Clinton's foot in mouth once again

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Find anything distressing about this? http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100416/D9F4EPUO0.html

My response: "No, Mr. Clinton, it's a slippery slope from demonizing political dissenters to tyranny--once which would deserve dethroning, might I add. Yes, I am armed. Yes, I support secession. But casting me as violent, incapable of self-government, or even as someone who desires to murder innocents, especially to simply make a political point, is such an ignorant statement, such a low blow I'd have expected better from Mr. W. Bush."

Not really. There is a lot of disturbing rhetoric coming from the right wing leaders, and a lot of their followers really are stupid enough to take it literally.


There was a hell of a lot more of that under the previous administration than there is today.


I wonder why anyone would every draw that inference.

Clinton's right, there are some truly off the chain types in the extreme right. Read The Turner Diaries, just google it. That is a white supremacist novel written in the 70s that inspired McVeigh. In the novel, a white nationalist cell bombs FBI HQ, but does not destroy it. This act leads to an uprising by "The Organization" against the Jew-led System, which eventually turns into a nuclear civil war, with 18 nukes exploded in Manhattan, and the main character ordered to go on a suicide nuking of the Pentagon as penance for betraying his cell inadvertently. The Pentagon is successfully destroyed, and The Organization eventually wins its war, leading to an all-white world. Another novel, Unintended Consequences, describes how an effort to confiscate guns leads to snipers taking out top politicians. McVeigh read Unintended Consequences in jail (it was first printed in 1996), and said that if he had read it several years earlier he would have done things differently.

Survivalist fiction is passed around widely in the far right, and all of it describes heroic American citizens rising up against a tyrannical government with force of arms, and winning. It's a short jump from there to believing that a few well placed bombs or bullets will start a revolution, the war that the American public will join en masse once they realize the rightness of the Patriot cause. The temptation to cast oneself as the hero, the guy who is lauded as the new George Washington by generations unborn, is too much for some to resist.

Wealth inequality is far greater than in 1995, and the elite seem intent on widening the gap further. America has less social mobility than parts of Europe! Eventually, somebody's gonna get it right, and start a war. While I would welcome and join a revolution, we should be under no illusions-it would be bloody and messy. The outcome may not be the intended one. The French didn't get their rational society, but Napoleon, who started a war that engulfed Europe in order to build a French Empire. (The German name for France remains "Frankreich", literally French Empire.) Millions of Russians died in two famines and the purges, all to create a perfect society, just because they wanted to be rid of the Tsar, who partied while the peasants starved, in a similar fashion to Marie Antionette. The American elite is partying while the peasants starve, and is just asking for it.

How about that one by T. Jefferson about the blood of tyrants watering the tree of liberty. Should that be condemned because someone might take it literally?

That obnoxious utterance by Bill Clinton was a condemnation of the exercise of the right of free speech.

If you want free speech be prepared to put up with very unpleasant speech.

ruveyn

No.


If you listen to Clinton himself, it is quite plain that he has no problem with free speech. He was very clear that he does not want to restrict people's right to criticize elected officials, even to criticize them very harshly. He was only pointing out that the violent rhetoric coming from right-wing leaders does have consequences.


Ruveyn, you are highly unlikely to ever find another person as anti-censorship as me, so spare me the spiel. The observation remains that some right-wingers will be incited to violence by what they hear from their leaders. This does not mean there should be any criminal or even civil penalties against those leaders, but there is nothing wrong with telling them that they should bring it down a notch.

What violent rhetoric? I don't recall anything. Please don't bend words and out of context phrases either, leave that to Glenn Beck and his chalkboard.

The left just likes to whine about the opposition like the right does. These are the same folks who were all parroting "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" a few years ago.

Honestly if you been paying attention most of the political "violence" I've heard about lately has been from Obama-backing union thugs.

Well, large numbers of people apparently take Beck seriously, sad as that is, and you can't deny that he has made plenty of ridiculous claims. There have been several comments form Republican leaders about wanting their supporters to be "armed and dangerous" among other quotes. The whole Tea Party movement seems to have an undercurrent of militia movement revolution fantasies.


Oh, I hate the hypocrisy from both sides on this point. But if you listen to Clinton's comments, he explicitly said that he thinks people should go out and protest and criticize their leaders. He denounced the threats against Representative Cantor, a Republican. The Republicans were the only ones who ever tried to suggest that opposing the administration was akin to treason. So I see your point that it goes both ways, but I really think the Republicans are far worse on this particular hypocrisy.


Evidence please?

