Hate Speech vs Hate Crime
Conservatives love to talk about how the big bad liberals hate them so much. I know, those bad liberals say such mean things about Bush and Cheney and Rove and Fox News and it makes them so sad. Never mind the stuff that they say about liberals, they're obviously the victims here! So what should they do about these bad bad liberals? How about showing up to one of their churches (since everybody knows that the only true churches are conservative) with a shotgun during a children's play and start shooting those mean liberals? But it wasn't this guy's fault. The liberals drove him to it. I mean, look at what this church was all about...The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church describes itself on its website as working for social change since the 1950s, including desegregation, racial harmony, fair wages, women's rights and gay rights.I mean, how could he not want to kill people like that? This guy was clearly victimized by those bad liberals and their evil civil rights work so this was a justified act, like a battered wife killing her abusive husband. And the Unitarians aren't even real Christians. They're the same radical liberal church that many of our founding fathers were members of, and those guys were a bunch of radical liberal terrorists for crying out loud! But seriously, for all the anger that liberals have toward conservatives, some of which most definitely crosses the line to downright hate, I have never heard of any liberal who has ever acted on it. Yet I don't think this is even the first time I've heard of some wacked out rightwinger who decided that killing people over their politics was part of their second amendment rights and their patriotic duty. So what's the point of all of this? It's simple. Right wingers need to STFU about liberal hate as long as your side's hate has a body count. We may say things you don't like, but we haven't resorted to killing you. Man up and accept that there are people on both sides who hate each other and stop all the lame one sided whining. It's kind of pathetic. And also if you don't mind, could you please stop killing people? Thanks. Labels: sad |
Comments on "Hate Speech vs Hate Crime"
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The BoBo said ... (7/28/08 11:32 PM) :
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Jason said ... (7/29/08 6:44 AM) :
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Jay said ... (7/29/08 12:40 PM) :
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Jason said ... (7/29/08 2:26 PM) :
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Jay said ... (7/29/08 3:30 PM) :
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The BoBo said ... (7/29/08 5:53 PM) :
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Jason said ... (7/29/08 8:18 PM) :
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Michael Cruse said ... (7/30/08 4:06 PM) :
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Jason said ... (7/31/08 6:40 AM) :
post a commentSo, I guess all the lynchings, cross burnings, and church burnings conducted under the leadership of David Dukes and Robert Byrd when they were KKK Grand Wizards don't count then? What about the FDR goon-squads? I suppose all the murders committed by blacks and hispanics were only committed by conservative blacks and hispanics? So, when a black man kills a white man because of the color of his skin- its not a hate crime?
Jason, this was a pretty harsh post. This was plain and simply one nutjob without a conscious. It's not right to lump all conservatives in to one ball like that!
Liberals don't have clean hands either!
Bobo, if some crazed liberal walked into some evangelical mega church and opened fire leaving a note that he did it because he hated conservatives, don't you think you might be a bit harsh too?
This is not the time for you to be the slightest bit defensive and offering "yeah-but's" and completely irrelevant non-examples. This is the time for you to say enough is enough and start cleaning house on your side. This is a direct result of the vile eliminationist rhetoric that comes from these extremists like Coulter and Malkin and other crazy squalking heads on talk radio who are accepted as your mainstream activists. There is a large enough constituency of conservatives who believe in eliminationism, and this guy took it one step further.
There really isn't anything comparable on the mainstream left. Liberals may talk some smack, but not to the point of wanting to eliminating all conservatives, and so far we haven't opened fire in one of your churches over ideology.
The guy didn't do this because he was a right-wing conservative, he did it because he was a nut. Nuts always look for some group of people to blame.
kinda like you are doing
Jay, you're only half right. He was a right wing conservative who also happened to be a nut. And you just don't hear about left wing liberals who happen to be nuts killing people over ideology. But you've got a whole bunch of mainstream conservatives who have been making jokes about killing liberals for years and then saying "but we're only joking," and now you've got this, and now every mainstream conservative has some serious soul searching to do about what kind of rhetoric they consider acceptable from their talking heads.
I've gotten lots of emails from Obama supporters wishing all kinds of nasty things, including death, upon me. Should I worry about them too?
Nuts don't need a logical reason to project, they just need a reason. I understand the point your trying to get at and it has some validity to it...but I think you are painting with too broad of a brush to be taken seriously.
Jason - ditto's with what Jay said. This guy was a plain old nutjob. He would have done this even without people like Coulter and Malkin. And..FYI..not all of us conservatives agree with the two of them..they are extremists..but..they are also trying to sell books and get publicity.
It's like blaming rock and roll or video games for kids committing crimes...I don't buy that either. Either you are a nutjob with no self-control just waiting for an excuse...or you have all your faculties and condemned these kinds of acts. You can't blame his actions on other people.
Jay, you seem to miss the point entirely. My point is that conservatives complain about liberal hate speech, yet this guy actually killed people for being liberal. Therefore, conservatives should stop the whining. And by all means don't take me or any other person with a blog seriously. We're just people with opinions and sometimes something happens that particularly touches a nerve.
Bobo, you also seem to miss the point. This isn't the same as blaming rock and roll for stuff. I don't think that people who commit hate crimes based on race or sexual orientation or anything else are entirely with it, but they did what they did because of some irrational hate. And that's what this guy did, only his hate was for liberals and like racism, homophobia or any other ism or phobia that gets people so bent out of shape that they take lives, it doesn't just come out of thin air. That said, I'm not straight up blaming your average right wing extremists who are relabeled on TV and radio as somehow being fair and balanced, but I sure do think that their kind of talk pours gas on the fire. And I certainly hope you don't think I'm lumping you in with this trash, even if I am making some generalizations here. I do think that people on both sides would do themselves a world of good to vocally distance themselves from those who spew dangerous rhetoric.
What it really comes down to is that I am seriously angry about this, and as somebody who could just as easily have been a target for some unhinged person bent on killing somebody of my political persuasion, this really troubles me. I've received my share of death threats too. People need to take a fucking chill pill, or better yet smoke a peace pipe! It's legal here in California.
Interesting banter but do you genuinely believe it is fair to draw a line connecting nut jobs, that should fry for the most part, to "conservatives" or any other cause? He was not programmed, just unbalanced. If it was not an anti-liberal cause it would have been some other "cause" that his warped brain would have attached itself too. Crazy people do crazy things, and it is not the political process that drives them to it.
I would be more interested in who around missed the warning signs that this guy was about to go off the deep end.
Michael, I think it's fair to say that there are people on the right who have been making "jokes" about killing liberals for years and the mainstream right has always just sort of chuckled and at most brushed them off as just being sensationalistic to sell books. And I think it's fair to say that this guy may have been crazy enough to kill people but probably didn't just dream up his hate for liberals all on his own. And I also think it's fair to say that mainstream conservatives have a duty to stop legitimizing the kind of people who talk about eliminationism by putting them on their news network as serious pundits and invite them to speak at their events and rally up the angry base.