From American Fascists by Chris Hedges, Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute, former reporter for the New York Times and NPR, and (paragraph break added):
This is the awful paradox of tolerance. There arise moments when those who would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible should no longer be tolerated. They must be held accountable by institutions that maintain the free exchange of ideas and liberty.
The radical Christian Right must be forced to include other points of view to counter their hate talk in their own broadcasts, watched by tens of millions of Americans. They must be denied the right to demonize whole segments of American society, saying they are manipulated by Satan and worthy only of conversion or eradication. They must be made to treat their opponents with respect and acknowledge the right of a fair hearing even as they exercise their own freedom to disagree with their opponents.
Passivity in the face of the rise of the Christian Right threatens the democratic state. And the movement has targeted the last remaining obstacles to its systems of indoctrination, mounting a fierce campaign to defeat hate-crime legislation, fearing the courts could apply it to them as they spew hate talk over the radio, television and Internet.
And to the extent there's some ambiguity about whether he's calling for legal suppression (which "denied the right" seems to strongly suggest) or just social pressure, he seems to have clarified it in favor of legal suppression (and "hate crimes legislation" in the sense of bans on supposed hate speech) on NPR's Talk of the Nation, Jan. 25, 2007:
JIM (Caller): Yes. Yes, I am. I needed to ask the author -- I mean, I myself am a Christian, but I wouldn't even somewhat agree with Pat Roberts. But the author stating that you need to restrict someone's free speech just for mere words, he's advocating -- I mean, what he's advocating is fascism, is he (unintelligible)? ...
Mr. HEDGES: I think that, you know, in a democratic society, people don't have a right to preach the extermination of others, which has been a part of this movement of - certainly in terms of what should be done with homosexuals. You know, Rushdoony and others have talked about 18 moral crimes for which people should be executed, including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and all - in order for an open society to function, it must function with a mutual respect, with a respect...
JIM: Sure.
Mr. HEDGES: ...for other ways to be and other ways to believe. And I think that the fringes of this movement have denied people that respect, which is why they fight so hard against hate crimes legislation -- such as exist in Canada -- being made law in the United States.
[NEAL] CONAN: But Chris, to be fair, aren't you talking about violating their right to free speech, their right to religion as laid out in the First Amendment?
Mr. HEDGES: Well, I think that when you preach -- or when you call for the physical extermination of other people within the society, you know, you've crossed the bounds of free speech. I mean, we're not going to turn a cable channel over to the Ku Klux Klan. Yet the kinds of things that are allowed to be spewed out over much of Christian radio and television essentially preaches sedition. It preaches civil war. It's not a difference of opinion. With that kind of rhetoric, it becomes a fight for survival....
It'd be funny if more people got the joke...
The radical Christian Right must be forced to include other points of view to counter their hate talk in their own broadcasts, watched by tens of millions of Americans.
Fairness Doctrine here we come.
If you want the Christian Right not to be dangerous, then free speech is your best friend. Let blow-hards be blow-hards. However, almost any religion or non-religion driven underground is going to nurture any criminal elements within it.
Censoring speech through anti-hate codes would eventually backfire on those protected, though I'm sure many would get great pleasure in using the laws of the United States to censor Jerry Falwell and his less famous brethren. Hugo Black was a Baptist from Alabama who had heard a lot of preachers spew fire, water, oil, and smoke, but in his Baptist way, he saw the First Amendment as literal and inerrant. Justice Black knew that ultimately America cannot be free for just me and my friends. It needs to be free even for the self-righteous clerics and revolutionary agitators who would preach hatred against all but a few.
Those who want speech codes will think they are fine until the codes are turned against them. Remember how Robespierre died.
We are at war and in times of war people expect their civil liberties to be curtailed. So far we have had rightwing Christian terrorist attacks on our soil by Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph - we either have to fight the terrorists over there or we will have to fight them here. (Okay that last part will need to be tweaked.)
I wonder if all those who agreed with trying to suppress Stimson's speech by going for his bar license would support thousands of fundamental Christians filing grievances against this guy were he a lawyer?
