are good reasons for this distinction. The Republican coalition for the last 30 years or so has included those who aren’t, traditionally, “conservatives”, e.g., libertarians, evangelicals, and “neo-cons”.
It happens fairly regularly that the media describe someone as “liberal” even though I don’t think s/he is. I’m not sure how meaningful that test is.
March 5, 2010, 7:29 pmerp says:
According to the media, what we call left wing is mainstream or even right of center.
I believe the media and lefties in general really believe that because in their lives, they’ve never met anyone who thinks differently.
Kinda like Pauline Kael not believing Nixon won the presidency because nobody she knew voted for him.
March 5, 2010, 7:30 pmManju says:
This is rather uncanny. With Joseph Stack we had a guy target the irs–which on the surface appears to be a quintessentially right wing act replete with various conspiracy theories generally associated with right-wing extremists– but scratch the surface and you have a guy with some classicly leftist beliefs, like anti-capitalism and pro-communism.
Here we have as good as a mirror image as you’ll see in the real world. John Patrick Bedell targets an institution distrusted by the left, traffics in conspiracy theories as associated with that wing as irs conspiracy theories are with the right one–as the van Jones incident and various pols indicate– but scratch his surface and he transforms into a quinbtessintial rightwinger: pro-capitalist and anti-communist, the precise opposite of Stack.
One would assume all those who associated Stack With the right and teabaggers– b/c his most salient hatred was classically right and b/c of some of the extremist rhetoric emerging from the teaparties– would now associate Bedell with the left, despite his anti-communism and property rights stands, b/c he targeted the military, hated bush, was a registered democrat, and trafficked in 911 conspiracy theories replete with extremist rhetoric one hear emanting from anti-war rallies and far left publications.
those who clung to the notion of Stack as a leftist should follow suit but in the opposite direction. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
March 5, 2010, 7:46 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Manju,
It’s as I’ve said here before: You need believe only one officially “right-wing” thing to be labeled “right-wing.” Whatever else might be in your head is of no importance. This is how it is possible that (e.g.) Glenn Reynolds and Pat Buchanan are both obviously “right-wingers” to some people, despite agreeing on, well, sod all above the level of 2+2.
March 5, 2010, 7:56 pmDr. Weevil says:
Michelle Dulak Thomson wrote: “No major newspaper is going to call anyone on any side a ‘fascist,’ or a ‘Communist,’ or a ‘socialist,’ unless the people referred to define themselves so.”
I’m not absolutely confident they would do so even if the people did call themselves that. I remember hearing 10-20 years ago about a mildly conservative professor who referred to Angela Davis as a Communist at a faculty dinner party at (I think) Stanford. He was immediately and passionately denounced as a ‘red-baiter’ and worse. Even after he pointed out that Davis had run for Vice President on the CPUSA ticket, he was still treated as if he had farted loudly and proudly at the dinner table. All this is second-hand and retrieved from very long-term memory, but I have known enough professors to find the story plausible.
March 5, 2010, 8:03 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Mark Field,
AFAIK, nobody does this. That’s because the terminologies are different. Those on the left are nowadays called “liberals” or “progressives” by the mainstream media. Those on the right are called “right wing”.
I think there are good reasons for this distinction. The Republican coalition for the last 30 years or so has included those who aren’t, traditionally, “conservatives”, e.g., libertarians, evangelicals, and “neo-cons”.
I don’t see the “good reasons.” You’re saying that the Republican coalition is diverse, containing people with very different motives and very different causes. Therefore it makes sense to call them all “right wing,” even though any idiot can see that (e.g.) evangelicals and libertarians have practically no cause in common.
Whereas on the other side we have people in favor of liberty and progress, who broadly agree on policy in a way that the fractious Republican “coalition” never will. But they aren’t “left wing”; they’re “liberal” and “progressive.”
What the hell is wrong with “fiscal conservative” and “social conservative”? Is it that the MSM can’t imagine its readership fathoming a game with more than two players?
March 5, 2010, 8:10 pmDave N. says:
Mark Field,
Do you perhaps, however, see my objection? If right-wing is used to describe both Republicans and crazies, then the term either has no meaning or falsely creates an equivilence.
March 5, 2010, 8:13 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Dr. Weevil,
Ms. Angela “Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies” Davis of UCSC? I don’t know, if I’d run for Vice President, I think I’d prefer the people who knew me to remember it. Unless I’d publicly repudiated the ticket and the views that came with it. Which I don’t think she did.
March 5, 2010, 8:17 pmDonBoy says:
Just now there’s an editorial narrative going (most visibly in the NYT) according to which there is a groundswell of right-wing rage, the iceberg of which the TEA Party is the visible tip, and all the crazies of the last fifty years (white supremacists, John Birchers, survivalists, you name it) are about to break out again.
Given that the John Birch Society was a proud co-sponsor of the CPAC conference that took place less than two weeks ago, some of this is hard to blame on “narrative”.
March 5, 2010, 8:22 pmTrue Patriot says:
I’ll note that John Patrick Bedell registered to vote Oct 2005, and then voted once in Nov 2005. He sat out the 2006 midterm where Bush got spanked. He sat out the 2008 presidential election where he could help defeat the Republicans.
He strikes me not that enthusiastic in his political affiliation.
Meanwhile, here in Knoxville TN, home of InstaPundit, a real life right-wing terrorist walked into a church and started shooting during a children’s play. His ramblings were straight out of the typical Limbaugh radio show.
Glenn didn’t bother to comment on his blog.
News Article
Killer’s manifesto
March 5, 2010, 8:27 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
DonBoy,
Agreed. OTOH, International A.N.S.W.E.R. organized practically every large antiwar protest of the last decade, and yet there was no corresponding “narrative” about the Stalinist/Maoist/Sendero Luminoso-ist element in our politics. Not in the NYT, anyway.
March 5, 2010, 8:31 pmJohn says:
Left wing is not a valid entry in MSM computing. Overflow errors and whatnot so they resort to right wing at any opportunity. Nutty as the shooter.
March 5, 2010, 8:35 pmDave N. says:
One of 88 co-sponsors, by my count. So was GOProud (an organization of Gay Republicans), the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Poker Player’s Alliance. But thanks for the ad hominem.
March 5, 2010, 8:40 pmTrue Patriot says:
One of the funnier sins of Fox News (sic) is that everytime a Republican politician is in a major scandal, Fox reports his party affiliation as (D). The Daily Show once did a very funny montage of Fox doing this.
March 5, 2010, 8:44 pmJohn says:
That you Keith?
March 5, 2010, 8:47 pmMark Field says:
Yeah, I see some of that. But I see it as well with “liberals” and “progressives”. After all, much of the Glen Beckistan right thinks it great fun to call “progressivism” a “cancer” on the body politic; Jonah Goldberg writes trash history which equates liberals and Fascists; Lynne Cheney circulates videos implying the Justice Department is on the side of Al Qaeda; etc.
