Kathleen Parker, the syndicated conservative columnist who called on Sarah Palin to step off the national ticket, has been inundated with hate mail -- Palin fans telling her she ought to have been aborted, she should kill herself, she's a traitor, etc. Parker writes about the crazy response here. Excerpt:
The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one's own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)
I'm sure it is coincidence that, upon the Palin column's publication, a conservative organization canceled a speech I was scheduled to deliver in a few days. If I were as paranoid as the conspiracy theorists are, I might wonder whether I was being punished for speaking incorrectly.
Unfortunately, that's the way one begins to think when party loyalty is given a higher value than loyalty to bedrock principles.
Our day of reckoning may indeed be upon us. Between war and economic collapse, we have enormous challenges. It will take the best of everyone to solve them. That process begins minimally with a commitment to engage in civil discourse and a cease-fire in the war against unwelcome ideas.
If liberals are concerned about this -- and they should be -- then they should urge the Obama campaign to stop mobbing radio show phone lines to stop discourse when Obama critics appear on talk shows.
I have a very bad feeling about where all this is headed -- especially if there is an economic collapse. We will have trained ourselves to think of our neighbors not as opponents to be defeated, but as enemies to be annihilated by any means necessary. If you read Saul Alinsky, he defends "ends justify the means" morality as a legitimate way to achieve social change. Any political movement in a democracy that believes the achievement of power is worth threatening and silencing opposition is not worthy of my allegiance. Whether you're on the left or the right, you can have your thuggery.
UPDATE: Ross Douthat calls out RedState, the conservative site, citing his "utter disgust" at the way Erick Erickson is trying to silence conservative debate he doesn't like. Ross writes, correctly:
The irony is that Erick Erickson no doubt really and truly believes that by blacklisting (blacklinking?) any conservative or website that isn't sufficiently on-side, he's just doing What It Takes to rebuild a conservative majority - when the reality, of course, is precisely the reverse.
I spent about a minute in the combox thread at RedState under this Erickson post. I came up with this gem by an anonymous conservative who would prefer that one K. Parker keep her negative opinions about S. Palin to herself:
As for Kathleen Parker, Kathleen Parker is basically a literate vagina and if she didn't have one of those, there would be a bounty on her.
I can't imagine why people wouldn't be attracted to these folks.
(By the way, if you wonder why I police these comboxes, it's to keep this an atmosphere where people of either side don't say things like that.)
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steve sylvester,
You just mostly described me as well. David Kuo mentioned Crunchy Con a while back and since I enjoyed his J-Walking site (and the mostly thoughtful commenters there), I decided to stop in here. It's quickly become my favorite web destination. I'm a woman, mother, veteran, and pro-life Democrat. Truthfully, my favorite candidate was Ron Paul and I may yet cast my vote for him, since I'm essentially looking to vote *against* Sen. McCain.
There is much here, both in Rod's posting and in the comboxes, that I agree with and much that I disagree with, but most of the writing here is so thoughtful and well-reasoned that I have to dig deep to really figure out where I'm at with it. Hanging out here for the last couple of months has eradicated any impulse I ever had to be "knee-jerk" in my consideration of the issues facing me, my family, my community, my country and my world.
sigaliris
I try to find comfort in the notion of geologic time, but I think you are failing to appreciate the significance of this moment. Many of us may not have the comfort of our home and our gardens in ten years, if we live in intemperate places or places where the water runs out. That doesn't mean that bickering on the internet brings us closer to meaningful solutions to the worlds problems. I certainly agree with you that bile just eats away at things. But complacency isn't really the answer either. This too won't pass, at least not in a benign way. So what do we do to engage meaningfully with those who care like we do but may disagree? That's the challenge we are called upon to face.
If liberals are concerned about this -- and they should be -- then they should...
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:1-5%20;&version=9;
Thanks for the help with the mote, Dreher. Enjoy your beam.
I agree wholeheartedly that pigheaded ideology and "me too" booster-ism is a pox on the political discourse in the USA. As a simple recognition of fact, it is fair to say that both the political left and the political right have their fair share of shrieking fools, demagogues, and would-be brownshirts.
That said, I have to disagree with your haloing blame for this particular episode onto Dems and their boosters. This is an instance of conservatives savaging other conservatives. Trying to equate this spectacle, cons wishing murder upon Parker en mass, to libs flooding political shows looking to argue on the behalf of their candidates is simply advancing a false equivalency. This is an attempt to defuse some of the ugliness of the situation by arguing that both sides do this. While there are people on the left who pine for violent retribution on their opponents, this kind of over-heated rhetoric is far more common on the right.
While I think your larger message is a valuable one, backbiting antagonism in the body politic is a cancer, I have to agree with the commenter(s) who point out that you need to first remove the beam from your eye before we remove the mote from ours. I don't know if you care, but this ugliness directed at Parker only reminds this liberal what a good portion of the conservative base thinks about us *all the time*. Your suggestion that the proper response lefties should have to this spectacle is to stop arguing and defending our leaders is just laughable. If the far right has no respect for their own mouth pieces, no respect for their opponents, and little-to-no respect for the law, then I don't think laying down and hoping for the best is going to change anything.
With respect.
Parker is a wimp: she had no problem taking sowing the wind of conservative anger when it suited her, even approvingly reprinting e-mails from angry right-wingers calling for Democratic candidates to be lined up and shot. Now she reaps the whirlwind and realizes that "taking it" from her side is not so much fun as "dishing it out" to the other side.
And, Rod, when someone takes to the public airwaves to speak on a call-in show, one should expect to receive and be able to handle calls from people who disagree with your point of view. It's nice to see liberals engage in some push-back for those who wish to spread their own propaganda. If they don't like it, they are free to appear on radio shows that do not accept calls or not appear on the radio at all. Where on earth did conservatives get the crazy idea that it is inappropriate for liberals to make an organized effort to publicly criticize them and their arguments? The sense of entitlement is juvenile but, I confess, completely understandable after peddling their bile unmolested for so long.
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