Bricks thrown through the windows of political offices. An ominous message left for a member of Congress. A party leader threatened with death. Angry rhetoric is out of control, fueling hatred that will inevitably result in violence. When in the name of all that is good and progressive will liberals condemn the extremists in their midst?
You see, the bricks were thrown through the windows of Republican Party offices in Virginia and Michigan. The profanity-laced message left for Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., was that she would “not live to see her next term.” The death threat was against House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.
FBI agents arrested Norman Leboon Sr. in connection with the threat to kill Cantor, who is Jewish. The FBI affidavit against him quotes from a YouTube video Leboon posted: “Remember Eric ... our judgment time, the final Yom Kippur has been given. You are a liar, you're a Lucifer, you're a pig, a greedy [expletive] pig, you're an abomination, you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads.”
According to campaign finance records made public by OpenSecrets.org, Leboon made two donations totaling $505 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
Is all this evidence that the ranks of the progressive movement are filled with bigots and misogynists prone to acts of violence? Hardly. It merely demonstrates the common sense fact that neither the left nor the right has a monopoly on political extremism, though you wouldn't know that from following the dominant political narrative of the day.
According to that narrative, concern about a runaway national debt, opposition to the strong-arm tactics of Democrats to pass the health care folly and any criticism of the current commander in chief are signs of irredeemable bigotry. In what may be the most splenetic example, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy wrote, “I know how the ‘tea party' people feel. ... I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their ‘Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.”
Let's be clear. Some of the rhetoric that comes out of the opposition to the Obama White House and the Pelosi-Reid Congress is irresponsible. Some of it goes beyond even reprehensible words to despicable acts. Those words and acts must be condemned.
But the people doing the condemning need to keep some sense of proportion. John Avlon, author of “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America,” writes on the Daily Beast that acts of vandalism and threats against Democratic lawmakers create “parallels, intentional or not, to the Nazis' heinous 1938 Kristallnacht, or ‘Night of Broken Glass,' so-named for the 7,000 storefront windows that were smashed.”
Got that? The shameful vandalism of a handful of Democratic offices means the Third Reich is emerging in America. But broken windows at Republican offices and an actual threat to kill a Jewish GOP lawmaker aren't even worthy of a mention.
The people doing the condemning also need to keep some sense of balance. Where were they when Photoshopping George W. Bush's face onto the body of Hitler or carrying signs equating him with Nazism represented the height of rhetorical creativity? Where were they when anti-Bush progressives made the fantasy snuff film “Death of a President”? Where are they now as the game “Kill George Bush” racks up visitors on Internet video game sites?
People in glass houses shouldn't hurl bricks — real or rhetorical. Censuring incivility in our political culture and denouncing the words and acts of extremists isn't a partisan issue. It's a matter of decency.
Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express News wrote this opinion piece, which is rather unremarkable. With all that has been written on this topic recently, this is the article you chose to post, Doc?
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Bricks thrown through the windows of political offices. An ominous message left for a member of Congress. A party leader threatened with death.
Angry rhetoric is out of control, fueling hatred that will inevitably result in violence. When in the name of all that is good and progressive will liberals condemn the extremists in their midst?
You see, the bricks were thrown through the windows of Republican Party offices in Virginia and Michigan. The profanity-laced message left for Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., was that she would “not live to see her next term.” The death threat was against House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.
FBI agents arrested Norman Leboon Sr. in connection with the threat to kill Cantor, who is Jewish. The FBI affidavit against him quotes from a YouTube video Leboon posted: “Remember Eric ... our judgment time, the final Yom Kippur has been given. You are a liar, you're a Lucifer, you're a pig, a greedy [expletive] pig, you're an abomination, you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads.”
According to campaign finance records made public by OpenSecrets.org, Leboon made two donations totaling $505 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
Is all this evidence that the ranks of the progressive movement are filled with bigots and misogynists prone to acts of violence? Hardly. It merely demonstrates the common sense fact that neither the left nor the right has a monopoly on political extremism, though you wouldn't know that from following the dominant political narrative of the day.
According to that narrative, concern about a runaway national debt, opposition to the strong-arm tactics of Democrats to pass the health care folly and any criticism of the current commander in chief are signs of irredeemable bigotry. In what may be the most splenetic example, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy wrote, “I know how the ‘tea party' people feel. ... I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their ‘Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.”
Let's be clear. Some of the rhetoric that comes out of the opposition to the Obama White House and the Pelosi-Reid Congress is irresponsible. Some of it goes beyond even reprehensible words to despicable acts. Those words and acts must be condemned.
But the people doing the condemning need to keep some sense of proportion. John Avlon, author of “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America,” writes on the Daily Beast that acts of vandalism and threats against Democratic lawmakers create “parallels, intentional or not, to the Nazis' heinous 1938 Kristallnacht, or ‘Night of Broken Glass,' so-named for the 7,000 storefront windows that were smashed.”
Got that? The shameful vandalism of a handful of Democratic offices means the Third Reich is emerging in America. But broken windows at Republican offices and an actual threat to kill a Jewish GOP lawmaker aren't even worthy of a mention.
The people doing the condemning also need to keep some sense of balance. Where were they when Photoshopping George W. Bush's face onto the body of Hitler or carrying signs equating him with Nazism represented the height of rhetorical creativity? Where were they when anti-Bush progressives made the fantasy snuff film “Death of a President”? Where are they now as the game “Kill George Bush” racks up visitors on Internet video game sites?
People in glass houses shouldn't hurl bricks — real or rhetorical. Censuring incivility in our political culture and denouncing the words and acts of extremists isn't a partisan issue. It's a matter of decency.
Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express News wrote this opinion piece, which is rather unremarkable. With all that has been written on this topic recently, this is the article you chose to post, Doc?
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