Writing an op-ed in the New York Times, Paul Krugman mentions the internal report by the Department of Homeland Security on domestic terrorism, which was not well-received at the time. But things are different now, according to Krugman:
But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.
There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn't say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven't directly incited violence, despite Bill O'Reilly's declarations that "some" called Dr. Tiller "Tiller the Baby Killer," that he had "blood on his hands," and that he was a "guy operating a death mill." But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.
And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.
Krugman goes on to list voices he believes are feeding the conspiracy minded potential terrorists: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, actor Jon Voight. Krugman also says:
Credit where credit is due. Some figures in the conservative media have refused to go along with the big hate -- people like Fox's Shepard Smith and Catherine Herridge, who debunked the attacks on that Homeland Security report two months ago. But this doesn't change the broad picture, which is that supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.All this stern warning/hand-wringing would, perhaps mean more if Krugman had bothered to recall that there were not two acts of murderous domestic terror in the recent past: there were three.
The murder of Private William Long by Abdulhakim Muhammad was not, according to his own statements thus far, motivated by right-wing talk radio hosts and what Krugman sees as their systematic feeding of conspiracy theorists. In fact, Abdulhakim Muhammad appears to believe that U.S. soldiers are, as a matter of course, raping and killing innocent Muslims, as well as desecrating the Koran on a regular basis. Wherever Pvt. Long's killer got his views, I highly doubt Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh had anything to do with it.
The apparent belief that hate speech or violent extremism exists only on one side of the political spectrum is hard to account for--yet it exists. In the days since the murder of George Tiller, a plethora of articles and a wealth of conversation has ensued on the topic of whether the right's anti-abortion speech played a contributing role in the decision of the killer to commit his crime, but no voices of similar stature have raised any concern whatsoever about whether the left's anti-military speech may have contributed to Abdulhakim Muhammad's decision to open fire on soldiers. This is because to many on the left, anti-military speech is sane, and reasonable, and impartial; it's what everyone thinks, so how could it possibly foster hate?
The truth is that disturbed, potentially violent individuals exist on the extreme fringes of both the far right and the far left. They may feed their hatred from many different sources, though in general the mainstream on either side of the political spectrum isn't bloodthirsty enough for them. But anyone who thinks that hate is confined to the extremist groups on the right is probably not examining the problem objectively.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Rebecca, I agree with most of your last response to me. I just think some of your rhetoric is innacurate, unfair, and counterproductive.
"Contact your members of Congress to change the laws, which they have had 35 yrs to do."
Rebecca said:
"I do. I don't have much confidence in politicians though. As I said, the work will be done through educating the young well and by helping individual women as much as possible."
I am curious why people that call abortion doctors murders do not do the same for members of Congress. Why don't they protest at members of Congress' office or home locations? It is their lack of action that makes abortion legal.
Apparently threats at the Holocaust Museum have been happening since its inception
"My Daughter's Chilling Account of Years at Holocaust Museum"
Jeni Mitchell, just out of college, worked at the museum during its start-up, in 1992, through its 1993 opening, and two years after that. Part of a letter to her father.
"The entire time I worked there, we always expected something terrible to happen. I was very lucky it didn't while I was there -- but it wasn't for lack of trying. Our head of security was a former FBI guy and he said we would not believe the volume of threats.
While the museum was being built, we were told that neighboring buildings were enhancing their security and protection in anticipation that the Museum would be a target for violent extremists, possibly even blown up.
When we opened, each of us working there received a 'security kit.' This was to supplement our in-person briefings. The kit contained instructions on what to do in the case of a bombing, an evacuation, receiving a bomb threat, etc.
The kit also included a piece of paper stapled to a stick; the paper screamed in bold letters, 'I'M GETTING A BOMB THREAT!' The idea was that if I were to receive an actual bomb threat, I should keep the guy on the line, stand on my chair and wave this sign around frantically until someone noticed.
One time, I was talking to this very nice woman in NYC on the phone, when our evacuation alarm went off. It was right behind my desk so I gave a little scream. I was pretty sure it was a drill, so I shouted into the phone 'I'll have to call you back,' but I couldn't be heard over the noise.
Off we went for our evacuation drill. Half an hour later I returned to my desk and called the woman back. It turns out that in the interim, she had called everyone she knew in New York to tell them the holocaust museum had been blown up. Whoops.
"Contact your members of Congress to change the laws, which they have had 35 yrs to do."
Rebecca said:
"I do. I don't have much confidence in politicians though. As I said, the work will be done through educating the young well and by helping individual women as much as possible."
I am curious why people that call abortion doctors murders do not do the same for members of Congress. Why don't they protest at members of Congress' office or home locations? It is their lack of action that makes abortion legal.
Apparently threats at the Holocaust Museum have been happening since its inception
"My Daughter's Chilling Account of Years at Holocaust Museum"
Jeni Mitchell, just out of college, worked at the museum during its start-up, in 1992, through its 1993 opening, and two years after that. Part of a letter to her father.
"The entire time I worked there, we always expected something terrible to happen. I was very lucky it didn't while I was there -- but it wasn't for lack of trying. Our head of security was a former FBI guy and he said we would not believe the volume of threats.
While the museum was being built, we were told that neighboring buildings were enhancing their security and protection in anticipation that the Museum would be a target for violent extremists, possibly even blown up.
When we opened, each of us working there received a 'security kit.' This was to supplement our in-person briefings. The kit contained instructions on what to do in the case of a bombing, an evacuation, receiving a bomb threat, etc.
The kit also included a piece of paper stapled to a stick; the paper screamed in bold letters, 'I'M GETTING A BOMB THREAT!' The idea was that if I were to receive an actual bomb threat, I should keep the guy on the line, stand on my chair and wave this sign around frantically until someone noticed.
