Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Maybe we should run those excerpts past Ann Coulter, get her opinion on extermination. I’m sure she has plenty of to say when it comes to extermination liberals, Arabs, Democrats, Kerry, Clinton, and a whole slew of folks she doesn’t agree with.

Better yet, what about Mike Savage? He can provide some additional insight on the art of extermination as well.

Ok Tanya, I’ll put you down as a no vote on the apology then.

Interesting, isn’t it, that Tanya should pick those two examples, Coulter and Savage. Both got fired (Coulter from National Review, I think it was, and Savage from NBC), for making over-the-top remarks about political opponents—which even then never rose to calls for extermination.

But think any lefty rags are going to fire anybody for Nazi-like calls for the deaths of their political enemies? Think again. In fact, I smell a Pulitzer—hell, a Nobel Peace Prize—for this little piece of leftist hatred.

I only read the Village Voice for Dan Savage (no relation to Mike as far as I know), who offers a lot of VERY useful non-political advice. It doesn’t bug me so much that VV is such a sordid rag of lefty-lunacy (they hardly pretend otherwise). They’ve always been like that, and their political pieces are uniformly laughable.
They have nice pictures, though, in the ads at the back of each issue, and as long as its free (as it is when I’m in NY) I’m a willing conduit between the newstand and the recycle bin.

[Comment deleted for failing to observe WB’s rule of critiquing the message, not the messenger. —WatchBlog Manager]

Tanya:

As an FYI, you went immediately to the “well, you did it TOO” strategy. Last I checked, that was elementary school debate tactics, and didnt even work that well back then.

I have no problem with your condemnation of Coulter and Savage for making irresponsible extermination comments (I’ll de facto assume they did so, though I haven’t seen any personally). But along with that would need to come a similar condemnation of the Village Voice…..yet I didnt see any of that in your post. To NOT condemn a left leaning group for doing the same thing that you condemn a right leaning person for smacks of hypocrisy.

I’d be okay with condemning them all. I’ll admit though, that we of course need to see things in context. Too often, journalists spot one tiny comment and focus on it, without setting it into context.

Mike:

By the way, your post (now appropriately deleted by the ever present blog manager) focused negatively on a number of people, including Mr Remer.

While I disagree with David on many, if not most, issues, I find him intelligent and articulate. In fact, if he could just find himself on the right side of a few issues, he’d make a helluva Republican…lol (just kidding David.)

Mike, you do the entire blog a disservice by posting in the manner you did, and I’m glad your post was found lacking not only in content, but also in taste.

I’m sitting here laughing. Ann Coulter and Michael Savage are big bright stars in the Dittohead pantheon, with large nationwide audiences repeating their very charges. This is some pretentious theatre critic in a far left publication, who the vast majority of the liberals here had never heard of. Do I find what he said extreme? Yes! Do I find it applicable to the sentiments of the average democrat or liberal? No.

If you want a good idea of how these people don’t compare, I’d like you to find how many bestselling books your hatemongers have sold, and how many this fellow has. Heck, how many he’s actually written, for starters.

Eric, if you wanted to really prove we’re just as bad as you, then you are going to have to find better (or worse!) exemplars of our party saying these things.

Short answer: Yes, the Village Voice should print an apology/retraction.

Longer answer: It was a fringe writer in a fringe publication. Trent Lott (note to Joe: Eric brought him up, not me) is a former Senate Majority Leader and the current chairman of the Senate Rules committee. The Left has its share of crazies, but they don’t get within spitting distance of any kind of political power. There is no Trent Lott of the Left.

Is the Village Voice really a “fringe” publication that nobody’s heard of?

Here in NY, it’s everywhere—on practically every street corner. No wonder that Dems outnumber us five to one in the Big A.

Yes, I did directly go for the jugular, because in my experience, that’s the way the right likes it. And yes, I think that the VV should apologize. And by the way, as a New Yorker, I don’t read the VV. Would you like to make some more generalities, or did I cover them all in my first and current posts?

How could you possibly know what the “right likes” if you live in NY? I am one of exactly three Republicans in this town, and I have never met you. The other two tell say they don’t know you either.