As for the traditional media, I can understand their dilemma. If they break down left and right into too many categories, their audience can’t keep track. If they use too few, they get (rightly) accused of false equivalence by those of us who can. This was a real problem on the left in the 60s, when groups like the Weather Underground got false-equivalenced with, say, George McGovern, it may be more of a problem today on the right. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, given what happens on Fox.
March 5, 2010, 8:54 pm1040 says:
No response to my debunking of your claim?
March 5, 2010, 8:58 pmfrankcross says:
I put leftwing democrat into Lexis and found a reference from a Providence newspaper, two days ago, referring to Edward Kennedy
March 5, 2010, 9:24 pmAnonsters says:
Um, no.
Most of us actually on the left-wing tend to see what the media describe as the “center” as being, in fact, right-of-center.
It’s perspective. From out here, the center looks skewed to the right. From the center, anyone deviating from the center looks like a winger. We don’t have an outside, objective point from which we can credibly and legitimately evaluate where a person or party or movement falls on the political spectrum. We are always already (to invoke the Heidegger) planted somewhere on the spectrum ourselves, and our perceptions reflect our position.
March 5, 2010, 9:32 pmDave N. says:
1040,
Fine, you found a later story. But according to Mark Field, “left wing” isn’t appropriate to use at all. I was responding to HIM.
March 5, 2010, 9:33 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Mark Field,
…Jonah Goldberg writes trash history which equates liberals and Fascists…
You know, I’ve no more read Goldberg’s book than I imagine you have, but from the capsule reviews I’ve seen, he does no such thing. What he seems to argue is that Fascism and various “progressive” strains in American and European politics had a great deal in common. I don’t think that’s even particularly controversial. Mussolini became a villain in retrospect; when he first came to power, there was no such consensus.
March 5, 2010, 9:44 pm1040 says:
No, I found a story that uses left wing exactly the same way as right wing is used in the story you pointed out – to describe portions of their respective parties.
Further, there is reason to believe that it is the right wing of the Republican party that is loudest and gets the most attention, which is why there if the conflation of extremism and right wing in the public mind.
March 5, 2010, 9:47 pmDangerMouse says:
But I see it as well with “liberals” and “progressives”.
Um, honest question here: who is supposed to be worse? “Liberals” or “Progressives”?
I always though “progressive” was a B.S. way of hiding one’s liberalism. Libs are all into “framing” themselves as something more moderate than they really are.
So which is supposed to be more extreme?
March 5, 2010, 9:50 pmAnton says:
Interesting. I’m hearing that he’s a registered Democrat who ranted and raved on Bush hatred.
http://www.Electorates.us has 180 million registered voter records available online. Thirty-six-year-old John Patrick Bedell’s voter registration records in Hollister, CA are available for any journalist before he/she goes off and labels him a “right-wing extremist.”
Guess which party he registered under in 2005 and was actively registered under as of 2008?
March 5, 2010, 9:50 pmpc says:
The publisher really needs to be taken to task for the title: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Perhaps Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince had nothing to do with Harry Potter?
March 5, 2010, 9:50 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Anonsters,
We don’t have an outside, objective point from which we can credibly and legitimately evaluate where a person or party or movement falls on the political spectrum.
But of course we do. It’s called “the American public,” and you and I belong to it. Dead center on the map of “the American public” is “center.” To the left of that mark is “left”; to the right is “right.”
Granted that breaking out all political positions onto one axis is silly. But as long as you’re going to do it, all you have to do is ask the public where it is; determine where your own position is; and decide whether you want to call that “left” or “right” of center. Because the mass of the public is the center, and to the extent that you differ from it, you are literally eccentric.
March 5, 2010, 9:56 pmTrue Patriot says:
Let’s be fair: You are under deadline. Some crazy shoots up a government office. You start reading his website and it starts off with rants about the evil government killing and enslaving us all. Your first thought is Tea Party, not guy who didn’t notice that Bush isn’t still in office.
That’s why journalists should read to the end of the webpage. Even if your news report is already writing itself after you read the first paragraph. Sometimes the crazy are not just crazy; they sometimes are behind in their current events.
March 5, 2010, 10:09 pmDave N. says:
FIFY
March 5, 2010, 10:12 pmVolokh Groupie says:
But haven’t you heard Anton? Bedell didn’t vote often and consistently enough in significant enough years to substantiate his party registration according to True Patriot.
This post really just points out how shoddy a journalist can be and still hold a position at a major news outlet. It doesn’t say anything about the right or the left, both of whom (as partially demons by the general bilge in the comments) have their fair share of idiots, psychos and extremists.
March 5, 2010, 10:17 pmVolokh Groupie says:
um, as partially demonstrated*, not ‘demons’
March 5, 2010, 10:19 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
pc,
The publisher really needs to be taken to task for the title: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Perhaps Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince had nothing to do with Harry Potter?
The “off” word here is “liberal,” because what Goldberg appears to be talking about isn’t liberalism so much as Leftism. All the same, when the sub-sub-title gets round to “The Politics of Meaning,” you do see the point. There’s something in that rhetoric of “community” and “meaning” and “it takes a village” that actually does have a fascist ring to it if you’ve read much original fascist rhetoric.
March 5, 2010, 10:33 pmLee Peters says:
Earthquake in Haiti Was Right-Wing Extremist
March 5, 2010, 10:37 pmTrue Patriot says:
Aton actually did a cut-n-paste from Michelle Malkin. Michelle was being a little unfair. The website in question doesn’t have voter records available online. They sell (I guess for thousands of $) lists of voters for your mailing list/phone bank. Once you buy a list, you can search it to see if someone is a Democrat or Republican. You don’t just type a name into the website to check.
Some reporter could have gone to their editor and said, “I’d like $15,000 to do some data mining to see if the perp was a registered voter.”
Personally, I’d find that a fun fact to know about every criminal. Along with a list of turn-ons, turn-offs, and favorite movies.
March 5, 2010, 10:40 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Lee Peters,
I don’t throw “LOL” around promiscuously, but … LOL.
March 5, 2010, 10:41 pmDr. Weevil says:
‘True Patriot’:
March 5, 2010, 10:47 pmWhy do you “guess” that it would have cost a reporter “$15,000 . . . to see if the perp was a registered voter”? You linked to the site, and they say right on the home page “Usually a whole state or district is just $750 and three cents per phone that is appended to each household.” The second half is not entirely perspicuous, but it looks like it would have cost a lot less than $15,000 to get the information, especially if you only wanted (e.g.) one county or less.
Michelle Dulak Thomson says:
Dr. Weevil,
Or, of course, you can just wait for Michelle Malkin to pony up and then you don’t have to pay squat, yes?
March 5, 2010, 10:50 pmAnonsters says:
This is meaningless to me. How precisely do we go about calibrating the scale based on this amorphous “American public?” Polls? Registered voters? People likely to vote? How do we do the calibration? Ask specific policy questions? How do you interpret where the answers to those questions fall on some political spectrum, without invoking your own particular understanding of said spectrum? Ask where people think they are on the political scale? Introspection, I’d bet, would be remarkably unhelpful. If you cluster people in large enough clumps, it’s not going to be interesting. And I’d still say that the people who fall just to either side of the center will regard themselves as centrists, whereas a pure centrist may regard such a person as a winger.
