they're not all crazy!
Last week, via the Google Reader, I shared Matt Welch's article about the more strident reactions to some of the crazier conservative elements at health care town hall meetings. Welch argued that evocations of widespread and growing violent racist (and also nazi) sentiment from middle America are harmful exaggerations. I thought this was uncontroversial, but a liberal friend of mine pointed out that there has been an uptick in right wing violence, such as the Tiller killing and the Holocaust museum incident. I have no idea if right wing politically motivated violence has actually increased, but it could be. And he thinks implicit endorsements of violence by relatively mainstream entities are peculiar to the right. Perhaps they're more common on the right.
You certainly can cross rhetorical lines and implicitly incite violence. And I'll grant you can say some elements of conservative leadership are stoking the fringe. I think it's important to see that the leadership is broad and varied, just as is the silent majority. Sure, you have Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh making/shouting opinions, but you also have Ross Douthat, with whom I quite often disagree (because he's a conservative), but whom I also think is a responsible thinker with a voice. There are others. I've started reading Reihan Salam's blog, and I'm usually impressed every time I come across David Frum, even though he's a neocon. There are responsible Republicans in governance roles too, such as the Governator. (Hm, citing the governor of a failed state is perhaps unwise, but California is damned ungovernable) And some of these people even have an intelligent thing or two to say about health care.
So it is just 'some elements' of the leadership. And it's also just a very small fraction of the fringe that is violent. Ron Paul supporters are fringe, in that they believe crazy things and get worked up in a lather over various perceived slippery slopes. Probably most Ron Paul supporters are actually, palpably concerned that Obamacare will lead to health bureaucrats offing Grandma, and they won't be able to do anything about it because the Gummint will have already taken their guns away. But the overwhelming majority of Ron Paul supporters would never think of resorting to violence. My crazy religious aunt has always believed any number of weird conservative scare-stories, but she's never fundamentally changed her life (by holing up in a compound or something) in the ways her beliefs would imply she should. I mean, she still works for the Air Force, last I checked. Julian Sanchez calls this symbolic belief, the kind of belief you wouldn't gamble on because some part of you knows it's ridiculous; it's more like signaling.
Is this sort of violence peculiar to the American political right? The only example of violent leftists I can usually think of is the animal rights crowd. But politically motivated violence certainly isn't limited to the right if you broaden your historical and geographical perspective. A century ago in America we had all sorts of leftish anarchists blowing things up. In other parts of the world, you have Maoist rebels, Bolivarian revolutionaries, etc. One of Matt Welch's points was that we seem to be getting less violent all the time in America. No more lynchings, fewer and fewer hate crimes. (Though this is a general trend) Maybe the left achieved a certain level of cool and the Right just hasn't caught up yet. It's progress either way. I'm glad Bush's election didn't result in violence. And I'm glad the left leadership's call to pitchforks didn't result in any dead bankers last year.
So maybe conservative leadership is implicitly inciting violence that loosens a few nuts and it's reasonable to want someone to stop them. First of all, the responsibility should really lie with the violent individual, at least in these foggy, implicit cases (maybe a fatwa would be a different story). Second, who is supposed to stop them? The right? There are reasonable voices on the right who would like to steer the conversation back to reality, and they're trying to be heard. The left? How? Matt Welch's essay detailed all of the gross oversimplifications and distortions coming from the left. Calling everyone on the right jackbooted racist thugs does nothing to promote rational discussion. That sort of rhetoric just turns the right into the Other.
This is easy, and gratifying, but counterproductive. It's a bit like the New Atheists launching total rhetorical war on even moderate religious folks. This is certainly something I've been guilty of, and my moderate religious friends are never satisfied when I say "But Christians really do believe crazy, dangerous things! And look at how many people do violence explicitly because of religion! Look what evil religion makes possible!" Well, sure, but there actually are reasonable (at least about most things) religious people, and some of them have interesting things to say. Maybe us enlightened types should build relations with them instead of lumping them with the extremists.
