One of the lines of Democrats is, “They mean and crazy, we nice and sane. Republicans are extreme and dangerous, and Democrats are good, well-meaning citizens.” I thought it might be timely to offer, or re-offer, a piece I did about a year and a half ago, called “All Wee-Weed Up: Protests on the right, hypocrisy on the left.” Go here, if you wish. The piece will remind you — if reminding you need — of the general stance of the Left during the eight years of Bush 43. I’m not talking about obnoxious rabble on the street — such rabble will always be with us. I’m talking about esteemed writers, artists, and officeholders.
Here was Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee: “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.” Plus, “This is a struggle of good and evil.” By “this,” Dean meant politics in general. “And we’re the good.” An editor of The New Republic wrote a piece called “The Case for Bush Hatred.” It began, “I hate President George W. Bush.”
Is Nazi stuff your concern? John Glenn said of Republican campaign rhetoric, “It’s the old Hitler business.” Al Gore said that the Bush administration was “unleash[ing] squadrons of digital brownshirts.” Julian Bond said of the Bushies, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.” Keith Ellison compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire. Garrison Keillor called Republicans “brownshirts in pinstripes.”
Assassination? Allow me to excerpt a couple of paragraphs from my piece:
Even before Bush was elected president, the kill-Bush talk and imagery started. When Governor Bush was delivering his 2000 convention speech, Craig Kilborn, a CBS talk-show host, showed him on the screen with the words “SNIPERS WANTED.” Six years later, Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.” (This is the same Kerry who joked in 1988, “Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle.”) Also in 2006, the New York comptroller, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”
A columnist in Britain’s Guardian, Charlie Brooker, wrote, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?” Betty Williams, the Irishwoman who won the Nobel Peace Prize, said, “I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence,’ because I don’t believe that I am non-violent. . . . Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” A novelist, Nicholson Baker, was so filled with rage at Bush, he wrote a novel mulling the question of assassinating him. In Britain, there was a TV movie — a “fictional documentary” — that was a kind of fantasy: on the assassination of Bush. (It was called Death of a President.) Etc., etc.
Etc., etc., indeed. Just one word to the Democrats this week: Get off your high horse, please. One more thing, too: Does the killer in Arizona have any connection to the Republican party, the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, National Review, or the “Right” at all? Any? Why are we even having this conversation? (I know why.)
Thank you, Jay. I grow weary of the left's urge to suppress opposition voices by group ad hominem.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDo you think any of your examples are akin to putting a target on a congressman who was then shot in the head?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI do wonder what would have happened if some nutcase had shot Bush. Would we on the Right have had the integrity to say, "This guy appears to be a lone nut, let's wait til all the facts are in before we tie him to any political point of view"? Or would we immediately drag out all the assassination rhetoric and say that those people had blood on their hands?
There is no answer to this question, obviously. But it's worth considering.
Jason,
That's sarcastic, right? I would say that "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?" is far worse rhetoric than Sarah Palin's obviously metaphorical target.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Jason - are they akin to putting a target on a person's elected position? No, they are far worse, no one said, implied, or could have honestly construed that the ads were meant as an invitation to commit violence on any of the people marked. On the other hand, calling for, condoning, wishing, or dreaming of violence against a sitting President is far worse. I know, I know Bush = Hitler so it was OK...
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Zsuzsa, no I'm not being sarcastic. Charlie Brooker wished that someone would get shot, but then.... no one got shot. See how it's different than the Giffords situation? In one situation, a person got shot, while in the situation you cite, no one was shot.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo Jason, your view is that if Bush had actually been assassinated, then all novels, articles, made-for-TV movies about his assassination would have been wrong? As long as no one follows up on such OVER THE TOP hate spewing it is a-okay?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn this case, a lunatic attacks a member of congress who hasn't had a book written about her assassination, so the left has to look for any tenuous link to any hated political figure from the right. I can see where the examples given you could be confusing. A public education (indoctrination) will do that to a person.
Jason,
Ridiculous, and offensive. You didn't read Nordlinger's column (or, ignored its points wilfully).
If you're implying that violence is more nearly connected to the political Right because of, for lack of a better term, "red state" culture (including the reverence for guns, etc), then you're wrong.
Mayor Anthony Williams wasn't responsible for John Lee Malvo and John Muhammad. The entire Left wasn't responsible for the film - yes, shown to a star-studded audience at Cannes - "Death of a President" while President Bush was in office.
I deplored the whole Michael Moore-shtick of blaming "the other" in total (Bowling for Columbine) back in 1999 (really, how does one make a movie about a school shooting to promote, essentially, gun-control? How horrid, really, that man is.) instead of blaming the perpetrators (and not inanimate objects, by-the-way) in particular, and I deplore it now.
NR has deplored violence, and always will (except against our real, no-kidding enemies in the world). Glenn Beck has deplored violence. Tea Party leaders have, and will continue to, deplore violence. John Boehner has suspended the legislative session. Mitch McConnell has publicly stated that violence has no place in our public life. You have not a leg to stand on.
A random act of violence successfully carried out no more implicates a cross-section of one political philosophy than Al-Qaeda implicates all Muslims (in fact, Al-Qaeda is the vast minority, and is hated by most of the world's Muslims, who are its most frequent victims).