Second question where does this guy get this crap about talk radio and christian TV preaching for the physical extermination of homosexuals and others. I've never seen or heard this ever, and I've been listening from time to time.
My suspician is that anyone not preaching the PC line that agrees with his thoughts on these issues is interpreted by him to me they speaker is preaching extermination, and then he calls for their forced re-education/suppression and then says *THEY* are the fascists.
The Chutzpah of the left wing PC moonbats seems to have no bounds. I mean a book calling for the abolition of the free speech and free exercise rights through the use of unconstitutional criminal laws (like hate speech laws and others) being titled "Fascists In America" is pretty damn amazingly ironic and humorous. Too bad such idiots are not just fools deserving of laughter and derision but also quite dangerous at the same time.
Guys like this scare me way more than some harmless old believer like Pat Robertson.
Says the "Dog"
I'd never heard anything linking McVeigh to religion before, and wikipedia was easy. I think you're full of it. Please retract or clarify?
However, the reason I said 'theoretically' is that I do not trust our lower level judiciary to be uniform in any application of the first amendment. Being far too self-absorbed, these judges (and folks like Hedges) view that "if the speech is offensive, it should be illegal" rather than "if the speaker intended to incite violence [insert temporal limit], it should be illegal."
When the criteria is 'offensive,' it becomes a de facto heckler's veto. Moreover, when the person making the 'offensive' determination has his own biases (as we all do), he will invariably make 'offensive' determinations in a non-uniform manner. Thus Hedges will find no anti-christian or anti-joooo speech offensive, and would find nearly any anti-muslim speech as offensive, merely by virtue of its being directed against a politically powerless minority.
Just look at his trademark views on christian fundamentalist condemnation of sodomy, and his insistence on equating this with a call for genocide against homosexuals. Status =/ behavior, at least post-Romer and pre-Lawrence.
I do pose one small caveat.
Does tolerance mean that we must tolerate the intolerant?
That information comes from our allies. Also, he had several meetings with people who were admitted Christians. All you have to do is connect the dots . . .
I've seen the claim made seriously before, and although your last post was obviously tongue-in-cheek, there was no indication that the part claiming McVeigh was a "christian terrorist" was.
As long as we're clear...
Note that, in America, if an "islamofascist" organization calls for the extermination and destruction of others, they're inviting at a minimum some serious scrutiny from the Feds, and they risk having their funds frozen or cut off. I hope the same kinds of investigations befall other organizations of whatever origin if they agitate for the execution of others. But I would add that I think there's a difference between saying "there oughtta be a law" or "society should execute such and such" on one hand, and "listeners should go find _____ and execute them." I think both are positively evil, but only the latter seems actionable. That is, I'd call the police if I heard the latter (and I have done so before). I think the former should be protected.
For reasons Eugene's stated many times already, speech (even despicable speech) should be protected. I'm all for giving the nuts enough rope to hang themselves. I much prefer that to letting the government do it.
We are all facists now.
JLD - I was agreeing with the basic idea of your post until I got to the 'left wing PC moonbat' tripe. You know how to play to your audience.
I'm not a legal scholar, but is the "social value" of speech a basis for protecting it or not?
Wrong. This is one misguided man. Sorry, but I will go out on a limb and say that most self-respecting liberals will vehemently disagree with banning speech. Unlike the Rush-Hannity crowd, we have the courage of our convictions and stick to our guns. This guy is no more representative of liberals as Michael Savage is of Republicans.
I'd prefer to worry about the people who control the mainstream media and who occupy many seats in Congress and the Senate who believe that a person who insults one of their sheltered constituencies, such as the blacks or the gays, should be sent off for counselling . . . so they can be "re educated" and "get their mind right."
We've seen this twice lately. Michael Richards and his outburst against blacks, and just last week with this actor fellow who slurred his gay co-star. Both "eagerly" agreed to go off somewhere for counselling.
No, its not the religious types who scare me, its the secularists, who claim to answer to no one.
I hope so. But I was at the University of Michigan during their repeated attempts to impose speech codes on students. That was quite--shall we say--illuminating. "No free speech for fascists!" was a not-uncommon rallying cry by the predecessor organizations to BAMN. They defined "fascist" as "to the right of Castro."