March 5, 2010, 11:04 pmTrue Patriot says:
Ah, for the 60s. Back then, the public was educated enough to get their name calling right.
The cops would call the left-wing hippies “commie pinkos.” The hippies would call the right-wing cops “fascist pigs.”
I blame the educational system and TV for the general ignorance these days.
On the other hand, the old retort, “I know you are, but what am I” has never been more apropos.
March 5, 2010, 11:05 pm1040 says:
Did you ask Pat Robertson about that?
There is no need to slander the entire base of non-liberal public as detached from reality.
March 5, 2010, 11:12 pmneurodoc says:
I have no data to offer, but I suspect there is a greater incidence of antisemitism among 9/11 Truthers, many of whom believe the Mossad was the real culprit, than in the general population. But if we are correct about that, would it by itself make it any more or less likely that this individual 9/11 Truther was a “right-wing” as opposed to a “left-wing” extremist? If it would, in which direction do you think it would point and why?
March 5, 2010, 11:17 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Anonsters,
The point is that we do have something by which we can gauge what’s — not “left” or “right” so much as “mainstream” or “not.” We have the people of the United States.
I know as well as you do that polls can be manipulated; that polls can be manipulative, for that matter. Still, there are things that we can know fairly reliably. We have some idea how Americans feel about capital punishment; about illegal immigration; about gay marriage; about post-first-trimester abortion; about taxes. Don’t you agree? Can’t you place yourself relative to the, so to speak, national center of gravity?
Introspection, I’d bet, would be remarkably unhelpful.
Because you can’t expect anything complicated like interior mental life from ordinary people. (No, I know that’s not what you meant, but it’s how any casual reader would understand it.)
March 5, 2010, 11:23 pmTrue Patriot says:
I stand corrected. My hypothetical reporter could ask the hypothetical editor for $750, maybe less, in order to do the data mining.
And after I just ranted that you need to read to the end of the webpage.
March 5, 2010, 11:24 pmMark Field says:
I think of this as the political version of parallax.
March 5, 2010, 11:28 pmneurodoc says:
What datum or data do others think would be most telling for purposes of pegging this guy as right-wing, left-wing, sui generis, or whatever politically rather than simply “deranged, otherwise not classified”? I think what would be most informative for these purposes would be to know which nationally known commenters he most often and most fervently agreed with.
While I agree with the general thrust of your comment, might it be of some interest to know who/what most agitated and animated them? Are more crazies susceptible to incitement by right-wing speakers and cant or left-wing speakers and cant or most require no incitement? But for the volume of right-wing or left-wing noise they hear, might their craziness not have caused them to undertake homicidal violence? I don’t know that but for Jodi Foster’s appearance in Taxi Driver John Hinckley would not have tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, but perhaps but for the likes of 9/11 Truthers or others with extreme views shouting them loudly, this guy wouldn’t have crossed the line.
March 5, 2010, 11:43 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Mark Field,
But it’s nothing like parallax. The point of parallax is that you can actually locate something if you look at it from two different directions. There’s no political equivalent, unless you think A calling X a “Nazi” and B calling X a “Communist” (a fair indication that X is neither one) constitutes location.
March 5, 2010, 11:44 pmorca says:
Many terrorists have mental problems, but that doesn’t stop people from blaming Islam for the damage they do.
March 5, 2010, 11:48 pmAnonsters says:
Assume the answer is yes; I’d say that it’s such a coarse-grained analysis that it’s not very interesting or informative. But I’m not sure the answer is “yes.” I bet we can find different trends in different parts of the U.S. if we looked. I bet we could find different trends within different sections of the different parts. I bet we could find different trends within different slices of different sections of the different parts. Too much turns on how you choose to divide things up prior to asking the questions to make the results interesting as anything other than an exercise in you dividing things up (i.e., as anything other than a reflection of how you personally understand political divisions).
So much the worse for the casual reader.
Self-reports are notoriously unreliable. Just glance at basic research in psychology for confirmation.
March 5, 2010, 11:54 pmrpt says:
By Monday night Glenn Beck will be praising Bedell as a true American hero. Just wait.
March 6, 2010, 12:13 amHoystory says:
$50 says you’re wrong.
If you’re not willing to back up your mouth with your money, you’d be advised to think twice before you libel someone.
March 6, 2010, 12:34 amJohn Moore says:
You mean the John Birch Society that published this attack on the tea party movement?
Perhaps you are having delusions.
March 6, 2010, 12:34 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Anonsters,
Urgh. Yes, anything purporting to generalize about a population as large as ours is going to be hopelessly crude.
I’m in one of the most liberal counties of one of the most liberal states, myself, and so I have to check myself repeatedly; I see silly liberals all the time, silly conservatives practically never, because conservatives (silly or otherwise) lie low here. Conspicuous right-wing idiots you can find in other parts of this state, and in other parts of the country, but right here all the idiocy is on the left. And we do have some prize idiots.
Still, it’s not impossible to generalize even about the American population. Pretty much everyone seems to agree, for example, that “we” lie somewhere to the right of Western Europe.
March 6, 2010, 12:41 amMark Field says:
The analogy is to the fact that the same object can appear to be in different locations depending on the position of the observer.
March 6, 2010, 12:47 amneurodoc says:
Many terrorists may have mental problems, but that doesn’t stop people from rightly blaming radical Islam for the damage they do. Yes, I agree. It would be patently absurd to think the problem we face from Muslim terrorists is the product of individual psychopathologies rather than a great many individuals who are “normal” in the context of their backgrounds, but acting under the influence of radical Islam, Islamism, Islamofascism, Wahhabism, Salafiism, or whatever label you care to give to their hateful religious expression.
Do you see an identifiable ideological or theological influence to explain John Patrick Bedell, or particular individuals on the national scene today who he might have thought were speaking political truth to him in the manner that Nidal Malik Hasan thought Imam Awlaki was speaking Islamic truth to him from Yemen?
March 6, 2010, 12:54 amneurodoc says:
Not according to any maps I’ve seen. According to them, we are to the left of Western Europe, below Canada (on maps), above Mexico, and right of everything beyond Hawaii.
March 6, 2010, 12:58 amneurodoc says:
We are told that Bedell believed that Marine Col. James Sabow did not commit suicide, but was in fact murdered by his own government to prevent him from revealing CIA secrets. One can find the details laid out in a posting to the website of Gary Null, a charlatan who holds forth daily on our local Pacifica Radio station WPFW, an unmistakeably left-wing outlet. http://www.garynull.com/Documents/sabow.htm That Bedell and Null both gave credence to this 9/11 Truther-like anti-government conspiracy theory, may be seen as evidence that Bedell was a left-wing, not a right-wing extremist. QED
March 6, 2010, 1:17 amorca says:
“He wuz crazy” is only a valid excuse for right-wing terrorists then?