If you can't understand that, or are wilfully ignoring it, like Keith Olbermann and so many others, in order to make a mere political point, then you are wilfully misunderstanding this with a malign intent.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf something, god forbid, had happened to the targets of the rhetoric cited by Nordlinger, I would expect that those people would regret saying those things. They'd be inhuman not to.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason: The DCCC had a map targeting folks before Palin did (External Link
). Even absent that, you seem to be asserting that Palin's target map is causative. Can you provide some evidence to connect those dots? Or are you connecting because you *want* there to be cause and effect?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Even absent that, you seem to be asserting that Palin's target map is causative."
No, I'm asserting the target map is regrettable.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSpeaking of hypocrisy, wasn't the whole purpose of "No Labels" to be centrist and avoid the heated partisan rhetoric. Looks like they've already violated their prime directive: External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason, try this on for size:
One of the examples of people calling for Bush's death came during the 2000 convention, meaning before the 9/11 attacks. On 9/11, the fourth plane might very well have been heading for the White House. Is the "SNIPERS WANTED" comment to blame for that? After all, someone used rhetoric wanting Bush's death, someone else tried to kill him. By your logic, maybe Craig Kilborn was morally responsible for 9/11.
You might respond, quite reasonably, that there was no cause and effect; the 9/11 hijackers did what they did for their own reasons totally unrelated to Kilborn's graphic. Likewise, there is zero evidence that Palin's graphic motivated the shooter in Tuscon. Post hoc ergo propio hoc is not a good way of assigning blame.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason, nice attempt to back-pedal, but it's not working. Let's refresh: "...putting a target on a congressman who was then shot in the head"
From that statement, it is clear that you believe there is a connection between the two events.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseZsuzsa, I'm not arguing cause and effect. If I told you to go jump off a bridge, _and you did_, I would regret saying it, even though I didn't cause you to do anything. Because I'm human.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI had forgotten about many of those instances, Mr. Nordlinger, but it reminds me of the old political axiom on the difference between how the two political sides see each other, also illustrated so succinctly by Howard Dean. Those of us on the right see the left as incorrigibly wrong, mental or, to put it bluntly, just plain stupid. The left sees the right as all those things, but adds in evil. They, as a whole, think our actions and beliefs are not just wrong, but evil.* That's an important difference to note.
With that in mind, why would wishing a president dead be a shock or deemed wholly inappropriate by those who firmly believe he and those who follow him are evil?
And, Jason, how does one go through the motions to register for a political site in order to comment and not have the wherewithal to comprehend similar war/gun metaphors have been used in American politics since its founding? It's as if you don't actually have interest in or historical backing in politics based upon your comment, but your actions speak otherwise.
How is this guy an 'approved commenter' yet I, a two-time subscriber to National Review and one who signed up to comment the first day possible, and many others I see making cogent if sometimes disagreeable points not?
*On a small side note, this comes from the party who scoffed at and ridiculed the expression "evil empire" to describe a regime who murdered tens of millions. That's not evil, apparently, but I am for believing people are helped more by a gut kick than dripping faucet handout.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason - you do realize that we've got more evidence that the kid was a lefty in persuasion than we do that he was a conservative? It's possible to hate government and be a liberal - he just hates our form of government. I have also read that he hated the Constitution and that he was an athiest. Sounds like most conservatives and Tea Partiers I know.
Based upon the information mentioned I suspect that rather than Palin's targeting her for political defeat or conservative talk radio...the Daily Kos' posts/comments about Gifford would be more likely to have been the culprit if political issues we're the reason he committed the murders. I don't think Daily Kos is to blame I think the guy was stark raving mad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason,
Okay, fair enough, I would feel the same way. However, if the situation you describe came to pass, and on a blog someone else started talking about what I horrible person you were for saying something like that, I would hope I could find a way to post from the afterlife in your defense.
Ms. Palin probably does feel bad that she chose that particular metaphor. However, that has nothing to do with whether we should be blaming her for creating a "climate of hate" and saying that she and those like her (but not those on the other side of the aisle) need to shut up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1) To argue that all speech should be limited to only language that would not anger/bother a mentally ill person is asinine.
2) It is ridiculous to assume that the word target or a picture of a bullseye would cause a mentally ill person to act except for such language. What is the logic that someone would see that Sarah Palin is "targeting" a politician, then that person would then feel justified in shooting someone? The logic is so tortured it is amazing adults would propose something so silly. By that logic Jodie Foster should have quit acting so that President Regan would not have been the subject of an assassination attempt.
Mentally ill people are irrational and will act irrationally regardless of what limits you put on speech.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat Charlie Brooker quote cannot be understood properly without the full context. It appeared towards the end of one of Brooker's TV review columns, and is just a re-phrase of a dark, comedic comment used from both the right and left as early as 1980.
Charlie Brooker is a British writer and has very little mainstream exposure in the US, so you can be partially forgiven for assuming that he is a serious political commentator, although the article that you scraped that quote from should certainly have indicated otherwise. If you approached a Britisher and told them with a straight face that Charlie Brooker was calling for the assassination of the president, you would be greeted with a laugh. <>
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason - 20 people on Palin's map had targets on them, but then.... 19 of them didn't get shot. See how it's different than the Giffords situation?
The way you think is ridiculous.
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