The conservative pundits inciting this outrage and eventual violence are banking on the fact that the opposing side will not lower themselves to the level necessary to counter it. They're engaged in a dangerous game of leveraging their influence to create outrage through lies while keeping their hands just clean enough to disavow responsibility for the results of their actions.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to end until a line is crossed that's so heinous the center is ready to stand up and demand an end to it. But where's the line? We've already endured murder and domestic terrorism as a result of this tactic by the right wing fringe. How bad does it have to get before we're angry enough to tell the loud mouth person standing next to us to sit down and shut up...or else?

I do not believe in the use of violence except in reaction to violence, because in my estimation those people who speak the language of violence don't understand any other form of discourse. And my line is apparently a lot closer than the average person. At this point it would be a mistake for anyone to try to intimidate me with angry right ring rhetoric. How long before the rest of you are ready to stand up against this nonsense?

^ I don't want the left to respond to this with violence. I like that we're mostly just trumpeting the sheer ugliness of our opponents, and the shallowness of their so-called "principles".

They're against having any kind of reasonable debate, and will engage in the most blatant lies, scare tactics, and now outright physical intimidation, and for what? To preserve a broken healthcare system?

This is supposed to be a civilized society, and it's up to people to decide whether they're going to hop into bed with our nascent version of a Republican Basij, or if they're going to demand that people conduct their debates on issues with some modicum of honesty, civility, and respect.

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When Bush was in charge you fucks did the same shit but called it FREE SPEACH. Obama and the Left needs to be stopped at every opportunity since they don't know shit about the constitution.



MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is s poor excuse of a reporter. Reporters Slanted to the left or right do not belong in the news. Report the news not your slant.

^ We understood that when you're in a town hall, you're not there to disrupt the entire proceeding by shouting other people down, chanting, and generally trying to prevent other people from speaking. If we didn't understand that, we often got arrested. Even if we were outside, we were told we needed to stay in "free speech zones", or again, we were arrested.

Now we have professional lobbying companies organizing intentional disruption of townhall meetings. Not that they're sending people in with tough questions to ask, just people who want to just generally bitch, moan, and make the whole thing seem like it's full of people who're angry at the very idea that we might do any kind of reform, or just plain shut it down.

That's not free speech, that's censorship.

>> ^bobknight33:
When Bush was in charge you fucks did the same shit but called it FREE SPEACH.

It's "speech" you ignorant fucking moron... =)

Once again proving that having the right to something doesn't confer the ability to exercise said right in any meaningful way...

Please someone... tell me this isn't going to work.

Well "bobknight33", she clearly reported FACTS! Are you that daft or are you just doing your "duty" by shouting down the truth like your fellow Republican zombies? People like you scare me...

This is just too rich.

First of all, politicians receive death threats frequently and it happens on both sides. Maddow acts as though this is a first. She is so appalled by this behavior. Yet, I don't remember her saying a word about the multiple Bush effigies we saw. Oh that's right. She's a complete partisan hack. She only gets upset when it's her guy or her agenda that is being attacked. The hypocrisy is blinding. But hey, that's MSNBC "journalism" for you.

And of course, the majority on the internet lack any type of introspection. You don't have to look very far to find someone saying we should hang Bush or shoot Cheney. But yeah, this is just the "right-wing" that does this type of stuff.

Bobknight, you have such a griefer's name.

Progressives have zero qualms with comparing anybody who disagrees with them to Nazis, and Maddow has zero objections to that. That's just how most humans view people on the other side of debates. Maddow's a journalist, not a scientist, but she should be able to avoid this kind of sloppy thinking, which is a discredit to progressivism.

^ Honestly, you're a fucking moron if you can't tell the difference between the way liberals used Nazi references, and the way conservatives are currently talking about liberals being Nazis.

Liberals use it as hyperbole. You're a Nazi when you're oppressing people, usually by using arrests or threats of violence to suppress free speech. Remember the Soup Nazi? That's how we usually use Nazi references. We don't literally mean "be afraid of that person, they're going to kill everyone you love".

Conservatives are using it in an entirely different context. They literally mean that we're going to go around marking people, putting them in concentration camps, and putting them to death. They're saying our duly elected President is some sort of Manchurian Candidate, seeking to destroy our freedom, our babies, and apparently our grandparents too. He's going to force whites to pay slave reparations, he's going to outlaw Christian churches. He's going to take your guns.

This is incitement to riot at best, revolution at worst.

And for what? Campaign donations from big pharma and big oil?

Fuck these assholes, and anyone who dares draw some sort of false equivalence between what liberals have ever said or done and what these dipshits are doing.

It's a huge discredit to your intelligence that you don't see any difference here.

^I don't find fault with Maddow's overall thesis, only with the details.