I guess it’s possible that you don’t read the VV, but it’s pretty hard to avoid around here. If you don’t read it, then you can’t miss its covers staring from every news stand, which of late have been pretty much always some nasty cartoon caricature of a Republican.

This is some pretentious theatre critic in a far left publication, who the vast majority of the liberals here had never heard of. Do I find what he said extreme? Yes! Do I find it applicable to the sentiments of the average democrat or liberal? No.

I am glad you disapprove of this man’s extreme hate speech. Truthfully I don’t think that it represents you or most left-of-center posters here at watchblog. But I do think it represents about 10-15% of the left in this country. I’ve talked to at least two of them locally. It’s embarrassing. I just hoped that it was embarrassing to you as well.

The thing that is unfortunate is that this 10-15% (in my guestimation) seems to be getting more vocal and/or are becoming more prominant. Witness the implosion of yelling and screaming from Gore recently and the demise of the candidacy of Howard Dean. The shrillness seems to be increasing as it becomes more evident that over the long term the nation is turning from liberalism.

Eric, apparently you are utterly incapable of recognizing the age-old literary technique of humorous hyperbole. I guess the review was absolutely correct when it wrote: “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one…”

I very very sincerely doubt that the 10-15% of leftists you have spoken to actually advocate extermination. In fact, I emphatically refute your assertion and accuse you of intentional slander. Sure, many lefties may have a deep and seething hatred for Republicans, but I doubt they would vote for a Democrat who said “As President, I will round up all Republicans and throw them into concentration camps”. You know this.

On the other hand, I feel fairly confident that if Michael Savage’s fans had the chance, most of them would (in a heartbeat) actually consider casting their vote for a candidate who said the same thing about homosexuals.

By the way, I saw the Richard Foreman play in question a few months ago and it was absolutely fantastic. And it never really felt overtly political or even mean-spirited. The resemblances between the main character and George W. Bush were utterly ephemeral - you had to really stretch your imagination to even perceive any political relevance. But, somehow, the play caused you to make that stretch. Highly recommended.

-Cf

This is a “Heimlich Maneuver” post to push my last choked post through…

Tanya:

Thanks for clarifying that you do indeed find that kind of hate speech outrageous and deserving of an apology. You seem to fall into a bit of a trap that many people fall into, though. You say you went for the jugular because that’s the way “the right likes it”.

I try to deal with things the way I think they should be dealt with. I dont subscribe to doing things because others are doing them, as you seemed to do in your first post. I try to do what is right in my mind, and I dont let others dissuade me of that, or persuade me to do differently. To allow that simply makes us sheep.

I want to be sure what you’re exactly advocating Eric.

You want an apology for some one speaking negatively of “Republicans whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings”?

I presume you are for the expansion of the class of people who qualify for this title?

I would also like to exterminate ruthless psychopaths that kill women. I am not advocating murder or violence of any kind. I simply would like to eliminate this class of people. Does my position offend you? Should I be apologetic for it?

I think you have read more in there than is there. Perhaps that reveals something about you’re thoughts, as Freud might say.

Greg, let’s not try to paint that review as something it is not. It’s not a logical argument. It was intended as humor, irony, pure and simple> And it certainly wasn’t limiting its scope to a subset of Republicans who profit from disaster, etc: Mr. Feingold is clearly angry at *all* Republicans, not just the worst of them, and he was using the rhetoric of extremist ultra-right wing groups to voice that anger.

-Cf

Eric, the trend in America is not going against liberalism. It’s going for it. According to poll results I’ve heard of, people are shrugging off the “revelation” that John Kerry is a Massachussetts Liberal. According to other surveys, more Americans are becoming willing to identify themselves as liberals, too.

The strident attacks on Democrats, the bloody war, the economic success that’s failing to improve the average standard of living, and the shame of Abu Ghraib have combined to make Liberalism fashionable again. The increased aggressiveness of the Democratic party should be plain for you to see. The Bush administration has committed the boneheaded mistake of fulfilling most of liberals worst fears about what their government has gotten them into, and what it is attempting to do.