Since the issue raised by this “one misguided man” was the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” is it your position then that most liberals will oppose it?
Oh and I would be curious if you could provide us with actual examples of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity in favor of banning political speech that they disagree with.
Maybe it’s because “regular Christians” realize that the sort of morons who throw around epitaphs like "radical Christian right" probably think that they’re part of it.
Sigh. Give me a name to call those people who advocate the creation of a theocracy based on their interpretation of the Christian bible. Please. I'll gladly use your term (and not theirs) to describe them, so that you'll understand who I mean.
By the way, the FBI tracks some of those organizations. I guess the FBI must be comprised of morons, as well.
I fondly remember when conservatives told us we had to restrict the free speech rights of communists because they would use those rights to destroy our freedoms. Some of you older readers may even remember those horrible Islamofascists who needed to be suppressed for the same reason. Can you believe one of them even wanted to use the Koran in a private ceremony?
I wonder who it was who insisted on upholding principle in the face of such attacks. Guess we should thank them now that our own rights are in danger from Chris Hedges (a majority of one, I'm guessing).
He's not just criticizing the "radical Christian right", he's proposing to abridge free speech. You don't have to "conflate the larger community with the extremists" to see that.
When I read comments like this one of yours I suspect that you worry that any criticism of an enemy or your enemy equals support for your enemy. If the radical Christian right or whatever fringe group you allude to is as dangerous as you warn, it won't be made any more or less so by criticizing Hedges.
So, you think we should be cool with speech suppression, as long as it isn't our speech being suppressed?
Although it is true that at present advocacy for censorship comes to a large extent from the left, it isn't that simple. Historically the right is just as guilty, and even now there are plenty of leftists, such as myself, who oppose laws against "hate speech".
Oh and I would be curious if you could provide us with actual examples of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity in favor of banning political speech that they disagree with."
He may have been making a point about the FD, but the issue at hand and the one to which I referred was his claim that "when you preach -- or when you call for the physical extermination of other people within the society, you know, you've crossed the bounds of free speech," which was interpreted to mean government censorship of such speech. On that topic I will boldly and humbly attempt to speak for all liberals. On the FD I will not be so bold and thus have no position on what all liberals think of it.
As for your second point: are you seriously defending Rush and Sean? I mean, these guys are notorious for pushing intolerant views and branding those who disagree as traitors, treasonous, anti-American, etc. Again, are you seriously defending them and they're positions? I presume you're too smart for that. Shit, there are entire books and websites dedicating to exposing their nonsense.
I don’t think that’s true that the right is “just as guilty” as the left when it comes to censorship. Most of the examples of government attempts to suppress political speech seem to have come from the political Left. Wilson and Roosevelt were particularly notorious for it during WWI and II. We had Al and Tipper Gore’s attacks on the music industry during my childhood but I honestly cannot recall any similar or comparable attempts at censorship by the political right.
We've seen this twice lately. Michael Richards and his outburst against blacks, and just last week with this actor fellow who slurred his gay co-star. Both "eagerly" agreed to go off somewhere for counselling.
Have you got any basis for thinking Michael Richards or Isaiah Washington headed for counselling at the behest of members of Congress rather than out of a desire to avoid the career damage that comes with being regarded as a hateful person? (cf Mel Gibson).
Jeff, one of the only known criteria for defining obscenity is the lack of "social value." Miller v. California 413 US 15 (1973).
One guy states that perhaps that lawyers who defend insurgents might be due some criticism sets off numerous threads.
This guy echos what people like Garrison Kellor have stated before, and we the ones painting with a broad brush?
Reporter for the NYT and NRP.... What liberal media?
I like that perspective.
This guy echos what people like Garrison Kellor have stated before, and we the ones painting with a broad brush?
What did Garrison Keillor say about this? Did he really advocate suppression of speech?
Chapman: Isn't it a good thing that this happened on NPR? The broader population would have never heard this guy if he hadn't been on there. Better we know about him and this kind of view than not, no? I mean, how many people are actually buying this guy's book?