It's flimsy to defend our usage of "Nazi!" as harmless metaphor, while presenting our opponents' usage of "Nazi!" as literal and frightening. Naomi Wolf wasn't speaking metaphorically when she was certain that as of Oct 1, 2008 (~3:35) the Bush administration had launched a coup, and we were now living under martial law and a fascist state, and Obama wouldn't be elected.

Partisanship and political wishful thinking become a cognitive bias with significant costs when you're raging against even people whose only concern is a scientific understanding of the world.

You and I still have a bet going that Peter Schiff's certitudinous claim of an immanent end of the world as we know it won't be occurring by the end of 2010.

I know progressives are good people trying to do the best thing, and I do appreciate our debates, though

^ Naomi Wolf is one person in our movement. She does not have hordes of liberals hanging off her every word, picking up signs, and going to every Republican town hall yelling and shutting down any attempts at discussion with accusations of tyranny (and the people who tried that all got arrested, BTW).

Through the bulk of the Bush administration, our leadership, even down to the "respected blogger" level was telling people that we aren't under fascist rule, though there did seem to be troubling movement in that direction.

The Republican organization, on the contrary, said Obama would bring fascism and communism and socialism during the election campaign, and only stepped it up after it was over. Beck celebrated the election with a sweet little video, making Obama the star of a Soviet-style propaganda piece. This is Beck's introduction to his new show's format, now working entirely off the fascist playbook for propaganda.

Here's what one of the people who was constantly talking us down during the Bush years had to say about the Tampa protest. Now, she's actually raising concern about fascism in America.

You really need to listen to what the Limbaughs and Becks are saying. They're not just rattling off a context-free accusation of Nazism, they're going into great lengths to compare specific elements of Nazism to everything Democrats are doing, right down to what the organizers of these anti-health care riots are telling people.

Looking back at our Schiff discussion, it appears you were also holding up Naomi Wolf as a reason to ignore anything the left says about Republicans using fear and propaganda, because you think Naomi Wolf making specious claims in books, and saying things in interviews is the same as having the entire conservative media enterprise, and their elected representatives in government make outright false declarations is totally the same deal.

Don't you think that exposes a certain level of bias towards equivalence on your part?

I think the best defense against an unreasonable right wing is to make progressivism stronger. In order to do that, though, progressivism would have to learn from its mistakes, which means not using our intelligence to deny them. In this case, the fastest way to alleviate the contradictions in Maddow's argument would be by discouraging liberal excesses instead of trying to justify them.

We know that using "fascism" and "nazi" metaphorically is intellectually undisciplined and undermines our cause among mainstream society (moderates, centrists), so discouraging that seems like a good place to start.

That's actually what the left's organizations are putting out, that it's absolutely critical that we not match shouting with shouting, and fight the incivility with civility.

Like I said elsewhere, I think the right move is to just observe and report, and drive the narrative to be about the deceptiveness and crude anti-democratic nature of what's being done.

However, I do think it's worth noting that the right inciting angry mobs to intimidate our politicians and supporters in the hope of shutting down rational conversation crosses an important line between peaceful, rowdy political activism and thuggery and intimidation.

I can't imagine anyone who said anything like this or this would retain any kind of position of authority or respect in the progressive movement.

Fox News is already talking up this incident as if it's an example of Union "thugs" trying to beat down righteous protesters.

Why the hell can't we just have a public debate on the merits of the issue? I hunger for a real, reasonable debate, but it doesn't seem like the other side wants to engage on the merits, just with lies, fear, and now outright intimidation.

Liberals aren't nazis, they're commies, and Obamacare is an indefensible, unworkable scheme. In case you're unsure, it's also a stepping stone to full-blown socialized medicine.

The thieves and liars pushing this garbage refuse to explain how it will be funded (let me guess, just tax everyone at a 60% rate) and are unconcerned. They just want more power over the individual when they have far too much already.

Americans put up with enough government thievery from all sides. Because the deceivers refuse to teach American history, it will be amusing to us and terrifying for them as more and more average Americans discover their revolutionary roots.

It's difficult to argue progressives are categorically more civil when they're not above freely advocating genocide, and when they do so without even the gentlest rebuke. Both sides have outliers, though, as you've pointed out.

Our endorsement of intellectual debate would be more convincing if we didn't advocate physical harassment when it serves our goals. Instead of drawing fine lines between our "peaceful" physical harassment and our opponents "intimidating" physical harassment, let's commit now to a stronger position of discouraging physical harassment in general

In our fields of work, most of us achieve our goals through genuinely doing a better job, and nothing else. I think we agree that using harassment is resorting to a weaker strategy.

QM, while I am an advocate of individualism and self-reliance, the healthcare debate for me boils down to one fact: Canada spends a smaller portion of its GDP on healthcare than the US does (10.1% vs. 16%).1

That seems like an even better deal when you take into account that the average per capita GDP in Canada (38.3k USD) is 81% of that in the US (47.2k USD).2 (According to an averaging of the World Bank, IMF, and CIA factbook estimates of GDP per capita.)

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