The question is how fast the political momentum is drifting in the Democrat’s favor. That will depend on how bad or good things get, and whether the bad things of the past persist to motivate Democrats to go to the polls.

joebagodonuts, does adamantly supporting President Bush in invading Afghanistan and calling for fiscal responsibility count? :-)

Thanks for the kind words. You are one of the folks that make my participation in debate at WatchBlog both stimulating and challenging. I am sure we will find some more common ground before November.

If I were an avid reader of the VV (which I am not) I am sure I would look opun this article as a funny review of a play I would (now) like to see.

“Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet.”

come on if that was about clinton and it was in the washington times, you would have laughed.

Every large group has its outliers. I’d say we keep excessive rhetoric pretty well under control on the whole, however.

It was intended as humor, irony, pure and simple> And it certainly wasn’t limiting its scope to a subset of Republicans who profit from disaster, etc: Mr. Feingold is clearly angry at *all* Republicans, not just the worst of them, and he was using the rhetoric of extremist ultra-right wing groups to voice that anger.

Chris, ?

So it’s really not a liberal saying these things, it’s the rhetoric of the extremist ultra-right?

That makes a lot of sense.

The strident attacks on Democrats, the bloody war, the economic success that’s failing to improve the average standard of living, and the shame of Abu Ghraib have combined to make Liberalism fashionable again. The increased aggressiveness of the Democratic party should be plain for you to see. The Bush administration has committed the boneheaded mistake of fulfilling most of liberals worst fears about what their government has gotten them into, and what it is attempting to do.

I’m sorry Stephen, but this is clearly not borne out by the last 20 years of history.

Liberalism has several definitions. I consider myself to be a liberal in the old fashioned sense of the term, as Reagan was. Modern liberalism however is clearly on the decline. The socialist big government theories have been debunked and rejected. Obviously the meme has not been completely vanquished but on the whole it is discredited.

The democratic party as the bastion and promoter of modern liberalism in the US is going through a crisis right now. It is being forced to look at it’s principles and either discard them, enhance them, re-label and market them, or wither away. The increased aggressiveness of the Democratic party is a sign of desperation not strength.

Was Clinton elected as a liberal? or as a ‘new democrat’? I guarantee you that Kerry will not be elected by campaigning as a liberal. He will have to campaign, as Clinton did, as conservative as he can without alienating his base. The liberal ideology will stay in the closet throughout this election. How is that a triumph of liberalism over conservatism?

If I were an avid reader of the VV (which I am not) I am sure I would look opun this article as a funny review of a play I would (now) like to see.

…come on if that was about clinton and it was in the washington times, you would have laughed.

No, I’d be embarassed. But I guess it embodies the desparation of a dying ideology defeated at the polls.

> So it’s really not a liberal saying these
> things, it’s the rhetoric of the extremist
> ultra-right?

This is the second time today where a conservative Watchblogger has totally misread my comments. Am I really that bad of a writer?

I don’t think I said anything to suggest that Michael Feingold wasn’t a liberal.

By “the rhetoric of the extremist ultra-right” I meant the word “extermination”, which is a term pretty tightly identified with the Nazis and other genocidal supremacists, groups which most people would unhesitatingly classify as “the extreme right”.

We liberals like to joke that way, pretending to be conservative and talking that funny-sounding conservative talk. For example, sometimes we joke about burning books we don’t like, or “turning in” our neighbors’ kids for being Boy Scouts. My mother has a red-white-and-blue bumper sticker which says “Mandatory Lobotomies for Republicans”. But really we don’t believe in such things, and you know it. We believe in shocking amounts of civil liberties, unfettered freedom of speech, compassion and respect for our diverse neighbors and those different from us, that reforming criminals is superior to punishment, that all people have unquestionably equal rights, etc. Some of us are even outright pacifists. That’s what makes us liberals, silly!

That is, unless you think American liberals secretly carry around wallet-sized pictures of Stalin.

-Cf

Eric, according to a recent Gallup poll 62% of americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. According to the Pew Research center, it’s 61%. Associated press puts it at 58%. NBC/WSJ has 50% of people responding that we are on the right track to 33% that we are going in the right direction, with 14% mixed. Even FOX is polling 47 percent to 40 that we are on the wrong track.

