Sunday, December 14, 2008
Domestic terrorism? An arsonist burns down Sarah Palin's church
Imagine the bleating headlines, sanctimonious editorials, furrowed brows, and national introspection that would occur if an arsonist burned down Barack Obama's church in Chicago. Well, yesterday somebody torched Sarah Palin's church. Nobody knows who did it, but it seems to me very unlikely that the culprit is a native Wasillan. And if that turns out to be true, then what was the motive? Forgive me, for notwithstanding John Hinderaker's warning I impulsively speculate that this fire was aimed at Sarah Palin's church.
In yesterday's interview with Chris Chambers, we discussed the widely-publicized stories from the campaign about frothy hostility supposedly erupting from the crowds at Sarah Palin's rallies. Left unsaid was that there has been at least as much crazed hostility from the left over the last few years. Indeed, during this election campaign the activist left went to great efforts to define the Weatherman bombings as something other than "terrorism." They and their allies in the press who claimed that Barack Obama's association with Bill Ayers was irrelevant were, subconsciously at least, dumbing terrorism down. And now, somebody has burned down Sarah Palin's church.
Was it genuinely harmless to rehabilitate Bill Ayers, or did it somehow legitimize political bombings? You know, as long as they do not kill anybody. Those people in our media who rushed to give that bastard his opportunity to publicize his cause and justify his actions ought to ask themselves whether they have unleashed a whirlwind.
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Dec 14, 10:07:00 AM:
The author of the Powerline article says "It would be a good thing for the country if this particular crime does not turn out to be politically motivated."
I guarantee that if it is politically motivated, the MSM will move heaven and earth to avoid, distort, and minimize any reporting on such motivation, just as any article on political scandals will not mention the party of the offender if the offender is a Democrat.
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 10:21:00 AM:
"At least as much crazed hostility from the left over the last few years"?
O rly? TH?
Youtube me, please. This seems like a pretty powerful basic political assumption; what makes you believe it?
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 10:27:00 AM:
Oh, and the firebombing of the Texas Governors mansion during the state democratic convention....?
Oh, and the planned firebombing of several targets at the National Republican Concvention in St. Paul.
No, no. Move along. Nothing to see here. There's no connection. What. So. Ever.
By 
JH, at
Sun Dec 14, 11:22:00 AM:
The MSM will immediately do one of the following
1) Moral equivocation with abortion clinic bombings
2) State that the church has "controversial" viewpoints such as anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage.
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 11:29:00 AM:
"At least as much hostility from the Left..."? Why pull the punch on this key point? Hate defines the modern Left. There has been nothing in our times as the hate against George Bush and conservatives -- and nothing more alarming than the increasing institutional tolerance and even encouragement of it among the media.
By Georg Felis, at
Sun Dec 14, 01:06:00 PM:
The New York Times actually has an article on this, and Jeff was perfectly correct on 2), they linked it to the Churches view on homosexuality.
Anybody know what page of the dead-tree Times this story got pushed back onto?
By Elise, at
Sun Dec 14, 03:16:00 PM:
Fnord - I'm not much for YouTube but you could think about what was said about Sarah Palin. Not complaints about her experience or her political viewpoints - those are always fair game. I was referring to incidents like the person who yelled out "Stone her" at an Obama rally. Or the "Sarah Palin is a c***" T-shirts. Or Sandra Bernhard talking about Palin being gang-raped.
Going back a little further in time you can think about the vitriol directed at Hillary Clinton by Obama supporters (whom I'm pretty sure we can classify as "Left"). Not just the sexism but the claims of racism and the disgraceful way Obama supporters (and Obama himself) behaved with regard to the RFK/June comment. Again I'm not talking about legitimate policy differences but about frothing at the mouth hatred, hatred which sees "the other" as not deserving of decent treatment, as not truly human. That's crazed.
And before that, of course, you can think about how the Left has referred to the Bush Administration. I don't have a good opinion of the current President, his attitude toward the Constitution, or his economic policies. But that's not the same as insisting that he is a fascist, a dry drunk, a wet drunk, a fool manipulated by Cheney, or the most evil man on the face of the earth. That's crazed and it's hate-mongering and it eventually has consequences.
If you don't think the way the Left talks about Bush is crazed then think about how the Right talked about Clinton. If you believe a lot of that was clearly crazed (selling coke? Please) then I don't see how you can claim some of the attacks on Bush were not equally crazed. The problem, of course, is that people who are caught up in this kind of hysteria always think that when they say horrible things about their opponents it's justified but when their opponents say horrible things about their side it's way out of line.