Some people will be inspired to violence by the Bible and Q'ran. Shall we burn these books to be safe? There will be people inspired to violence by what most folks consider inoccuous and innocent. That is the way things are. There is no remedy for it so relax and get used to it. Since we cannot spot violent folks before they do violence reliably the only thing to do is nail these misbehaved folk after they do their damnedest.

ruveyn

Beck is a ratings whore and a loon sometimes but I'm pretty sure he's never advocated violence. Beck has his bad moments and he has his good moments. Lately he's preached a lot of libertarian ideas(not saying Beck is a libertarian btw) to a probably mostly neocon audience. This past week he had a whole show about cutting defense spending believe it or not.

I'm not that concerned about old white people with picket signs and tea bags tho. All things considering, for the number of protests and the number of people they've been remarkably calm and peaceful. They're nothing compared to the destructive WTO/RNC/DNC protesters we've seen over the last 10 or so years. Not to say they didn't have a legitimate cause either, all these protest movements are very loose coalitions you gotta remember that. There are some bad apples in every group like this.

I just see a lot of these accusations of encouraging violence and whatnot from Obama, Pelosi, Clinton, etc.having more to do with the fact that this movement is against them and wanting to deflect criticism rather than actual fear for their safety. Saying that Palin is encouraging violence by taking figures of speech out of context literally is really stretching it. What's going on in the country is healthy in my opinion.

As for the union thuggery, just look it up. They've been pretty openly confrontational with the tea parties and town hall protesters over the last year or so. here's one of the videos they made a big deal about

Are you deliberately misrepresenting my opinion? I do not, under any circumstance, believe censorship is appropriate. I would not censor the Bible or the Koran. I would not censor Mein Kampf.


We can tell certain leaders who are inciting violence that the extremes they go to in their rhetoric is a bad idea. This doesn't mean censoring them. Clinton only seemed to want to impress upon the right-wing leaders and pundits that their words are very influential and should be chosen carefully and responsibly. As I explicitly stated, I don't believe there should be any legal repercussions for them if they continue their overblown rhetoric, but other people are allowed to encourage them to exercise some modicum of restraint.

In his CPAC speech, he called progressives a "cancer" and stated that they needed to be "eradicated." I hate to be the one to call Godwin's Law, but that doesn't sound too far removed from comments that were made about the Jews in earlier times.


A few of them do seem dangerous, but I will grant you that the overwhelming majority of them are peaceful and fairly innocuous, albeit grossly misinformed on a number of issues.


I disagree. The anger at the status quo is being misdirected in a counterproductive fashion: the Republican rank and file will soon fall in line to oppose any form of financial reform that could possibly be proposed. Do these people really want to keep the same system that led to the recent crash? Of course not, but their leaders are lying to them and getting them to go against their own interests. And I'm not saying the Democrats have the answer either, but these protesters do not, for the most part, know why they are angry or who their enemy is.

If I remember correctly Beck was talking about pushing big government "progressives" out of the GOP or something along those lines. Not killing them

Are you referring to that supposed "militia movement"? I don't really take them too seriously, I see them mostly as a bunch of yahoos who like to dress up in military fatigues and play with guns in the forest. They're a pretty tiny minority either way.

Let me guess - would I be right to place money on a good chunk of the same people on this thread who moan about Clinton also feel that Autism Speaks et al should be gagged.

I don't even know anything about Autism Speaks but I'm not too involved in the whole "community" so whatever.

I don't have an issue with Clinton saying stay civil, it's just the whole systematic attack by the left trying to tie the Tea Parties with violence and extremism. It's just not based in reality. It's being done to scare people away from the movement and to shut them up.

I also take issue with the whole notion of words = actions too. People are responsible for their own actions not any one else. Nobody is actually advocating violence.

Not particularly.

I think it is perfectly fair comment to inquire into the consequences of free speech. Not to suppress or control free speech, but rather to cause people to consider whether the particular mode of exercise of free speech will accomplish the end that they seek.

At then end of the day, you may consider that your sign that says, "Kill all XXXXX!" is the correct approach to your cause, and you are free to exercise your right in this fashion. But, perhaps, a more nuanced message would attract better, more constructive public attention to your cause.

Maybe you are the exception on this thread then.

The far right in America are insane by most of the world's standards. Even Putin is far more liberal. Asides, if people are scared off by his remarks - well they are responsible for their own actions, right. By your argument anyway...

I used to take this line - but as I have grown older I have seen the fallacy in it. It gives people far too much credit, in reality most people are, for want of a better word, stupid. Something which is especially true in politics...