March 6, 2010, 4:32 amneurodoc says:
First, it is not about “excuses” for any of them. None of them, nor any of their hateful acts are “excusable.” It is about “explanations” for them, since many terrorists, whether right-wing, left-wing, Islamic, or ones of other stripes are explicable, that is “crazy” does not account for them, some political or theological agenda accounts for their actions. Indeed, if there is no clearly identifiable agenda, then it can be plausibly maintained that ipso facto they don’t meet the definition for “terrorist.”
Nidal Malik Hasan arguably counts as a “terrorist,” albeit a self-actuating one not acting in concert with others, since it may be seen that he was encouraged by others who are part of terrorist networks, e.g., Awlaki, and he acted consistent with their objectives. Thankfully, unlike Hasan, John Patrick Bedell did not manage to kill/wound a great many, before the Pentagon police nailed him with a bullet to the head. Had he managed to kill/wound others though, he still would not qualify as a “terrorist” unless it could be established that his intention was a non-crazy one to act in furtherance of the goals of identifiable terrorist organization, e.g., the various Islamofascist ones. (If we were back in the 60′s, the Weather Underground, as exemplified by Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and others in their circle, would be a possibility. But here within the US these days, it is hard to suggest candidate groups other than Islamofascist ones.) So, the question here is in effect was Bedell living mostly or entirely in his own head, as a paranoid schizophrenic might do, or was he in alignment with other extremists and acting, or trying to act, in accordance with their objectives.
orca, you are free to persist in denying or minimizing the contribution of political or radical Islam to the problem of terrorism, but you are not going to persuade very many people, who realize that in recent years professedly religious Muslims have accounted for almost all international terrorism. (The Tamil Tigers, who appear to have been largely finished off, certainly qualified as terrorists, but they confined themselves for the most part to their own country, Sri Lanka, as have the IRA, ETA, and most other non-Muslims.)
March 6, 2010, 8:57 amJohn says:
I suppose if John Bedell had been screaming Glen Beck is Great while shooting folks this rag would have had some small justification for calling him a right winger. Of course the same paper and their fellow travelers on the left assigned no such label to Major Hasan as he shot unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood while screaming Allah Akhbar.
Why do you suppose that is?
March 6, 2010, 10:06 amPaul A'Barge says:
Do some Google-fu … the mutt was a registered Democrat voter.
March 6, 2010, 10:13 amDesiderius says:
pc,
“The publisher really needs to be taken to task for the title: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Perhaps Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince had nothing to do with Harry Potter?”
Nope, blame the author. Too cute by half, as usual. Unlike MDT and the esteemed Mark Field, I have read the book, and the title is a tragedy, in that it’s all too predictable misreading is nearly 180 degrees removed from the argument set forth in the book.
In a futile attempt to clear up the misreading:
In Aristotelian terms, the “liberal” of the title is intended to be accidental, not essential. In other words, “fascism” is not some foreign disease to which other less good/human people are susceptible but to which we enlightened liberals are immune. If one means “never again” seriously, one must pay attention to the possibility that one could oneself be acting in a similar manner and guard against it.
This applies to Left and Right, as the book amply illustrates.
March 6, 2010, 11:18 amgeokstr says:
Hoy, I’d give up on trying to get him to stop libeling people. It reminds me of a scene from the original Terminator, where Reese (Michael Biehn) is being questioned by the police psychologist when he tries to warn Sarah that Arnold won’t stop until he kills her:
===================================================================
Except you conveniently forget that a huge number of imams all over the world openly preach that it is totally justified by the Koran and wonderful things will happen to those in the afterlife who blow themselves up, especially if they take lots of little Jewish and other infidel children with them. There are also a number of experts on Islam, including current followers, and also prominent apostates who were brought up in it, that agree that the Koran itself and other teachings of Islam actively promote violence in furtherance of their faith.
Every year there are tens of thousands of terrorist attacks worldwide, nearly every one committed by Muslims. It must be just a coincidence that they all have Islam in common, I guess. I suppose it’s just a highly efficient method for stamping out mental illness in their Religion of Perpetual Outrage, if nothing else, eh?
March 6, 2010, 11:28 amDonBoy says:
John Moore: Michelle called the idea that groups including the John Birch Society are returning to prominence a “narrative” pushed by among others, the NYT. I pointed out that the JBS was a co-sponsor of the mainstream-conservative conference CPAC, so that part of the “narrative” is, in fact, undeniably true. Which she acknowledged. How does the fact that the JBS is even more right wing than the Tea Party contradict anything I said?
March 6, 2010, 12:23 pmElliot says:
Twenty-two percent of Americans are Truthers.
Democrats 35%
Republicans 12%
Independents 18%
Source: Rasmussen Poll May 4, 2007
March 6, 2010, 12:32 pmorca says:
Crazy may indeed “explain” most terrorists, but that might cut into the $300 billion a year anti-terrorism business.
All I know is that mental health issues show up in the background of almost every terrorist who rates a profile in the press…
March 6, 2010, 12:43 pmATM says:
Well, if you are in Europe laying down in a prone position with your head pointing north , the US would indeed be to the left. But if either your head is pointed south, or instead you are laying in a supine position with your head point north, the US would be to the right of Europe.
Of course, if you were laying down with your head pointing west, it would be neither a matter of left or right, but just the US being superior ;)
March 6, 2010, 12:58 pmJohn Moore says:
Sponsoring a booth at CPAC along with dozens of other groups and companies hardly means “returning to prominence.” In that sense, the assertion is misleading.
I would not be surprised, in these trying times, if the JBS gains some members, but it is unlikely to regain any prominence. That’s NYT trying to smear the right, like usual.
March 6, 2010, 1:03 pmJohn Moore says:
Most people with “mental health issues” are not crazy. Would you care to point to a single psychotic Islamist terrorist who acted in the west? A lot of Al Qaedan’s are engineers, and often suffer from what one might call “horny nerd syndrome.” That doesn’t make them crazy, it just makes them unhappy.
Modern Sunni Jihadism offers an ideology which is sufficiently logical to appeal to cognitive folks such as engineers – in much the same way that Communism and related ideologies captured and captures so many intellectuals. Sayyid Qutb created the modern basis for this by adding Marxist-style theory to Islamism.
March 6, 2010, 1:12 pmAnon says:
I’d like to comment on the direction the Christian Science Monitor is taking overall since moving to its Internet-only format, well not only Internet, but close to it.
It seems to me to be experiencing some bad transition /hopefully growth/ pains that could cost it its reputation for thoughtful in-depth day-2 reporting.
My impression: The CSM seems to want to take advantage of its web presence to get into almost real time, short breaking news.
It also seems to want to maintain its stronghold for the former described in-depth reporting. As far as I can see, it is losing its hold on it though.
CSM has to be careful not to lose its base.
Also lost in their online rush is the careful consideration I thought they always gave to terminalogy. Hurriedly casting the shooter as a right-winger is one example of that going out the window.
