False Equvilancies abound!

[speaks]

I've been thinking about the shooting in Arizona a bit. From what I saw, the shooter gave the left little real ammo to use, although that didn't stop a lot of people. If anything, I actually agreed with James Carville who said "this isn't an issue about talk show hosts, it should be about gun control" more or less. Naturally the NRA has been

Comments

[chapel_of_words]

The right is anti-intellectual, the left is faux-intellectual. That leaves neither with a strong intellectual tradition or base they both try to claim. And the Tucson shooting is a continuing example of the inability to think critically, and rather just react emotionally

[monkeyd]

I'm not so sure that doing away with the sacrifice of cows to Zeus was altogether a good idea, or even that it ever really happened at all. All religions, even Secular Humanism, have a strong tradition of giving and charity, and ultimately, most sacrifice traditions led to a common feast. With, ultimately, exceptions made for human sacrifice traditions, although there is an element of population control, competition for limited resources, and wonky economics in those.

[logiphage]

Put a mustache on a picture of Obama and you're satan. Call for Bush to be killed and you're a saint. I despised both of them, but the double standard is pretty blatant.

Sure the left is a lot more hateful in their rhetoric but that's just because the MSM never calls them on it and regardless, so what?

Free speech doesn't cause violence, but suppressing free speech leaves no option but for violence.

Whacko's shoot people from time to time. People burn themselves with coffee, and people overdose on drugs. The bad guys are the ones who want to use these events to pass some law.

[stickmaker]

I heard an NPR segment recently about a study of assassins and attempted assassins in the US. The majority are apolitical. Yes, they often claim they're attacking or defending something political, but that's just a justification. In fact, their justifications are usually a mostly incoherent mess of extreme left and extreme right beliefs, most of which they don't actually understand. Closer examination reveals that their main motivation is to be famous.

Seriously. These are people who feel not just disempowered but voiceless. (The voiceless part is usually because they're incoherent and people therefor ignore them.) They feel they deserve attention and they're not getting it.

In a way they're right. Someone should have not only been paying attention to them, but trying to get them help.

[kingfrog]

Ah, which side uses the Uzi and which one uses the spitgun is entirely dependent upon which side you agree with. By definition, *my* side uses a spitgun and *your* side uses the Uzi.

Unless you're going to suggest that pictures of politicians with crosshairs on their faces is spitgun-shot?

[speaks]

Thats simply not true.

The amount of hateful angry rhetoric from O'Rilley, Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh is far in excess of anything the left puts out.

[kingfrog]

I surrender. If you can't see the implicit hate in saying that Republicans want you to DIE SOON, calling a prominent black official a "house nigger" and another one being depicted as "Aunt Jemima" in the press, then you are hopelessly blind to your side's follies in a way that I am not to my side's. I give up discussing politics with you.

[speaks]

Which of those comments were made by mainstream Democrats or Left Leaning people.

Those sort of comments are made by nutcases who are generally ostracized by the left after they make such comments.

[speaks]

So far the only people that are seriously entertaining the notion that the Right spews hatred far more copiously and virulently than the right is the general gang of people that spent a while speculating on birtherism on Facebook.

[chapel_of_words]

Do you see what you just did yourself?

You used a caricature based in ignorance and prejudice to justify your own righteous posturing. You didn't even pause, pass Go or take a breather. It's such a default-reaction that you probably didn't pause to consider what you were saying.

You ARE the very epitomy of what you claim doesn't exist "on the left". I've never been to a LJ where by implicit association I've been compared more times than to a racist, mysogonist, homophobe, than your livejournal. YOU are the one who's behavior typifies the double standard.

Remember your tirade on November 3rd? http://speaks.livejournal.com/118383.html

I couldn't stand in the same room with the amount of mysogyny, racism, religious intolerance and homophobia that the Republican Party attracts.Since, for policy reasons, the Republican party attracted me in 2008 (to vote for divided government) and in 2010 (to check overreach), I'm all the sudden a mysognist, racist, religious intolerant.

[syn74x]

I didn't see anywhere that Speaks stated that if you were a Replublican that you were all of those things. Rather, he stated that the party attracted it. I don't think that's wholely untrue in some of those cases such as with homophobia... A party pushing for Gay Marriage Rights isn't generally going to attract folks who hate that lifestyle. A party which opposes those rights, will.

The same type of thing can be said of Democrats and abortion. The party is largely characterized as being supportive of Reproductive Rights, and tends to attract people who are. But that doesn't mean there aren't people who oppose it (such as the Blue Dogs).

IMHO, Tim, you're not in anyway the typical anything.

Also... I find it amusing that as a registered Democrat (since being old enough to vote), I recognize all of Republican names, but maybe half of one one the Left you mentioned.