Hedges is a fascist. You don't have to scratch very deep to figure out why. Elton John's recent call for state suppression of religion because Christianity "promotes hatred ... against gays" (while ignoring Islam, that executes gays, instead of politely disapproving of it) shows what is really going on. No surprise on this; homosexuals played a key role in bringing the Nazis to power.
Hedges is an intolerant person. But I'm not a fascist. I'm prepared to tolerate his intolerance and even his promotion of fascist ideas. Why does this remind of the incident under the Sandinistas where one of the opposition newspapers ran a story about press censorship, and the government shut them down for telling lies, because there was no censorship?
I am NOT a fundamentalist Christian. I think Pat Robertson's theology is suspect and his politics even more so.
That said, lumping the Christian Coalition with Christian Identity is sophitically stupid. [Please make substantive arguments, rather than simply insulting the people you disagree with. -EV] I had thought that the most important thing we learned in law school was how to think critically. The commentary by some on this thread makes me realize how much law school failed them.
But I kid, of course... I know nothing about NPR's ratings, and I care less. The old saying "The answer to bad speech is more speech" doesn't require giving this guy a taxpayer-funded soapbox.
You know, I might be including him in the group of those who wrongly, and too easily, conflate the two communities.
I'm a very strong supporter of free speech. Without free speech — fought for and never really a given — gay rights would never have emerged as a movement. A lot of people went to jail or had their lives ruined for expressing the rather unpopular idea that gay people should be fully equal members of this society. I oppose "hate speech" rules and laws. I do, however, support "hate crime" laws in those cases where it can be shown that the motivation was hatred of a group of people, especially if the victims were randomly selected. (but that's another topic)
We're not in Lake Woebegon anymore...
Here's the discussion on the VC from that time.
Stimson, the "[o]ne guy" from your post, is the deputy assistant secretary of defense of detainee affairs, Garrison Kellor is a comedian. I don't think that's a reasonable comparison. Anyway, I don't delude myself into thinking that most conservatives believe that attorneys representing GITMO detainees are terrorist sympathizers. I realize that is a fringe position; will you admit that the subject of this thread is a fringe position that is held by less the 1% of serious people one the left? Note: not that I would consider myself "one the left," I just tend to gag at irrationality in people I agree with more then in people I don't.
Censorship clearly isn't the answer. Hedges is right that these folks peddle misinformation to their followers by millions. He must have become so frustrated while researching them that he lost his mind.
One reason why I so intently debunk their "Christian Nation" thesis, even though very few scholars in the academy think it worth the time to even address, is because millions of people believe the twaddle coming from the likes of D. James Kennedy, David Barton, and William Federer.
Not that I think we necessarily should dig into his personal life, but this passage suggests Hedges is gay. Is that true?
Uh... I guess that believing that homosexuality should be punishable by law doesn't necessarily mean that gay people should be in prison, but that's quite an odd interpretation, isn't it, Clayton?
You're really reaching to tar your opponents with whatever brush is at hand. See, e.g., Cramer's classic "homosexuals played a key role in bringing the Nazis to power."
the whole apparatus of the McCarthy era, in which membership in a leftist organization or expression of leftist views led to persecution, the attempt to ban the publication of the Pentagon papers, the censorship of "obscene works" (which has relatively recently acquired support from a part of the left), and the repeated attempts to ban the burning of the flag.
That makes them substantially different than say, a comparison between Shia and Sunni within Islam.
I'm not Christian, so I don't have a particular dog in this fight, but there is nothing more inherently nutty about Christian Identity ideas than there is with Pat Robertson's ideas. I mean, unless you think it is perfectly reasonable and sane to believe that God punished New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina.
I am not making this up.
From what little I understand about the Sunni/Shia split, they both claim to be Muslims but there is disagreement about (among other things) who was the rightful spiritual heir of Mohammad. This split is so strong that a great many of these folks are now actively slaughtering each other in Iraq. (And some in Lebanon, too.)
Christian Coalition folks may dislike Christian Identity folks (or maybe that should be Volks) but that doesn't change the fact that both groups claim to be following the true Christian faith. You could even make the argument that they are more ideologically unified than Sunni/Shias are because the Coalition/Identity people are not actively slaughtering one another (not yet anyway.)