If CSM throws out the family jewels it won’t easily get them back.
March 6, 2010, 1:58 pmvw says:
He sounds/looks gay, is he?
March 6, 2010, 4:20 pmElliot says:
The Islamists aren’t crazy. They want to impose Islam and Sharia law on the entire world. We may not agree with it, but that’s what they want to do. They are quite rational.
They have no respect for rule of law unless it is their version of Sharia law. Any other legal system is an abomination and offense to god. They are not at all impressed by our legal system, and they have zero regard for where we try terrorists. Nothing our legal system does will in any way change their minds.
They regard our constitution as an abomination, and consider it their duty to god to prevent ideas like freedom of speech, religion, and press from infecting even more of the world.
The notion that they have the same values as Western liberals, and will be impressed by our legal system and treatment of captives has no basis, but they will take advantage of such notions to advance their agenda.
March 6, 2010, 6:34 pmjncc says:
Anyone who thins that Bedell is anything other than a right wing extremist, probably also thinks that Hitler and Stalin were leftists, too. In other words, someone you can’t reason with.
March 6, 2010, 10:37 pmMatthew Carberry says:
What is your working definition of leftist then?
Anti-authoritarian (libertarian)?
March 6, 2010, 10:41 pmbiscot says:
Bedell was a birther, a 9/11 truther, obsessed with the Sabow “coverup”, ranted about the size of the government and government surveillance.
That’s pretty much textbook nutty rightwing extremism. He’d fit right in at a teabagger rally (or as a VC poster on some of his issues).
March 6, 2010, 10:50 pmKen Arromdee says:
Why do we allow vulgarities here?
Would biscot be able to post if he referred to the right as cocksuckers instead? “Teabagger” is about the same level.
March 7, 2010, 12:08 amKen Arromdee says:
Because Hitler and Stalin were members of the Democratic Party?
(And Stalin was certainly a leftist. Cue True Scotsman fallacy.)
March 7, 2010, 12:10 amChris says:
Today the Christian Science Monitor put up a blog post that has a much more nuanced take on the issue: Political extremism: Not so easy to categorize
March 7, 2010, 12:11 amneurodoc says:
The Washington Post article with comments by Jerrold Post, a psychiatrist who has been a consultant to the CIA for a long time, was more informative. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/03/05/ST2010030501071.html
Now, it is becoming clear that Bedell was a paranoid schizophrenic, like Hinckley, so pretty meaningless to try to place him as a right-wing, left-wing, or any other kind of extremist. Different from a Timothy McVeigh.
March 7, 2010, 8:47 amJohn Moore says:
A very valid question.
March 7, 2010, 7:35 pmbiscot says:
“Would biscot be able to post if he referred to the right as cocksuckers instead? “Teabagger” is about the same level.”
I don’t know what sort of activities you engage in, Ken, that makes you so sensitive about the word “teabagger”, but if you will take a few minutes to educate yourself you’ll see that the teabaggers were the first to call themselves that. I didn’t make it up. Take a look. There are pictures of people wearing hats festooned with teabags, they initial act of protest was mailing teabags to members of congress. They are the folks whose wisdom and political savvy led them to choose the teabag as their symbol.
Sorry if that disturbs you.
March 7, 2010, 7:55 pmJohn Moore says:
Biscot, are you being intentionally dense, or do you really not know the following:
1) The tea party movement is not about “teabagging” but is instead based on the Boston Tea Party
2) “teabagging” is a kind of homo-erotic activity – sort of like cock sucking, to be explicit. The term was widely used in a disparaging manner, and Anderson Cooper apologized for his use (which may have been the first).
March 7, 2010, 9:36 pmDr. Weevil says:
Of course, ‘biscot’ knows that very few of those attending Tea Parties ever called themselves ‘teabaggers’, and that those who did did so in ignorance of the sexual meaning of the word. His argument is disingenuous (to put it politely). However, rather than compose an all-new refutation, I will just quote something I posted elsewhere when someone tried the same ridiculous ‘they started it’ argument a few months ago.
“Of course, even if dozens of Tea Partiers had called themselves ‘teabaggers’ in ignorance of the sexual meaning, that would not justify labeling the entire movement with that term forever after. If (hypothetically) tens of thousands of angry leftists were demonstrating as ‘The Working Peoples’ Movement’, and one or two or ten of them were quoted as saying things like ‘I’m just a simple working girl from Muncie’, their opponents would surely snicker, since ‘working girl’ is of course slang for prostitute. Would it be reasonable for their opponents to start shouting ‘they’re all WHORES! they admit it! “working girl”, ha ha ha! whores, whores, whores!’ and keep up the mockery for eight months or more, calling the WPM ‘working girls’ with a sneer every time they were in the news, and adding little digs about the putative whores’ prices for various services? That would be the equivalent of what you, and many on the left, are doing. Do you really see nothing wrong with it?”
My guess is that ‘biscot’ really sees nothing wrong with such behavior, as long as he and his friends are the ones doing it.
March 7, 2010, 9:45 pmBobDoyle says:
Translation: “Anyone who does not agree with me can’t be reasoned with.”
March 7, 2010, 10:32 pmHarryEagar says:
I didn’t know the sexual meaning of ‘teabagger’ Don’t get invited to the fun parties, I guess.
March 7, 2010, 11:14 pmzuch says:
There is some indication that if the Internet posts are by Bedell, he was a “small government” type, maybe libertarian and/or RW:
See also here:
Cheers,
March 7, 2010, 11:38 pmzuch says:
… which is why he imprisoned (and killed) real socialists and communists. I s’pose you think that the Demoocratic People’s Republic of Korea is democratic as welll, eh?
Cheers,
March 7, 2010, 11:48 pmzuch says:
Tell that to Perfesser InstaPundit. He seems to care …. oh, right, you can’t; he doesn’t allow comments.
Cheers,
March 7, 2010, 11:58 pmzuch says:
News flash: McVeigh was a RW nutcase.
Cheers,
March 8, 2010, 12:00 amzuch says:
Talk about false attributions. The Christian Science Monitor is most assuredly not a “liberal rag”.
Cheers,
March 8, 2010, 12:03 amzuch says:
The “Teabag” term was first used by the “Tea Party” people. Whether they were aware of any other connotations at the time is an open question.
Cheers,
March 8, 2010, 12:36 ambadlaw says:
He’s a liberal commenter. That means he gets to post with relative impunity.
March 8, 2010, 3:48 amDaedalus Mugged says:
I am not a tea partier, but I do find the use of ‘teabagger’ to be pretty derogatory and offensive. Yes one or two ignorant yokels used the words, but the name was stuck by left wing media ‘reporter’ activists. The name was not self identified by a predominant number of the tea partiers…it is a left wing hate label. It is offensive (NTTAWT Teabagging, but it isn’t appropriate to discuss in front of children on the news).