The Democrats are not desperate. What reason do they have to be. Kerry is beating Bush as president in several polls. He’s viewed more positively in the battleground states than Bush is. He may not be gaining ground, but he’s not losing it the way Bush is.

New Deal Liberalism is not the liveliest it’s ever been, but then again, it doesn’t have to be. Modern liberalism is what carries the weight and the votes of the Democratic party. What’s really dead or dying is Contract Conservativism, the conservatism that swept the Republicans into congressional majorities.

Democrats, thanks to the divisive, arrogant policy making of the Bush administration are no longer asking the question of whether their vote matters. They know the answer: It does matter. Virtually every decision Bush has made has highlighted the importance of the last election. Hell, the last election highlighted that. Never have so few people decided so much for so many.

I won’t kid you, I give us a little over 50% chance of winning this. But considering the popularity Bush had after 9/11, I, and many of my fellow Democrats are counting our blessings in terms of our present advantage. If America had the sense that Bush was doing his job, we would have had much more of an uphill battle than we are now.

But really we don’t believe in such things, and you know it.

Which begs the question… why say them?

It’s hard to see the humorous irony here. As for misreading your comments, I know how you feel. I tend to write with a glib tongue, but sometimes plain text doesn’t communicate the sarcasm.

It was intended as humor, irony, pure and simple… Mr. Feingold is clearly angry at *all* Republicans, not just the worst of them, and he was using the rhetoric of extremist ultra-right wing groups to voice that anger.

Besides, Nazi party ideology is closer to that of liberalism in many ways than it is to the ‘right’. Consider the economic definition of fascism as allowing private ownership of property but with dictatorial state direction of that property. Liberal economist Lester Thurow:

Can economic command significantly compress and accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. In 1920 Russia was but a minor figure in the economic councils of the world. Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States. - Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics, MIT, The Economic Problem, 1989.

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was also an advocate of a popular idea at the time called ‘Eugenics’. Something Hitler also took seriously.

Margaret Sanger had learned of eugenics form Havelock Ellis. She first acknowledged the place of birth control in the eugenicists’ program when she announced in 1919: “More children from the fit, less from the unfit—-that is the chief issue of birth control.”

Margaret Sanger usually used the term “unfit” to refer to the mentally retarded and physically deformed. “Birth control,” she said in 1920, “is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out of the unfit, or preventing the birth defectives or of those who will become defectives.”
-fordham.edu

Eric, eugenics was indeed extremely popular in America in the early 1900’s.

In the 1927 Supreme Court ruling Buck v. Bell, it was determined (by a nearly unanimous vote) that it was constitutional to involuntarily sterilize certain kinds of mentally or physically “unfit” citizens.

President Bush’s grandfather Prescott was an avid and outspoken supporter (and a friend of Ms. Sanger). The popularity of eugenics in America is, in fact, one of the many reasons why Americans weren’t eagar to go to war with Hitler: a great many Americans (and, for that matter, Brits) actually agreed with Hitler’s social ideas. It was only his imperial ambitions that finally made him our enemy.

Planned Parenthood today, naturally, is opposed to eugenics. In fact, they vigorously opposed the welfare sterlization requirement advocated by Republicans a decade ago. Times have changed.

I can’t beleive you are trying to portray the Nazis as leftists. They indeed socialized much of their industry, but not because they were against the rampant and free accumulation of wealth (as their arch-enemies the communists were), but instead because they wanted to create a strong imperial military state even if the free markets were saying no.

Again, those were different times and today’s “right” and “left” are difficult to apply to those days. But the modern inheritors of Nazi-like ideologies and fascism are, today, customarily called “right wing extremists”, and those who see racism, fascism, and hate at every turn are customarily called “leftists”. The Village Voice fits the latter bill.

I guess this goes to show just how screwed up the terms “left” and “right” are in historical terms. Both have been responsible for oppression and genocide. I’ve always, for example, considered Stalinist communism a favor of fascism rather than a flavor of socialism. When you get to the extremes, the ideologies kind of re-connect with each other. It’s strange.