I suggest a bipartisan compromise. The Right agrees to ban the worst forms of theo-rage if the Left agrees to ban flag burning. Everyone can agree to that, right?...right?
Serious Question: What are the limits of implied threats? (And remember that the entire point of a threat is to shut down someone else's activity.) Examples such as:
-Listing the home addresses and information of abortion doctors on a stridently pro-life website (and nothing else, more info can get you in trouble)
-A public speech in which you say to your followers that Person X "deserves to die" withoutn actually calling for their murder
-A letter to the Dixie Chicks saying that "I hate you and my gun is loaded."
It seems to me that people like this are deliberately playing upon the lawyer's need to draw clear lines. The activity is unacceptable, but unpunishable.
It is Hedges, not "regular Christians", who is lumping a few extremists in together with the masses of Christians in this country. He specifically refers to restricting the speech in mass-market broadcasts:
He is saying flat out that tens of millions of Americans regularly watch shows that: "demonize whole segments of American society, saying they are manipulated by Satan and worthy only of conversion or eradication." This is indeed demonizing tens of millions of Christians because of the small number who actually call for a theocracy and other such horrible things as he and commenters in this thread have described.
The left, as well as the right, needs to be more specific in their arguments. If Hedges wants to limit the free speech of Rushdoony, he should say so, not assume that most Christians, even most very devout Christians, agree with or support theocracy nonsense. There are plenty of regular church-goers, even in deeply fundamentalist churches, who consider themselves part of the Christian right.
You make the point better than I have. The "few extremists" in the so-called Christian Identity Movement do not make up more than a miniscule percentage of the population--yet those defending Hedges want to tar all Christians with an overly broad brush. As I said originally, I am not a fundamentalist; I do not support Pat Robertson. However I do take umbrage when the crackpots are lumped with mainstream Christianity--including the fundamentalists within maintream Christianity.
See e.g., Jonah Goldberg's latest book: "Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton." Apparently, that kind of hysterical hyperbole is what passes for conservative these days.
A good start would be to acknowledge that one person espousing a specific view hardly constitutes the "left" or the "right."
When you get past the "Fascism = Corporation" mistranslated quote of Mussolini, and realize that Mussolini was not referring to things like Haliburton but actually to things like the teachers' union... you'll realize that Goldberg actually has a legitimate point (even if he stretches it to the bounds), and that Mussolini was totally insane.
But I suppose you would think I'm crazy for saying that Stalin was not a right winger.
<blockquote>
I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives. . . . I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.
</blockquote>
Like many polls, that one seems to tell us more about the pollster than anyone else.
Which popular politician said that?
YOu don't have to get very far in expressing any doubts about the exten of anthropogenic global warming to get someone arguing that your voice, and the voice of those like you, should be shut down...
Reference: several threads in the last month in Volokh
While I see how you might infer that from what I wrote, that's not what I was implying. What I was implying was that Hedges's concern about anti-homosexual talk is driving this. There are liberals who support totalitarianism because they are homosexual, and some who support totalitarianism because they know that's the only way to suppress disapproval of a preferred interest group of liberals.
2. There are laws that can clearly state a preference without criminalizing homosexuality. For example, a law that prohibited homosexuals from adopting, or that define marriage as "one man, one woman."
3. I have heard quite a bit of support for refusing to recognizing homosexual marriage. Clearly, laws that criminalize homosexual conduct (along with laws that criminalize adultery, premarital sex, and many other forms of sexual conduct) are Constitutional. That doesn't mean that they all make sense. I agree with Clarence Thomas's description of the law challenged in Lawrence v. Texas as "uncommonly silly." I would not have voted for it. I supported California's decriminalization of oral and anal sex in 1975.
2. The same cynical willingness to suppress opposing points of view.
Actually, it was quite a bit worse than that. A relatively well-known environmentalist argued that there should be Nuremberg-style trials for "global warming denials."
Now, more sensible environmentalists told him to shut up and sit down. (But who knows what they might do?)