I propose the leftists who use ‘teabagger’ be called ‘salad tossers’. PETA Vegetarian types tend to be leftists. I’ll let urban dictionary clue anyone in who isn’t up on their predominantly homosexual non-intercourse sex acts. Keith Olberman… definitely a salad tosser.
March 8, 2010, 7:04 amDaedalus Mugged says:
Zuch, Stalin also imprisoned and killed real socialists and communists. Does that mean he wasn’t a real man of the left either? Not all leftists follow the ‘no enemies to the left’ as closely as American leftists.
NAZI=National Socialist. And it wasn’t misleading cover(like the D in GDR…the Nazis controlled all business that mattered in Nazi Germany. The eastern front of WWII was so brutal because it was a civil war on the left. Between ‘National’ socialism and ‘International’ socialism. There is a reason the commie song is ‘The Internationale’
But make no mistake…Nazis were socialists (universal healthcare anyone?) and were on the left.
March 8, 2010, 7:13 amLogicalUS says:
“Between ‘National’ socialism and ‘International’ socialism. There is a reason the commie song is ‘The Internationale’ ”
Ding, Ding, Ding.
A person’s understanding of Hitler will ALWAYS expose the ones who have been indoctrinated by the Leftist narrative created to unlink this killer from their political history.
Hitler was most definitely a socialist and many of his top Lt. were former members of the “Internationale”, including Himmler and Goebbles. The Nazis’ hatred was racial not political. Hitler and Nazis hated “The Internationale” because they believed it was controlled and directed by the Jews. He saw it as the Jews taking over the world. Secondly, he was certain that Germany and the Ayran Race were destined to rule the world hence a national socialist movement focused on building a superior German nation.
Hence the Leftist narrative that Hitler was a right-winger to offset the Left’s unquestionable support and love of Lenin, Mao and Stalin even while they were sending millions to their death squads. It was bad publicity for EVERY slaughter of millions to have come from the Left, ie, “See Hitler was a right-winger so everyone does it”.
Leftist absolutely HATE when this is pointed out and it goes on today. Indoctrination. Despite the blood of millions upon millions on their hands, you still see Mao posters and Lenin t-shirt proudly worn by simpleton Leftists. Heck, Obama even nominated a dunce who told a bunch of High schoolers that her favorite political influence was Chairman Mao???
Just how many millions does a ideologue have to kill before they are not admired by the Left?
March 8, 2010, 8:28 amMichael McNeil says:
Tell that to Perfesser InstaPundit. He seems to care … oh, right, you can’t; he doesn’t allow comments.
What nonsense. Prominent on Reynold’s page is a “Contact” button that will send him your e-mail comments — and a great many people do just that all the time.
March 8, 2010, 10:01 amParatrooperJJ says:
The guy was a registered Democrat.
March 8, 2010, 10:15 amSarcastro says:
So was Hitler!
March 8, 2010, 10:52 amzuch says:
And:
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea = a democratic republic.
You ignored this comment of mine for some reason. Why?
And also: “Greenland” = a verdant, green land.
Cheers,
March 8, 2010, 1:10 pmzuch says:
Nope.
Could it be that it was the biggest war being fought (and most existential, for the Russians), the Western front being non-existent?
That’s got to be the lamest “argument” I’ve heard in a long time….
Should we say the U.S. is “socialist” because our Pledge of Allegiance was penned by a socialist?
Cheers,
March 8, 2010, 1:20 pmzuch says:
Yes, perhaps (if the spam filters don’t gobble ‘em). But the fact remains that the blog doesn’t allow comments.
Cheers,
March 8, 2010, 1:23 pmElliot says:
Your point? Rahm Emmanual called Democrats “F**king Retards.” Does that make it acceptable to call Democrats “F**king Retards?” Rahm did it first.
March 8, 2010, 7:55 pmTrue Patriot says:
This is a recent Right-wing fantasy that Hitler was somehow Left-wing. Daedalus is even more off base by bringing up “International” anything.
The entire focus of Hitler’s National Socialist Party was Nationalism. In Mein Kamph, Hitler prattles on for pages about how the only justification for national government is to preserve and defend racial (by blood) identity. He condemns the idea that Germanization could be carried about by spreading ideas, language, or culture:
The “Socialism” in the party’s name had nothing to due with Marxist Economics. Instead it was a form of populism that elevated the individual and the common man. Hitler hated all forms of Marxism:
Just as Hitler deliberately chose to redefine Socialism to remove all Marxist Economics while keeping the Populism, he delighted in the confusion it caused. The Nazis even adopted red as their official color to increase the confusion:
Hitler hated the Left:
And the Liberal Press:
Whereas the Conservatives could have saved Germany during WWI:
Hitler, Mein Kampf, and the Nazi party were a nasty piece of work: A Right-wing nasty piece of work.
But, Daedalus need not feel too bad. The Left has the shame of the Communists on its side.
March 8, 2010, 9:02 pmTrue Patriot says:
Of course, Hitler also hated all forms of Marxism for the same reason:
Hitler was about as pro Socialism as Ronald Reagan. In fact, Hitler has the support of the German industrialists who saw Hitler as a fighter against Socialism and Communism. Henry Ford, vehemently against labor unions, was a fan of Hitler’s. Hitler also greatly admired Ford.
March 8, 2010, 10:57 pmDaedalus Mugged says:
Zuch,
I did not ignore your comment…I provided another example of the erroneous strawman you built. If it wasn’t obvious enough, Communist dictators like to hide behind the supposed legitimacy of sticking democratic in the names of their totalitarian states. You brought up DPRK, I brought up GDR. Commies like calling themselves democratic, because even commies don’t like commies. Which has nothing to do with political parties putting socialist in their names. Can you name another significant (say >2% of a population) political party (other than the German National Socialist Workers Party) from any country in any period of time that put ‘Socialist’ in their name that was not socialist?
Re: the control the National Socialists held in Germany, was there any businessman in Germany that could tell Der Fuhrer to eff off? Even before the war, say 1937 or 1938? No way. Complete control, while keeping ‘private’ ownership. A Commie takes a factory owner, puts him against a wall, shoots him, then tells the factory what to do. A Fascist/National Socialist tells the factory owner what to do, and in the few instances he doesn’t hop to, they put him up against the wall and shoot him. If you think that very subtle difference puts them at opposite ends of the political spectrum, you’ve spent too much time in school and not getting enough education.
March 8, 2010, 11:00 pmDaedalus Mugged says:
“True” Patriot: You make a compelling case that Hitler hated Communists. That is true. With hate of a civil war…with the hate that the various tiny splinter groups of communists have amongst themselves…with the hate that the Trotskyies had with the Stalinists. Because they were both kissing cousins politically.
The communists emphasized the internationalism…the whole ‘workers of the world unite’ thing. Didn’t matter if you were a Russian, Pole or German, you were a Prole. Hitler obviously thought it mattered a lot whether you were German or a Pole. Thus the National vs International distinction between the various forms of socialists. But they were both socialists. And they hated each other with the hate of a civil war on the left. And yes, Hitler wanted to draw a distinction between his ‘socialism done right, the German way’ and what he viewed as the screwed up ‘Jewish’ socialism…communism.