-=Cf

I’ll grant you this theater critic doesn’t like Republicans. I’ll grant you that this is an attempt to say something provokative. I’ll grant you that the Village Voice embodies a liberal bias.

But to state that what was said was that it was O.K. to slaughter Republicans simply wasn’t there. That was my only point. I’ve read it three or four times now. While the word exterminate conjours up pesticides and death, that isn’t the context. And it clearly is sarcasm, and hyperbole as a set up for the review that follows.

Thus to demand an apolgy is a bit self serving.

I can’t beleive you are trying to portray the Nazis as leftists. They indeed socialized much of their industry, but not because they were against the rampant and free accumulation of wealth (as their arch-enemies the communists were), but instead because they wanted to create a strong imperial military state even if the free markets were saying no.

National Socialist Party. You admit they socialized much of their industry. What makes a leftist a leftist? Being against the accumulation of wealth? Or not wanting to create a strong imperial military state? Hell, the Soviet Union had one of the biggest imperial military states ever, were they not leftists?

The Nazi’s and the Communists had way more in common than today’s right wing extremists. There’s an overarching term called collectivism which applies to both. The idea that rights are given to individuals by the state. That the state is or should be all powerful.

Again, those were different times and today’s “right” and “left” are difficult to apply to those days. But the modern inheritors of Nazi-like ideologies and fascism are, today, customarily called “right wing extremists”, and those who see racism, fascism, and hate at every turn are customarily called “leftists”. The Village Voice fits the latter bill.

Tell me Chris, name me one ‘right wing extremist’ in the republican party today that you would say is the inheritor of the fascist nazi mantle.

Greg,

But to state that what was said was that it was O.K. to slaughter Republicans simply wasn’t there. That was my only point. I’ve read it three or four times now. While the word exterminate conjours up pesticides and death, that isn’t the context. And it clearly is sarcasm, and hyperbole as a set up for the review that follows.

Oh so sorry! I didn’t read it “IN CONTEXT”. Funny how the left never means the insane comments it says with vitriolic hyperbole. But let Trent Lott say to a former segregationalist that his service to his country over many years in congress makes him a great man and and he’s a rascist.

It’s not like Lott was advocating killing anyone.

Eric, there is no obligation of course, but, I wish you would cease casting millions and millions of people you don’t know into a class of thought represented by a few. I watched Washington Journal on C-Span a few weeks ago when a Bush supporter called in and said he thought we should just nuke the whole damn country of Iraq and be done with it. Now, it would simply be illogical, untrue, and frankly, dim, to say that all conservatives are of like mind, or war mongers without conscience.

When you make comments like “Funny how the left never means the insane comments it says with vitriolic hyperbole.” you may not realize that it cuts both ways and just as inaccurately.

Just a suggestion from a fellow debater.

Haha! Eric, I didn’t realize the left had the power to force a Senator to resign. I seem to remember pressure from his fellow Republicans playing a part.

I realize you guys are scared to death of a Democratic president - apparently the peace and prosperity under the Golden Age of Clinton didn’t sit too well with you guys - but we don’t have super-human powers. At least I don’t think we do. :)

> Tell me Chris, name me one ‘right wing extremist’
> in the republican party today that you would say
> is the inheritor of the fascist nazi mantle.

In my previous posts I never suggested that such a person existed, nor did I say that any Republicans were racists or that they employ Nazi methods or techniques or rhetoric. I merely said that fascists are conventionally considered “right wing”, and then I said that such distinctions are generally moot today. In the 1930’s things were quite different.

How about you name a Democrat who is an inheritor of Stalinist communism? See, the extremes of yesteryear aren’t really around any more.

-Cf

cf-
the links are great, very funny:)

I understand chris, you just meant to label the ring wing in general as inheritors of the nazi mantle not anyone in particular.

Eric, you’re thinking of Michael Feingold. I’m just the messenger.

-Cf

While I did not really follow the Trent Lott tussle, i recollect reading an article attributing the demise of Trent to Tom Delay., but maybe my memory is tricking me.