And Senators Rockefeller and Snowe publicly suggested that corporations that have funded research by reputable scientists on this topic should have their tax status changed as punishment.
Yes, liberals do believe in suppressing free speech.
The primary areas of difference are that fascism allows private ownership of property to continue, although usually not allowing owners to have that much control over that property, and fascism tends to have a more cynical, more realistic view of human nature. Socialism destroys people because it doesn't want to face that human nature is corrupt, and in the interests of high ideals, ends up giving power to evil men. Fascism destroys people because it cynically accepts that human nature is bad, while pretending that it is aspiring to higher ideals.
I do think an excess of bubbly emotions poses a threat to civilization, but I don't see how it is scary.
Tim Robbins kept talking about a "chill wind" blowing, but it's been a real gale force since the November elections. And it's blowing from the left.
Not to detract from what should have been the nadir of your frankly spiteful rhetoric ("homosexuals played a key role in bringing the Nazis to power"), but did you really just say that "[t]here are liberals who support totalitarianism because they are homosexual"? I'm beginning to think that you just jumble all the words you don't like--liberal, gay, Nazis, totalitariansim--in a hat, and pull them out in random combinations to express whatever it is you're trying to express.
I sincerely hope that I misread you.
Now, more sensible environmentalists told him to shut up and sit down. (But who knows what they might do?)
We know that they might exactly what they did do: tell the radical nut to sit down and shut up. You said so yourself. I've already expressed that you seem to be pounding the partisan drum rather than really analyzing these issues, but this is ridiculous. One guy says something objectionable, other liberals actually do object, and that's evidence to you of "what liberals think"? If that is the standard, then the ultra-extreme views of the Xian Dominionists really can be imputed to conservatives, even if the vast majority of conservatives openly repudiate those views.
I wonder if they are aware that Al-Jazeera has established a TV network and hired David Frost. Has anyone in the Liberal community denounced this anti-Semitic hate network as vehemently as Hedges denounces Christians? Hedges assumes that we would not turn a cable network over to the KKK, yet we have done the equivalent by turning a network over to people who believe that Hitler didn’t finish the job.
It depends. If they objected out of strong moral disapproval for the idea, then it doesn't show that that's what liberals think. If they objected to it because they agreed with the general idea but thought it was a little too quirky, or if they objected to it merely for public relations, or if they decided that the guy was such a good friend that his support of such a nutty idea doesn't matter, then it shows a lot about "what liberals think".
What happened to the guy after he said that? Was he made a pariah by leftists, or was this treated as just a minor misunderstanding?
@ r78
1.
You call that PROOF?
There's speculation, but nothing else. What possible definition of "proof" are you using? The abridged version?
The fact is that McVeigh was at best a renounced Christian and was NOT a practicing Christian at the time of the bombing. This nonsense is the favorite repetition of the far-left twits who try and use it to smear Christians.
It's false, you have no proof and thus you're a liar.
2. Hitler wasn't a "liberal" he was a *socialist*, i.e. leftist. The mistaken conflation of liberal and leftist is a fairly recent thing where those claiming the mantle of liberalism have instead adopted leftist ideology and largely abandoned classical liberalism.
Well, I don't think it shows "a lot" about anything in particular. It's tricky to extrapolate so much from one instance, especially when you're using so much conjecture to interpret what was happening in people's heads.
To turn it again, we don't know why most Xians disclaim the beliefs of, say, Howard Ahramson. We only know, as a matter of fact, that they do. He's hardly a pariah--many right-leaning organizations, think tanks, etc. take his money. But despite his broad acceptance (or the broad acceptance of his cash, which I accept is a slightly different thing) and our inability to know for a fact why most conservatives repudiate his hard-core dominionism, it's not fair to impute his views to conservatives in general. It's just too much reinterpretation, too much conjecture, and too close to conspiracy theorizing.
If he ain't noticed by now, he ain't gonna.
/joke
Second, Timothy McVeigh was an agnostic and fallen away Catholic, not a member of the religious right. To equate a couple dozen neonazi hate groups with 40 million born again Christians is another libel.