One time, I was talking to this very nice woman in NYC on the phone, when our evacuation alarm went off. It was right behind my desk so I gave a little scream. I was pretty sure it was a drill, so I shouted into the phone 'I'll have to call you back,' but I couldn't be heard over the noise.
Off we went for our evacuation drill. Half an hour later I returned to my desk and called the woman back. It turns out that in the interim, she had called everyone she knew in New York to tell them the holocaust museum had been blown up. Whoops.
I actually received death threats. Personally, addressed to me at my office"Contact your members of Congress to change the laws, which they have had 35 yrs to do."
Rebecca said:
"I do. I don't have much confidence in politicians though. As I said, the work will be done through educating the young well and by helping individual women as much as possible."
I am curious why people that call abortion doctors murders do not do the same for members of Congress. Why don't they protest at members of Congress' office or home locations? It is their lack of action that makes abortion legal.
Apparently threats at the Holocaust Museum have been happening since its inception
"My Daughter's Chilling Account of Years at Holocaust Museum"
Jeni Mitchell, just out of college, worked at the museum during its start-up, in 1992, through its 1993 opening, and two years after that. Part of a letter to her father.
"The entire time I worked there, we always expected something terrible to happen. I was very lucky it didn't while I was there -- but it wasn't for lack of trying. Our head of security was a former FBI guy and he said we would not believe the volume of threats.
While the museum was being built, we were told that neighboring buildings were enhancing their security and protection in anticipation that the Museum would be a target for violent extremists, possibly even blown up.
When we opened, each of us working there received a 'security kit.' This was to supplement our in-person briefings. The kit contained instructions on what to do in the case of a bombing, an evacuation, receiving a bomb threat, etc.
The kit also included a piece of paper stapled to a stick; the paper screamed in bold letters, 'I'M GETTING A BOMB THREAT!' The idea was that if I were to receive an actual bomb threat, I should keep the guy on the line, stand on my chair and wave this sign around frantically until someone noticed.
One time, I was talking to this very nice woman in NYC on the phone, when our evacuation alarm went off. It was right behind my desk so I gave a little scream. I was pretty sure it was a drill, so I shouted into the phone 'I'll have to call you back,' but I couldn't be heard over the noise.
Off we went for our evacuation drill. Half an hour later I returned to my desk and called the woman back. It turns out that in the interim, she had called everyone she knew in New York to tell them the holocaust museum had been blown up. Whoops.
I actually received death threats. Personally, addressed to me at my office. Written in cramped, sociopathic handwriting, pages and pages of nonsense. I turned them over to security and didn't worry about it (who would bother to kill the schedule coordinator?) but it was chilling."
Read the rest:
http://tinyurl.com/m7rhy8
Ken, thanks for the discussion. I appreciate your candor. I do think history tends to repeat itself and we need to learn from it. Our primary lesson, I think, rather than merely condemning the Germans as moral monsters, should be self-examination--could we possibly be falling into any of the same kind of mindsets? Are we possibly doing the same types of things under different labels?
Julie, I do consider pro-abortion politicians to be murderers. As for inaction, well it depends on the circumstances whether or not that's culpable, but yes, for the most part, the politicians who aren't actively pro-abortion but don't act when they could make a difference, are like the standers-by in Germany. You are right that there could be more concerted effort in the direction of protesting outside their offices but the fact is that most of us aren't standing outside of abortion clinics just to protest but to save lives; if my being there makes a difference to a woman then that's where I'll be first.
"The lack of any other way to stop the baby killing makes it reasonable to use deadly force." pd
TR: I'm real nervous to give this argument, but non-lethal force can sometimes work. Take the case of Charles Cullen. Cullen killed 29 patients at a hospital using digoxin. Cullen initially claimed they were "mercy killings" but I think this was ruled false. Although the death penalty was considered he ultimately received life on a deal. Although I might support death in his case there's no evidence he's killed anyone since.
So it's not always and everywhere necessary to kill a killer in order to stop him. I'm hesitant to go down this path as I'm coming close to saying it's okay to keep an abortion doctor in your basement or chop his hands off, but as psychotic as those are I think they are better than killing.
Note: I'm still having major problems with this site so I hope I get the willpower to quit on it.
The practice of abortion and the Nazi Holocaust are not the same thing, but they share the same intellectual and ideological roots in theories of negative eugenics growing out of Charles Darwin's work from the 1860's forward. What one might call by the portmanteau term "eugenocide" was rather an old idea by the time the Nazis took it up in the 1930's. Versions of it had been expounded -- almost invariably on the political left and not the political right -- for decades before Adolph Hitler arrived on the scene, and not only in Germany -- where it was in vogue in "progressive" circles all through the Weimar period, before the Nazis took control. Before Hitler took charge in Germany, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was already arguing for a racially-targeted eugenic policy that would use abortion among other means to reduce what it wouldn't be inaccurate to call the "non-Aryan" proportion of the population in the United States. Sanger was especially keen to see the African-American population reduced, with is in keeping with the recent comments by MLK's daughter recognizing that abortion is in its practical effect and often in its tacit intention a form of "eugenocide" against what would be future generations of African-American children. Finally, it's worthy noting that it was no coincidence that the earliest opponents of the Nazis tended also to have been among the earliest opponents of eugenics more generally, at a time in the late 19th and 20th century when opposition to eugenics was consider as far beyond the pale in "bien pensant" circles as opposition to abortion still is today. None of this is to equate a pro-abortion position with Nazism, but it is to suggest that the intellectual affinities and ideological overlappings of an institution like Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood and an institution like Adolph Hitler's Nazi Party are substantial and significant enough that they ought to give anyone morally and intellectually responsible at least a little bit of pause before going "forward" to take a pro-abortion stance.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.