The communists had the state take ownership of the means of production. Hitler (Mussolini really) figured out you didn’t need to actually take ownership…it was more efficient to leave the private ownership in place but just control it through them. You could just have a powerful gov’t with no respect for individual rights or private property and boss them around and it was more efficient. That is the grand distinction…whether you shot the owners first (communists) or shot them if they disobeyed (fascist/national socialists). Hardly a distintion that makes National Socialists a party of the ‘right’ Did he hate the commies? Yes. Was he a socialist? Yes. Was he a ‘pure’ (in his perspective) jewish/marxist socialist? No, he modified the idea slightly. But even he recognized he was a socialist.
And that is even before I get to the ‘workers’ in the National Socialists Workers Party.
March 8, 2010, 11:18 pmDaedalus Mugged says:
And to reiterate LogicalUS’s point…there is a reason so many of the senior National Socialists and early recruits came with a communist background. They were already socialists, and the National Socialists only had the case to make that the German version of socialism was better than the Russian version of socialism.
Heck, Hermann Goring even had a Four Year Plan “where he effectively took control of the economy” (wikipedia) in 1936. All the socialism of a 5 Year Plan, with 25% more efficiency!
March 8, 2010, 11:30 pmzuch says:
Go for it, big boy. It says more about you than about them.
Cheers,
March 9, 2010, 12:23 amElliot says:
What does it say?
March 9, 2010, 12:35 amzuch says:
Wow! Ya think? Why wasn’t that clear to me there? Maybe I wouldn’t have asked such a silly question as “I s’pose you think that the Demoocratic People’s Republic of Korea is democratic as welll, eh?”
Yes. I brought up the DPRK first. Strange you still haven’t figured out why:
* * * * *
Democracy and communism are not mutually exclusive.
Was there anyone who could tell Hitler to shove it? But the paydirt is here, nicht wahr?:
Your words. Imagine that. FWIW, the corporations were quite willing participants. Cheap labour, lots of business, not a bad deal, I guess….
If Hitler was a commie, you’d have to explain why his biggest friends here in the U.S. were Henry Ford, the Republicans, and the America Firsters, and his biggest opponent that renown socialist, FDR.
Cheers,
March 9, 2010, 12:44 amDaedalus Mugged says:
Yes, my words, that is why I put the ‘private’ in scare quotes. The national socialists left them in place, as long as they followed every order they were given. IE, the government had almost complete control over the economy (socialism!) while ostensibly leaving ‘private’ ownership in place, but it reality, the ‘private’ ownership is meaningless, because the government can execute anyone they please, and take their stuff, or give their stuff to party members…just like how the senior Russian Communists all ended up with such nice Dachas in a place where the workers ostensibly owned everything. In case you haven’t noticed, serious socialists are power hungry and blood drenched.
To your FDR point, we also allied with Stalin against Hitler, does that also made FDR not only a Nazi, but also a Commie? Your point is nonsense, but you did manage to completely dodge one of my original points. You said that Hitler wasn’t a socialist because he imprisoned and killed ‘real’ socialists. Do you acknowledge that is a logical fallacy? That Stalin and Mao and Castro and the Khmer Rouge all killed other ‘real’ socialists too? Or is every communist regime in every real country not ‘real’ socialists? Heck leftists kill more leftists than anyone. Do you know who imprisoned and executed more communists that Hitler in the same time frame as Hitler? Stalin of course.
Here is a quote about Blokhin, Stalin’s right hand man’s (Beria’s) right hand man: Elsewhere it makes it clear that most of those executed by him personally were party members…because they were afraid they might have the pull to get someone else executed in their stead. So Blokhin personally verified their ID to make sure the party members couldn’t pull one over.
Socialists kill a lot of socialists, including Hitler. Do you acknowledge your logical fallacy?
plus the whole advantage of not being executed and having your family sent to those camps that socialists (of both the national and international variety) are always building.
March 9, 2010, 8:01 amzuch says:
As I said, it was the Republicans, the America Firsters, and the Bunds, that were not only tolerant, but in many cases sympathetic to Hitler. Not FDR.
I agree that we made common cause with the Stalinist Stalin … but I’d say the consequences of not doing so were rather dire. The Soviet Union lost about one of every three dead in WWII, and a Western front would have been almost unthinkable without Soviet efforts on the Eastern front. Going it alone or just with the UK would have been unthinkable. But I’d also note that we certainly didn’t treat Stalin with quite the same deference as Churchill (see, e.g., US/UK co-operation on weapons and intelligence, freezing out the Soviet Union).
Cheers,
March 9, 2010, 1:46 pmTrue Patriot says:
There’s a big problem with your thesis: businessmen actually supported Hitler during his rise to power. They were big contributors to the political campaigns of the Nazi party as it rose to power. Hitler didn’t have to coerce the vast majority of industrialists to join the war effort. There was lots of money to be made, even for small-timers like Oskar Schindler.
Right-wing conservatives love big government contracts plus slave labor. So, yeah, there were people toiling in the factories because a gun was to their head. But it was the workers, not the owners.
March 9, 2010, 6:03 pmTrue Patriot says:
You obviously think that that you’ve made some point, but you haven’t. Every extreme right-wing dictator behaves exactly the same way. Pointing out that Hitler was a despot (even if some your details are wrong) doesn’t prove that he was on the left or the right.
For example, in Feudal Societies, the Lord owned the land, the crops, the serfs themselves. The Lord reserved the right to rape any woman on her wedding day. The Lord didn’t need to take anything, since it was the Lord’s in the first place. The Lord’s divine right was hereditary, emanating from God through the King.
That doesn’t make Feudal Lords Communists or Socialists.
March 9, 2010, 8:08 pmDr. Weevil says:
The Feudal lord’s supposed “right to rape any woman on her wedding day”, the so-called ‘ius primae noctis’ or ‘droit du seigneur’ is rejected as fiction by all, or nearly all, contempoary Mediaevalists. Should we believe anything else ‘True Patriot’ writes?
March 9, 2010, 8:53 pmTrue Patriot says:
That doesn’t prove anything: Far right-wing dictatorships love killing socialists as well. For example, Francisco Franco, Contras.
If you want to argue that Hitler’s internal and external enemies don’t define him, you have to have to argue more than your assertion that Hitler versus the Communists was a “civil war”.
Hitler explained his beliefs in Mein Kampf. Go an pull some comments from it if you think he advocated Socialism in any form other than a form of what we would call Populism (VÖLKISCH). Hitler was adamant that his brand of “Socialism” was completely free of any trace of Marxism.
Hitler’s narrative is consistent throughout: The Left and Jews were traitors who brought about the downfall of Germany and the Right was weak and cowardly and let this happen. (Tea Party take note!)
March 9, 2010, 9:43 pmTrue Patriot says:
Sorry about that. I am not an expert on Feudalism, and I got caught up with a popular misconception.
