Tommy is Rae Dawn…:
Is America becoming less politically stable? A glance at some foreign newspapers would certainly give that impression. This is an important economic question. The global primacy of Treasury bonds and the dollar stems mostly from the nation’s massive economic might. But confidence in U.S. political stability also plays a role. The shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, though tragic, shouldn’t alter those perceptions — unless freedom of speech suffers.
[…]
[…] political violence has been rare in the United States in recent years. That’s despite the disputed 2000 presidential election, the unpopular Iraq war and the election of the first black president. Indeed, the World Bank ranks America above the UK when it comes to “political stability and absence of violence.” And the U.S. rank has actually been on the rise in recent years.
[…]
That ranking partly reflects the fact that even heated talk doesn’t cause instability. But if the freedom to indulge in such rhetoric and to protest is curtailed, it can be a different story — one reason, perhaps, why China receives low marks from the World Bank. So it’s disturbing that some in Congress are already working on new laws to limit political speech, in addition to ongoing attacks on talk radio. Those efforts, if they move toward limiting legitimate expression, should worry global investors far more than a one-off lunatic act, however shocking its results.
Wait, so the argument here is that an impassioned political culture creates a kind of outlet for people, and in fact lessens violent tendencies? And that a government willing to use tragedies to rush to criminalize political speech — and let’s fact it, it’s conservative speech we’re talking about, because conservatism is inherently evil and deranged (there’ve been studies!) — is hoping to create the conditions wherein the curtailing of free expression might actually lead (based on anecdotal evidence) to an increase in political violence…?
…
RACIST!
If conservatives are outlawed, only outlaws will be conservative.
So if the Democrats were to succeed in curtailing political speech, you know, in the interest of yet again saving us from ourselves, never let a crisis go to waste and all, we may become more like China?
Tom Friedman surely approves…
And the unintended consequence of it possibly causing an increase in violence, as the only possible means of expression when all other ways are squelched? Just another unintended consequence unable to be foreseen by the good men of unimpeachable effect.
I wonder if threats of tarring and feathering will be included in the ban; or offers to bring one’s own tree to one’s lynching…
We’re already there. We just haven’t admitted it yet.
And Oliver Stone, and Sean Penn, and, well, you get the idea.
We’re already there. We just haven’t admitted it yet.
Democrats had better hope not.
it seems odd we haven’t heard from Chucky Schumer he should be like a pig in mud
Better watch it Jeff, next they’ll be blaming you for this.
Well, he wasn’t crazy about everything… ;-)
here is a … frank discussion from the Monitor what is Christer and Sciencey
happy —
You’re good at Google-fu. Can you find the Dick Morris memo to Clinton re: Oklahoma City bombing?
I will try
Even more than that, Oklahoma City created a huge political opportunity, which Clinton quickly seized. On April 27, a little more than a week after the bombing, Dick Morris, then a little-known but influential Clinton adviser, presented the President a fantastically naked political memo that, as you can find in his book Behind the Oval Office: Getting Reelected Against All Odds, said: “Permanent possible gain: sets up Extremist Issue vs. Republicans.” Morris suggested using “extremism as issue against Republicans,” not by “direct accusations,” but via a “ricochet theory.”
Clinton should “stimulate national concern over extremism and terror,” Morris wrote, and then “implement intrusive policy against extremist groups.” Morris predicted that radical right-wingers would write their local Republican congressmen, and that in turn “this will provoke criticism by right-wing Republicans which will link right-wing of the party to extremist groups.”
“Net effect,” Morris concluded: “Self-inflicted linkage between party and extremists.”
Also here.
Thanks, geoffb.
People should really arm themselves with this example. I’m eager to hear Morris on all this, now that he’s moved to the right.
that was the best discussion I found too – the reason excerpt of the examiner
And Clinton found his voice. At a Michigan State commencement address shortly afterward, he told graduates, “There is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.”
Wow. I’d forgotten the days when Dems would pretend they didn’t hate their country. Good times.
People should really arm themselves…
There you go with that inflammatory rhetoric again. HAVE YOU NO SHAME, SIR?
I can’t wait to hear Levin today.
Who was it that said he wanted to have sex with one woman of each ethnicity… or Rea Dawn Chong once?
Because I wish to denouce him before I’m put in the re-education camps.
or even denounce him. but maybe later.
Why is Secretary of State Clinton a moron? I mean, does she have to be?
Does anyone know if someone has compiled any sort of violent gun crime data from a political standpoint? Meaning, part of what fuels all of this nonsense is the left’s association between conservatives and guns (Palin included), yet it seems rather obvious that while the left is too emotion-based and stupid to differentiate between lawful responsible ownership and the inverse of that, Democrats or people in their environs commit the overwhelming majority of violent acts. Even a list of violent crime by congressional district would throw a wrench in their narrative.
It strikes me that legal gun ownership/advocacy juxtaposed with with incendiary political rhetoric pales in comparison to the theoretical danger of similar rhetoric directed towards people with a demonstrated penchant for violence. I don’t know the best way to package this off hand, but I’m rather tired of the circle jerk that is this violent TEA Partier claptrap.
Oh, and Tom DeLay gets three years in prison for the crime of being a Republican.
That is a felony in Austin IIRC.
that’s sick – our piece of shit cocksucker governor with the hair needs to pardon Mr. Delay
Also at Reason re: Clinton & Oklahoma City.
Well, I’m not too sure myself, but I believe that prior death threats are a better indicator of a whacko being a danger to others, threats ignored by the local constabulary, than run of the mill political discourse regardless of how heated…
( http://tiny.cc/zdbrh )
Seems to put Sherrif Dupnik’s haste to blame this on Palin into the “CYA” category moreso than the usual knee-jerk lefty political blather one.
Watch this. Go ahead. I dare you.
link
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