[quote=afx114]I’m not implying that you or all conservatives are like those whackos — you know I don’t believe that. I’m just trying to argue that the philosophies of activists who use guns and tough-guy bravado to take down “the man” often overlap with the philosophies of the right. This is evidenced by the list so graciously provided by pri_dk.
I look forward to your list of anti-government gun-wielding military-porn addicted leftist assassins.
Or maybe I’ve just had too much whiskey.[/quote]
Afx: First off, you cannot have too much whiskey, unless you’re drinking Jim Beam or some similar rotgut.
Second, you’re off into the weeds again with your connection of Rightist to right-wing. The main point I’ve been making is that extremism exists in both parties and that both parties, to a certain extent, have been co-opted by these extremes.
The other point was that whackos like the ones that pri used as examples are exactly that: Whackos. Their choice of “tools” as it were (guns, propaganda, symbols, etc) doesn’t reflect an ideology consistent with “right-wing”, it reflects a mindset consumed with symbols of power, hence the fetishization you see with Nazi symbology. This fetishization doesn’t reflect an attraction to Nazism as a political cause, but Nazism as a means to power and its oppressive use against one’s foes.
Mao once famously said that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. Does this make Mao right-wing? Nope. It simplys illustrates the realization that guns represent power.
You can easily debunk the mythology of the Soviet October Revolution by pointing out that, while peasants were being slaughtered in the streets by the Czar’s Cossacks, Lenin and Co. overthrew the government by smuggling revolvers into the Duma (Russian Assembly) and taking it literally at gunpoint. Was Lenin right-wing? Or was he a guy that would have agreed with Al Capone’s saying that, “You get more with a kind word and a gun, than just a kind word”.
My point with the above examples is that the guns, and the symbols, and the propaganda stand separate and distinct. I asked pri to show the connection between the alleged right-wing hate speech and the examples of the various loons he offered. I haven’t seen it yet because it doesn’t exist.
But let’s say it does. Now what? Legislation to limit such speech? And who is the judge of that? And is our speech now more dangerous and venomous than the past? Our past history is replete with examples that say, no, it isn’t. In point of fact, our past history was even MORE rambunctious than our present, with politicians physically attacking one another (and in one egregious case, committing murder), carrying guns and using inflammatory language far in excess of what you see now.
To me, at least, it seems like there is a more insidious rationale at work here and that is the desire to stifle certain forms of expression. It started with the whole PC movement and has now progressed to the point that anything that even remotely resembles upsetting words or symbols needs to be eliminated.