Since my argument is just as strong without that sentence, why not believe, or at least take seriously, the rest? Are you saying that Feudal Lords were Communists? That my argument fell apart?
Seems to me that claiming that a minor detail inconsequential to my argument is wrong, therefore I am never to be trusted is, well, intellectually dishonest on your part.
March 9, 2010, 9:57 pmDr. Weevil says:
I’m saying that you are ignorant of the most basic historical facts. Here’s another one: the Contras were neither “far-right” nor were they trying to establish a dictatorship. You just make stuff up, and your arguments are therefore worthless. Does that mean I think feudal lords were Communists? Of course not. Only an idiot would suggest that I am saying that. Please go away and learn a little bit about history and politics before embarrassing yourself further.
March 9, 2010, 10:55 pmDaedalus Mugged says:
I am done with this thread, there are no honest readers left who benefit from this continuing. Zuch jumps to another subject each time he is nailed down. (Do you acknowledge the logical fallacy?) Like now, in a discussion of whether the National Socialists were socialists, we are to the point of whether FDR treated Stalin better than the Brits. Not relevant (but for the record, FDR did give the commies all of eastern Europe, it isn’t like we let Britain keep France for their effort).
True Patriot: You are very successfully arguing against a very simple strawman. I never made the case you very thoroughly debunked that Hitler was a socialist because he killed other socialists. I made the point I did make to refute your compatriot’s point in response to egd that Hitler was not a socialist because he imprisoned and killed ‘real’ socialists. Although in hindsight, on a statistical basis, if all I knew about a government was that it killed and imprisoned lots of socialists….it probably would be a pretty high confidence guess that the government itself was socialist. Socialists are that blood drenched.
You also keep dwelling on the point of Hitler’s nationalism. Yes, Hitler was a Nationalist. That is why he put National in his party’s name…right before the Socialist Workers Party. It isn’t like Hitler was some sort of Nationalist Libertarian expecting the supposedly superior German people to work it out for themselves. He believed in the big powerful all controlling (including the economy)state. In other words…Socialism. That is why they are National Socialists. They’re Nationalists, and Socialists! As opposed to the ‘international’ flavor of socialism.
To the point that Hitler hated Marxists, and they hated him right back, yes. Because Marxists take Marx as the gospel. Absolute truth. And therefore Marx’s international version of big government as gospel. Which still contains all that nonsense about how the big totalitarian government will wither away and it viewed the proles of all countries as interchangable. The National Socialists adjusted several aspects around the fringes…like the fact that it replaces the weak ‘workers of the world unite’ hogwash with a much easier sell (to Germans) ‘Germans are better’. And he acknowledged the big state control was permanent and not temporary way point on the way to workers paradise with no government at all, as the international socialists continue to foolishly support generations after it has been empirically proved false in scores of blood drenched ‘experiments’. The National Socialists were indeed socialists, but they were heretics and apostates to the ‘true’ socialists of the Marx stripe. They kept the core socialism (all powerful state), and threw out a lot of the stupid and foolish window dressing. That is why most early converts to National Socialists came from the ranks of the communists…they were so close already. And that is why it was a hatred of a civil war.
Or even more precisely, a religious civil war. A lot like the Christian wars of reformation, or the Sunni/Shia divide…so much in common, yet such big hatreds over such modest differences. It is easy to find a Sunni to argue that a Shi’ite is not a ‘real’ Muslim. And it is easy to get a Socialist (international version) to argue that a National Socialist is not a ‘real’ socialist. Which is my guess as to what this interchange was really about.
Now I’m done.
March 10, 2010, 7:38 amTrue Patriot says:
I’ll point out that I’m the only one that quoted actual historical text written by Hitler on what Hitler believed. I included the pointer to the Project Guttenberg text so that you can check the quotes and their context yourself.
Let’s recap. When faced with an argument that only the Far Left kills Marxists and/or sets up a totalitarian government, I pointed out that the Far Right loves to do that as well.
I gave some examples, one of which was feudal societies. You pointed out that my passing reference to ‘ius primae noctis’ was historically baseless. I admitted that I was probably wrong about that.
You also seem to now agree that “only an idiot” would believe that somehow invalidated my point. Thank you!
Yet, you claimed that “I make stuff up.” At most you proved that I fell prey to a popular misconception about institutional rape in feudal societies. As to the Contras, you can argue that I wrong to believe all the reports of thuggery and drug running, but you can’t claim I made those reports up, or they were not taken seriously, or that there isn’t controversy.
It is dishonest of you to claim I have been “making stuff up”. You know better.
March 11, 2010, 5:25 amDr. Weevil says:
Yes, ‘True Patriot’, you make stuff up. What is the evidence that the Contras were a ‘far-right dictatorship’? You say that they practiced “thuggery” and were plausibly accused of “drug running”. That only makes your case if all thugs and drug-runners are not just on the right but on the far right (utterly false) and are dictators (also false). Your ‘argument’ is either astonishingly inept or totally dishonest — or perhaps a bit of each.
Here’s another lie: “Right-wing conservatives love big government contracts plus slave labor.” I’m pretty sure I’m a right-wing conservative, at least from where you sit, and I do not love big government contracts or slave labor. I hate them both. You are again (to put it kindly) making stuff up. To put it less kindly, you’re a liar.
March 11, 2010, 7:50 pmTrue Patriot says:
You realize that anyone can scroll up the page and see what I wrote, right?
My argument, in pretty much every one of the “history” posts, was that the Far Right was as guilty totalitarianism as the Far Left. I never pretentend that there wasn’t totalitarianism on the Far Left:
So, you are completely off base claiming that I ever attempted to state that all (and only) members of the Right were dictators. All I have ever attempted to do is give examples of Far Right acting the same way. I think you know that, despite your misrepresentations.
Dude, you seriously need to read about hyperbole and its legitimate use in rhetoric. In the context of my original post, the quoted sentence was perfectly reasonable even if in isolation it seems extreme.
But, good for you for coming out against slavery. Truth is, I never thought you were for it. No points for merely opposing businesses doing business with the government. What’s wrong with a little Capitalism?
But you will be shocked, shocked to discover:
Almost all business owners would celebrate a large government contract.
Some business owners, usually on the Left, believe there is a social obligation to pay their workers fairly.
Other business owners, usually on the Right, believe that there is only the economic principle of extracting as much value from their workers while minimizing the cost. Those business owners have been known to:
Fire workers in order to move jobs to third-world nations where workers can be paid a penance.
Set up sweat shops where undocumented workers have to work in poor conditions for low wages.
“Hire” prisoners for low wages. (Actually, the wages are paid to the government incarcerating the prisoners.)
And in the case of WWII Germany, some businesses were actually provided with prisoners from concentration camps.
March 12, 2010, 12:25 amDr. Weevil says:
You can call it ‘hyperbole’, but it was in fact a lie. What you said about the Contras is also false, and you haven’t even attempted to justify it. Keep on talking, liar. No one with any sense will listen to you, here or any other thread.
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June 18, 2010, 8:14 am