As for me, I'm a liberal Catholic. We go in for nuances, not strict interpretation. And, as the NYTimes found out when they misquoted Chaput, some of our bishops when misquoted place the entire interview on their website to point out when their words are twisted...
No offense, but I think it's a mistake to conflate ad hominem attacks with suppression of free speech.
Who made the claim that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks? I hear people saying someone or another did this, but I've never been told exactly who.
I didnt say they did.
But you tell me . . . what could have caused Gibson, Richards, et al, to think that "re education" was necessary to save their careers?
I can't tell if you're trolling or if you've never actually met a Christian. The link you provided to show a connection between McVeigh and the "Christian Identity Movement" does nothing of the sort. In fact, there's no inference anywhere in the text about what McVeigh's religious beliefs were other than the words some nut put in his mouth after he was dead. Did you not think anyone would read the link?
Equating the Christian Coalition, which is a grassroots lobbying group, with violent extremism is ridiculous. Shall we also equate PFAW with the Weathermen?
Adeez,
Calling someone a traitor or saying he's anti-American isn't the same thing as saying the government should step in and muzzle them. You'd think you'd be able to find one quote by Limbaugh that advocated the restriction of free speech. I mean, after all, he's been on the air for decades now. Or maybe those "entire books" are mostly about the projection of leftist paranoia? Does calling someone a "big fat idiot" count as exposing nonsense on the left?
Most of the criticism of Limbaugh that I've seen is either aimed at his personal life or based on a quote taken out of context.
Hedges' views are more of the same bovine effluvia, just tarted up a bit. It was wrong then and it's wrong now.
A staffer for one Jewish member of Congress insisted that the CCA was spending millions of dollars per year to make Jews convert to Christianity. That sure was news to me...I think the total budget for converting Jews was the $50 per month that CCA President Roberta Combs spent taking me to dinner when we would discuss religion.
Pat Robertson does not speak for everyone in the Christian Right. He knows that. The people who contribute to the CCA know this. Jay Sekulow knows this. Roberta Combs knows this.
As for liberals wanting to ban speech...I can remember my senior year of law school at the Ohio State University. The law school newspaper endorsed Ronald Reagan for reelection. A number of student groups were angered and wanted the members of the editorial board to be punished.
"Dominists" are also active in Republican circles. I don't think they represent mainstream Christian Republicans or even the mainstream "religious right." Rather, they are the right-wing of the religious right. But they do influence millions of folks.
The two biggest players are probably D. James Kennedy's The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and David Barton's Wallbuilders. They are intimately involved with GOP politics.
They try to inculcate zeal in their followers by telling them America was founded by evangelical Christians for evangelical Christians to rule, and that heritage has been "stolen" from them by the secularists, which they rightly should "reclaim." The problem is their historiography is abominable.
Why not? Why should the KKK not have a cable channel? And if not, why stop there? Why not insist that every kind of speech you find 'hateful' be banned? Indeed, ban Michael Richards and Mel Gibson for things they might say about 1% of the time. (No point taking chances.) Stifle Joe Lieberman if he doesn't toe the line. Ban groups pre-emptively, using the slogan 'Why Wait for Hate?'
If you want to censor, first thing you do is call it something else. All this leads to nothing good. What self-righteous fools these people are to advocate such conduct.
I could go on and on, but you dont' have to go far on the internet to find these views. And they are not limited to gays -- they include liberals of all kinds.
Now, I'm not saying that their free speech should be limited, but Hedges is right that they say some pretty inflammatory things. And worse, there are people who really believe them.
ErrAir America makes it clear that this is not an attempt to build up liberal speech (problematic enough in its own right), but to make conservative talk radio unworkable. During the last presidential contest, we heard Howard Dean openly suggesting that the federal government attempt to break up Fox News parent News Corp., a call that has continued to circulate amongst liberal pundits. While I'd like to believe Hedges' comments represent some idiosyncratic oddity on his own part. Unfortunately, they're all too recurring for me to have much confidence in that interpretation.Yes, as I pointed out earlier, he's conflating two groups to some extent, as well. but....