I think the motivation of some liberal friends I've talked to is to point out that people on the left are more responsible than people on the right. That the leftists that Welch attacked can be forgiven their zeal because there are some rightwingers who really are dangerous. And maybe I shouldn't go about defending folks on the right until they get their house in order. But I don't know where one goes from there. My point is that the crazies will always be with us, but they're getting less and less relevant all the time. And that the best we can do is ignore them, and carry on our discussions with reasonable people. Even if the crazies are in Congress, what else can we do but ignore them, and carry on our discussions with reasonable people?
You certainly can cross rhetorical lines and implicitly incite violence. And I'll grant you can say some elements of conservative leadership are stoking the fringe. I think it's important to see that the leadership is broad and varied, just as is the silent majority. Sure, you have Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh making/shouting opinions, but you also have Ross Douthat, with whom I quite often disagree (because he's a conservative), but whom I also think is a responsible thinker with a voice. There are others. I've started reading Reihan Salam's blog, and I'm usually impressed every time I come across David Frum, even though he's a neocon. There are responsible Republicans in governance roles too, such as the Governator. (Hm, citing the governor of a failed state is perhaps unwise, but California is damned ungovernable) And some of these people even have an intelligent thing or two to say about health care.
So it is just 'some elements' of the leadership. And it's also just a very small fraction of the fringe that is violent. Ron Paul supporters are fringe, in that they believe crazy things and get worked up in a lather over various perceived slippery slopes. Probably most Ron Paul supporters are actually, palpably concerned that Obamacare will lead to health bureaucrats offing Grandma, and they won't be able to do anything about it because the Gummint will have already taken their guns away. But the overwhelming majority of Ron Paul supporters would never think of resorting to violence. My crazy religious aunt has always believed any number of weird conservative scare-stories, but she's never fundamentally changed her life (by holing up in a compound or something) in the ways her beliefs would imply she should. I mean, she still works for the Air Force, last I checked. Julian Sanchez calls this symbolic belief, the kind of belief you wouldn't gamble on because some part of you knows it's ridiculous; it's more like signaling.
Is this sort of violence peculiar to the American political right? The only example of violent leftists I can usually think of is the animal rights crowd. But politically motivated violence certainly isn't limited to the right if you broaden your historical and geographical perspective. A century ago in America we had all sorts of leftish anarchists blowing things up. In other parts of the world, you have Maoist rebels, Bolivarian revolutionaries, etc. One of Matt Welch's points was that we seem to be getting less violent all the time in America. No more lynchings, fewer and fewer hate crimes. (Though this is a general trend) Maybe the left achieved a certain level of cool and the Right just hasn't caught up yet. It's progress either way. I'm glad Bush's election didn't result in violence. And I'm glad the left leadership's call to pitchforks didn't result in any dead bankers last year.
So maybe conservative leadership is implicitly inciting violence that loosens a few nuts and it's reasonable to want someone to stop them. First of all, the responsibility should really lie with the violent individual, at least in these foggy, implicit cases (maybe a fatwa would be a different story). Second, who is supposed to stop them? The right? There are reasonable voices on the right who would like to steer the conversation back to reality, and they're trying to be heard. The left? How? Matt Welch's essay detailed all of the gross oversimplifications and distortions coming from the left. Calling everyone on the right jackbooted racist thugs does nothing to promote rational discussion. That sort of rhetoric just turns the right into the Other.
This is easy, and gratifying, but counterproductive. It's a bit like the New Atheists launching total rhetorical war on even moderate religious folks. This is certainly something I've been guilty of, and my moderate religious friends are never satisfied when I say "But Christians really do believe crazy, dangerous things! And look at how many people do violence explicitly because of religion! Look what evil religion makes possible!" Well, sure, but there actually are reasonable (at least about most things) religious people, and some of them have interesting things to say. Maybe us enlightened types should build relations with them instead of lumping them with the extremists.
I think the motivation of some liberal friends I've talked to is to point out that people on the left are more responsible than people on the right. That the leftists that Welch attacked can be forgiven their zeal because there are some rightwingers who really are dangerous. And maybe I shouldn't go about defending folks on the right until they get their house in order. But I don't know where one goes from there. My point is that the crazies will always be with us, but they're getting less and less relevant all the time. And that the best we can do is ignore them, and carry on our discussions with reasonable people. Even if the crazies are in Congress, what else can we do but ignore them, and carry on our discussions with reasonable people?