In addition to the viciousness of these kinds of attacks there is also the problem of balance. When some on the Right accused Clinton of every crime under the sun they ignored the Clinton policies even they would approve of. Similarly when some (quite a few) on the Left decided Bush was equivalent to Hitler they ignored facts like his color-blind approach to filling administration positions and his work in Africa. These types of attacks are unbalanced in both the literal and the psychological sense of the word.
For some people it's a short step from believing that saying horrible things is justified to believing doing horrible things is equally justified. After all, if "they" are utterly devoid of humanity why not just do away with them?
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 10:37:00 PM:
Let's be clear here that pakistan is a "terrorist state" and never have any illusion that it is going to be any different.We have made a grave blunder by suggesting in the international fora that "Pakistan is also a victim of terror." We should stop interviewing leaders from that country who mouth the same inanities that "you have not produced any proof."Let us not fall into the trap of providing proof to the culprits. More than 100 acts/attempts of terror recorded in the world since 9/11 have had their roots in Pakistan. More than 40% of the prisoners in Guantanamo are Pakistanis.
We should categorically, unambiguously, unequivocally boycott Pakistan in all aspects for a decade or more. Pakistan is the only territory in the world where an army has a whole country under its control. The state policy of Pakistan is terrorism and their single-point programme of existence is to destroy India.
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 11:29:00 PM:
@ Elise and TH: I will freely admit that people of all stripes and all affiliations say or do horrible things. However, I am agnostic on the issue of which side is worse, not least because "the left" is a vacuous identifier; it is a group that has people most agree belong, but that's not what it means to define a group. I think such basics are important, because creeping assumptions frame debates. To start one group on unequal footing by an assumed "inclination to crazed hostility, moreso than my side" is almost the essence of presuming bad intentions, and I would like to see statistics.
By , at
Mon Dec 15, 08:50:00 AM:
For some people it's a short step from believing that saying horrible things is justified to believing doing horrible things is equally justified. After all, if "they" are utterly devoid of humanity why not just do away with them?
Rather like their hero Che did?
Instead, just throw them in jail. Those calling for jailing Bush don't seem to get that reprisals against your opponents is how dirt-poor third-world hellholes work. If that's what they really want, a third-world country we'll soon be. Also, I'm sure that none of them ever considered whether such threats would discourage Republicans from running for elected office.
By Elise, at
Mon Dec 15, 12:05:00 PM:
Fnord - I can't speak for TH but my comment was aimed at your asking for YouTubes that "proved" the Left was as bad as the people in your YouTubes. I was darn clear I thought some people on both the Left and the Right were guilty of inflammatory and uncalled for language.
I do think the Left has been worse than the Right over the last 8 years but that's probably a function of Jane's Law:
The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.
Now that power has shifted it's the Right's turn to be insane again just like when Clinton was President.
Your request for statistics is new and I can't imagine what sorts of statistics you have in mind. I suppose we could count the number of crazed blog comments against Obama versus the number of same against Clinton, McCain, and Palin but then we'd just fight about what the definition of "crazed" is. We could try to measure the volume of boos when each candidate mentioned his or her opponent's name but that's pretty tricky: besides all the technical problems we'd also have to normalize the data based on rally size.
As a side note, I loved the first video you linked to. Here's some shaky white-haired lady claiming Obama is an Arab and McCain telling her no, ma'am, Obama is a decent family man and that's proof of how badly the Right behaved toward Obama?
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Mon Dec 15, 08:13:00 PM:
fnord, if you're on the level I would love to have that discussion. As an ex-socialist who moved off the left because of its hatred, and tolerance for violence, I don't think the balance scales are close on this one. As I continue to work in an all-liberal, all-the-time environment, I get fresh info every week.
I readily acknowledge that there are people on the right who make inflammatory statements, and some I would not wish to meet in a dark alley. But my belief in the greater violence on the left is a conclusion, not an assumption. I may be proved wrong in that belief, but I have not taken it lightly.
By Andrew Hofer, at
Tue Dec 16, 06:04:00 AM:
..and if you want a pile of video/pictorial evidence, try this:
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/12/crush-the-obamedia-narrative-look-whos-gripped-by-insane-rage/
Not much point in trying to figure out degree, but neither side can claim innocence.