Now, you're distorting what he said. Millions of Americans DO watch shows that demonize gay people. And every now and then, people on those shows go over the line and say something really objectionable. They don't do it often, but they do it. The Canadian government has, on occassion, banned the broadcast of episodes of the 700 Club. I don't remember if it was for Pat's anti-gay rhetoric or his anti-Islam blather. I've watched the Coral Ministries show (whatever it's called) and have heard anti-gay demonization. I've watched the 700 Club and heard outrageous lies about gay people. I've watched Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blame gay people for 9/11 (among others). Oddly enough, hateful speech from them seems to increase viewership rather than get them fired.
Does my complaining about that demonize the listeners? How so?
And more importantly, why don't all the reasonable people in the Christian right start ignoring these folks instead of sending them money and listening to their voting suggestions? Why do men like these have the President's ear?
My question, Clayton, had more to do with your assertion that you have NEVER heard anyone call for gay people to be put in jail. Are you seriously suggesting that those who favor the re-criminalization of sodomy (Santorum, for example) are just encouraging fines? Care to retract the "never"?
You would not have. Good for you. The Texas Legislature, however, did. And Bush, as governor, supported the Texas law. And nice as it was for Thomas to find the law "silly", he found it constitutional.
Good for you.
Take up your complaint with those political leaders who host and court the favor of "the crackpots". Start with the White House. The GOP has based its strategy on allying itself with at least some of "the crackpots". Read the guest list for Justice Sunday.
Yeah, I miss All in the Family.
Who the hell is Rushdoony [rhetorical question - I looked him up]? I must be living under a rock because this is the first I've ever heard of him. Sorta reminds of me the great "right" scourge of a decade ago - the militia movement.
For which they were criticized by people of all political stripes. Not that it matters to you. Again, free speeh allows us to spot the idiots--in this case, Pat and Jerry.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35919
Just today another "angel" has come along to resuscitate the moribund Air America. I don't suppose the lefties posting here remember how much spleen, invective and hatefulness the AA folks directed toward GWB and "the right wing", do they? You know, the BushHitlerSmirkingChimp crap? Yet how many conservatives took to the national airwaves, as Hedges has to urge censorship against the Christian right, to argue that AA should be shut down? And why do such sensitive souls as Hedges and Keillor avert their gaze, and stifle their public comment, while Daily Kos, Democratic Underground and the other Internet foamers routinely call for Bush and Cheney to be killed and our country to be defeated? Did they object when Alec Baldwin, on national TV, called for Henry Hyde and his family to be stoned to death? Or how about the Left's attempt to conflate the right with Islamofasicm by referring to the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party"? Did Hedges object to that as "hate speech"?
Cue up the sound of crickets chirping, please!!!
Myself, I am struck at how much more often the left is driven to impute evil, not intellectual or moral error, to the right than vice versa. Take the Diebold voting machine flap: the lefties said Bush and the GOP would fraudulently use the machines to tip the 2006 elections their way. When it didn't happen, the left was curiously silent. Nor did they (or their media lap kitties), acknowledge that the GOP didn't send brigades of lawyers into states where their candidates lost to challenge the results, claim fraud, etc., while the left did the opposite in 2002 and 2004. If the right, especially the Christian Right, are so dangerous, why do they play...by...the rules???? Funny how the left projects its own actions onto the right, fantasizing that the right will engage in nefarious practices that the left uses all the time.
Cook County 1960: anyone remember???? The Left certainly forgot, when they huffed and puffed, and nearly threw the country into a constitutional crisis, in 2000.
QED
I've met with some Christians. Does that mean...
They were roundly criticized from the left. A few on the right chimed in, some only after being asked to give an opinion.
What matters to me is that Pat and Jerry still conference call with Dubya whenever they want. There was a time when leaders were "disgraced" and left the public eye. Not so much anymore.
Yes, it means...
We already do. Here in Richmond, the first year I moved here, I was treated to racist and anti-Semitic shows by some of the local neo-Nazi movements on our local cable channel. It ran at any time of the day or night, and finally stopped because--well, I'm not really sure. Perhaps nobody was watching it, and the bigots decided it was a waste of money.
This is America. Speech is still free, as far as I can tell.
Some highlights: