# Right-Wing Blogosphere Schism (Little Green Footballs "Parts Ways" With Right) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 1, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585 "2009-12-01T14:53:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/61 "2009-12-03T17:48:00Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > I’ll reiterate a question towards you earlier in the thread: Are your views amenable to new facts? Could the Republican or Democrat party do something so out of line or so good that it would change your view of how they were equivelant? If so, what sort of thing are we talking about? If not, then you’re “they’re all the same!” view is dogma rather than analytical. Sure. If one of the parties adopted as an official platform plank something I considered extremist or nuts, I’d really start to reassess. Simply allowing conspiracy-theory nuts under the “big tent” is SOP for both parties (Michael Moore/Glenn Beck, etc.). When multiple major party figures start openly embracing truther/birther type idiocy, I’ll be worried. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/62 "2009-12-03T17:50:24Z")
There’ve been several elected Republican officials who have expressed doubts about Obama’s birth certificate. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/63 "2009-12-03T18:11:29Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > There’ve been several elected Republican officials who have expressed doubts about Obama’s birth certificate. To repeat: simply allowing conspiracy-theory nuts under the “big tent” is SOP for both parties (Michael Moore/Glenn Beck, etc.). When multiple major party figures start openly embracing truther/birther type idiocy, I’ll be worried. If you have cites, I’ll read. I have no doubt that **Shodan** could rustle up umpteen quotes from minor Dems (house members and state-level pols) saying that “questions need to be answered” about whether Bush knew about 9/11 or similar loony bullshit. You’d have to do significantly better than that. But also to repeat: I think talking about myself much more in this thread is a hijack. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/64 "2009-12-03T18:57:07Z")
> [@furt](#): > > …(Michael Moore/Glenn Beck, etc… Boy, you got us on that one! Gotta admit it, Michael Moore and Glen Beck are just _exactly_ alike, save for their orientation. Moore fudges facts sometimes, and Beck shrieks bald-face lies at the top of his lungs. Why, the parallel is uncanny in its exactitude! ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/65 "2009-12-03T21:42:10Z")
My feeling is that Glenn Beck is far, far more phony than Michael Moore. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/66 "2009-12-04T14:13:23Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > My feeling is that Glenn Beck is far, far more phony than Michael Moore. So…how many does it take? [http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1209/Palin\_Obama\_birth\_certificate\_a\_fair\_question.html](http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1209/Palin_Obama_birth_certificate_a_fair_question.html) Although, I suspect she won’t count as “high-profile” enough. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/67 "2009-12-04T15:10:36Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Reason magazine isn’t exactly radical or fringe. If you think it is, that says more about you than about Reason. I can think of fewer publications that are more dispassionate while still articulating a certain ideology than Reason. Contrast that to almost any left-wing publication, which starts resorting to emotional appeals by the time you get to page 2. “Reason” magazine and the “Reason” Foundation have done far more to discredit and mock the very _idea_ of reason than anything else of which I am aware. And I write this as a subscriber to _Free Inquiry_ and as a subscriber to _The Skeptical Inquirer_ since 1979: Two publications dedicated more than anything else to advancing the cause of reason and clear thinking in the world. The difference between them and “Reason” magazine could not possibly be more striking and alarming. I doubt that sufficient common ground could possibly exist between myself and those who consider “Reason” magazine to be “dispassionate” and not “radical or fringe” for a debate to be worthwhile, but I’ll try… “Reason” magazine and the “Reason” Foundation are funded almost exclusively by steadfastly unreasonable corporations and private individuals and interests who wish to mock or destroy any and all genuinely credible, peer-reviewed science and reason that would tend to reduce their profits if widely accepted by the public. “Reason” magazine is one of their favorite disinformation and propaganda outlets, and that magazine’s writers are, to an individual, slavish devotees of the “fuck the facts” propagandist arts. What else would one expect from an organization funded by the Koch Family Foundations and the Scaife Foundations (among a very small number of other like “minds”?) Hell, David Koch himself sits on the “Reason” board! Koch Industries is the “nation’s largest privately held energy company, with annual revenues of more than $25 billion. … Koch Industries is now the second largest family-owned business in the U.S., with annual sales of over $20 billion.” David Koch is also the founder and chief strategist of the anti-health, anti-reason, anti-American astroturf group who was videotaped joyously cheering and dancing as Chicago lost the Olympics bid and who ordered his vacuous employees and other mindless gorilla dupes to stampede to the town hall meetings and to scream as loud as possible to drown out all dissent at all costs. Koch and his brother brag often about how they’re their father’s “chips off the old block”, and boast that he was a founding member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society. And what organization was less dispassionate and farther into the fringe than the John Birch Society of the 50’s? And does the name “Scaife”, as in “Richard Mellon Scaife”, whose wealth was inherited from the Mellon industrial, oil, uranium and banking fortunes, really need an introduction here? Richard Mellon Scaife, who funded and led the utterly vicious and dogged “(admittedly not very) Vast, Right Wing Conspiracy” against Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were in many ways not far from one of their own anyway? Richard Mellon Scaife, who referred to an interviewer from the Wall Street Journal – the **Wall Street Journal** , no less – as a “fucking Communist cunt”? So, what positions has “Reason” magazine long been infamous for unreasonably attacking and unreasonably espousing? – They have always been the poison mouthpiece of choice for the tobacco industry, crazily asserting in a most crazed manner over and over and over again that nicotine is not addictive, that cigarette makers don’t and never have “spiked” their products, that cigarette advertising in any media has always been completely benign and praiseworthy, and, more recently, that there are absolutely no credible risks whatsoever from second-hand smoke. – They have also consistently been the poison mouthpiece of choice for their funders’ corporations’ crazed anti-environmentalist anti-science. Consider this from CSICOP’s _Skeptical Inquirer_ ([The Skeptical Environmentalist: A Case Study in the Manufacture of News](http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/skeptical_environmentalist_a_case_study_in_the_manufacture_of_news/)): > [@](#): > > \*n the _Wall Street Journal_, Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for the libertarian _Reason_ magazine, judged _The Skeptical Environmentalist_ to be a “superbly documented and readable book,” and referred to the evidence presented as “uncontroversial data.” He ended the review by comparing “radical environmentalists” to Islamic radicals. Then there’s this from “Reason” printed in April: > [@](#): > > So here we are, 100 days into the great eight-year triumph of Hope over Change, a new Era of Really Good Feelings in which only one thing has become increasingly, even irrefutably, clear: President Barack Obama is about as visionary as the guy who invented Dippin’ Dots, Ice Cream of the Future. Far from sketching out a truly forward-looking set of policies for the 21st century, as his supporters had hoped, Obama is instead serving up cryogenically tasteless and headache-inducing morsels from years gone by. > > On issue after issue, Obama has made it clear that instead of blasting past “the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long,” (as he promised in his inaugural address), he’s moving full speed ahead toward policy prescriptions that already had less fizz than a case of Billy Beer back when Jimmy Carter was urging us all to wear sweaters and turn down our thermostats. Instead of thinking outside the box, Obama is nailing it shut from the inside. So: Lomborg’s mainstream-science-free **“uncontroversial data”**? And mainstream environmentalists = “radical” environmentalists = **“Islamic radicals”** – cutting off hands and “honor” killings and terrorism and 9/11? And Obama is “irrefutably” “about as visionary as the guy who invented Dippin’ Dots” and the rest of that anti-reasonable rant? What were you saying, **adaher** , about how “dispassionate” “Reason” magazine is and how “Reason” doesn’t “resort to emotional appeals”? How droll. - - ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/68 "2009-12-04T15:37:28Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Sorry, no. If you offer me a choice of a punch in the face or a kick in the balls, I’m gonna say “neither” and fight both. How very thoughtful and reflective! Such eloquence and perspicacity! I admire your honesty (though nothing whatsoever else about your thought-free “arguments” and “positions”) in more clearly revealing yourself to apparently rely entirely on the most infantile possible over-simplifications, stripped bare of any hint of subtlety and rational cognition. You should run for office, you’d do even better than Palin among your crowd. - - ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/69 "2009-12-04T19:58:45Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > How very thoughtful and reflective! Such eloquence and perspicacity! > > I admire your honesty (though nothing whatsoever else about your thought-free “arguments” and “positions”) in more clearly revealing yourself to apparently rely entirely on the most infantile possible over-simplifications, stripped bare of any hint of subtlety and rational cognition. > > You should run for office, you’d do even better than Palin among your crowd. I was trying to put it in small words for you, given that complex thoughts like “I’m not a Republican” seem incapable of penetrating your helmet. Perhaps next time I’ll try a rebus. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/70 "2009-12-04T20:32:55Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > It’s not, as others have already pointed out. Only if you could establish with fair-minded reason and evidence that both parties _ **equally** _ suck might you have the beginnings of a hint of a point. Speaking as someone who is overall probably to the left of Obama ( and who voted for him ), I have to agree with **furt** that that’s nonsense. Just because one party subjectively sucks twice as much as the other, doesn’t mean that objectively they both might not suck in general. Or to Godwinize, Franco wasn’t as near bad as Hitler. But objectively they were both still assholes. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/71 "2009-12-04T23:12:36Z")
Franco just didn’t have the opportunity for more massive evil. I mean, c’mon, Spain? ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/72 "2009-12-05T08:07:48Z")
> [@furt](#): > > I was trying to put it in small words for you, given that complex thoughts like “I’m not a Republican” seem incapable of penetrating your helmet. So, you dug deep into your sublime, highly educated and highly tuned intellect and brought forth the “rebuttal” that you’ve identified yourself as being “not a Republican”, and somehow you imagine that’s of even the _tiniest_ relevance or makes even the _tiniest_ difference? Would you mind pointing out to me where I wrote that _ **only** _ (or _all_) members of the Republican Party are incapable of clear, rational, well-justified arguments and critical thinking please? Why do you imagine that not considering yourself a Republican is some kind of defense against my and others’ criticisms? Consider this from upthread: > [@Merijeek](#): > > Don’t forget the “I’m so cool, I’m an independent. I think for myself. I’m not part of some party label. Sure, I vote for the same party 99% of the time, but that’s just a coincidence” people. > > It’s particularly entertaining when they feel the need to weigh in on political threads when their only point is that they’re not one of “them” and they damned sure aren’t part of the “other them”. Gawd. So I don’t care _what_ you do or do not call yourself. In the end, considering your facile comments and the fact that you think _“Reason”_ magazine is a credible source and that Obama is much worse a president than G. W. Bush, it’s abundantly clear that you’re a conservative (and don’t imagine that calling yourself a libertarian is any better). You see, conservatives face a greater and far deeper roadblock that prevents all but the very few wisest and most self-aware of them from achieving the goal of clear, critical thinking, and that roadblock is the pervasive dominance of authoritarianism and authoritarian ideology in their worldviews. Such deep-rooted authoritarianism makes subduing confirmation bias and the many other barricades against clear, critical thinking enormously difficult for conservatives to overcome. The scientific facts assembled from many peer-reviewed studies of the domination of authoritarianism among conservative Americans, as documented in the 2009 work [_Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics_](http://www.amazon.com/Authoritarianism-Polarization-American-Politics-Hetherington/dp/052171124X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books), presents a bleak outlook for the ability of conservatives to surmount the barriers to clear, critical thinking when it comes to the topics that are central to their political and socio-economic worldview and biases. The research demonstrates that authoritarian leaders consciously or unconsciously manufacture factitious but “authoritative-sounding” assertions and social “memes” / “bumper stickers of thought” (as with Reagan’s “welfare queen” hate “meme”) for blatantly self-serving reasons, such as to artificially divide and polarize the electorate by deliberately framing issues in an excessively vitriolic and inflammatory fashion. Nothing brings out the voters to the polls like irrational hate! Research also demonstrates that authoritarian _followers_ simply have few and/or weak critical thinking skills or otherwise powerfully resist utilizing them when it comes to the political and economic biases and counterfactual belief systems that comprise their worldviews. The very large number of studies documented by Hetherington and Weiler in their book even includes otherwise hard-to-believe studies revealing that authoritarians, on average, reveal rather poor cognitive functioning. Evolution brought about a human brain and human nature that, by dint of natural selection, primed us to hold and propagate all kinds of blatantly false beliefs. Those who were excessively fearful of unusual factors in the environment, and thus often crafted bogus pseudo-explanations like witchcraft and gods or other mysterious agencies like the “evil eye” of the poor, the unusual, and the dispossessed, were more likely to avoid those situations and, though based in utter falsehoods, their undue fear increased their genetic fitness and multiplied the genes, alleles, or gene combinations in the gene pool. The collection of scientific results that Hetherington and Weiler report in their book establishes that conservatives/authoritarians are innately more fearful than others, especially of views, actions, or behaviors that appear to them to upset the ostensible “natural” or “God-willed” order of things, just as their fearful genetic forbears did. While liberals and other non-conservatives are hardly immune to these irrational fears, their worldviews are much less authoritarian in nature and so those fears do not play anything _remotely_ like the fundamental role they play in conservatives. So you emphasize that you’re not a Republican. Big deal. Palin’s effectively no longer a Republican, either, as indicated by her campaigning against a registered Republican in favor of a nutjob Conservative, and she recently remarked that Glenn Beck would be a fine choice for her Vice-Presidential running mate. That’s why I identified her as the leader of the deeply irrational and mindless authoritarian crowd when I wrote: “You should run for office, you’d do even better than Palin among your crowd.” - - ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/73 "2009-12-05T08:34:58Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Speaking as someone who is overall probably to the left of Obama ( and who voted for him ), I have to agree with **furt** that that’s nonsense. Just because one party subjectively sucks twice as much as the other, doesn’t mean that objectively they both might not suck in general. With respect, I don’t think you quite grasp the issues here. Unless you can name a human institution that consists entirely of faultless, perfectly wise and noble people who never err or misjudge, then every single individual and collection of individuals will be flawed in some way. Yes? So **furt** and others who breathlessly report the shocking – _ **shocking!** _ – fact that both the Democratic and the Republican Parties are flawed are perhaps not telling us anything very earth-shattering after all. Yes? So we flawed humans will _always_ be confronted with a choice between flawed human organizations (including the choice of our own flawed human selves over other flawed humans). So the best we can ever hope to accomplish is to choose the _least_ flawed human institution available among the options. Agreed? So where does it get us to agree to the “shocking” fact that all political parties are flawed human institutions? In the U.S., we’re still left with the only two non-pointless options of either the Republican or the Democratic candidate! And only if **furt** can factually and rationally justify his continuing and utterly laughable assertion that both parties are equivalent (and so we can flip a coin and get the very same result) does anything he’s said here have any validity whatsoever. It is a shockingly flawed crock of excrement. - - ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/74 "2009-12-05T08:44:52Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > So, you dug deep into your sublime, highly educated and highly tuned intellect and brought forth the “rebuttal” that you’ve identified yourself as being “not a Republican”, and somehow you imagine that’s of even the _tiniest_ relevance or makes even the _tiniest_ difference? > > Would you mind pointing out to me where I wrote that _ **only** _ (or _all_) members of the Republican Party are incapable of clear, rational, well-justified arguments and critical thinking please? > > Why do you imagine that not considering yourself a Republican is some kind of defense against my and others’ criticisms? Consider this from upthread: > > So I don’t care _what_ you do or do not call yourself. In the end, considering your facile comments and the fact that you think _“Reason”_ magazine is a credible source and that Obama is much worse a president than G. W. Bush, it’s abundantly clear that you’re a conservative (and don’t imagine that calling yourself a libertarian is any better). > > You see, conservatives face a greater and far deeper roadblock that prevents all but the very few wisest and most self-aware of them from achieving the goal of clear, critical thinking, and that roadblock is the pervasive dominance of authoritarianism and authoritarian ideology in their worldviews. Such deep-rooted authoritarianism makes subduing confirmation bias and the many other barricades against clear, critical thinking enormously difficult for conservatives to overcome. > > The scientific facts assembled from many peer-reviewed studies of the domination of authoritarianism among conservative Americans, as documented in the 2009 work [_Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics_](http://www.amazon.com/Authoritarianism-Polarization-American-Politics-Hetherington/dp/052171124X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books), presents a bleak outlook for the ability of conservatives to surmount the barriers to clear, critical thinking when it comes to the topics that are central to their political and socio-economic worldview and biases. > > The research demonstrates that authoritarian leaders consciously or unconsciously manufacture factitious but “authoritative-sounding” assertions and social “memes” / “bumper stickers of thought” (as with Reagan’s “welfare queen” hate “meme”) for blatantly self-serving reasons, such as to artificially divide and polarize the electorate by deliberately framing issues in an excessively vitriolic and inflammatory fashion. Nothing brings out the voters to the polls like irrational hate! > > Research also demonstrates that authoritarian _followers_ simply have few and/or weak critical thinking skills or otherwise powerfully resist utilizing them when it comes to the political and economic biases and counterfactual belief systems that comprise their worldviews. The very large number of studies documented by Hetherington and Weiler in their book even includes otherwise hard-to-believe studies revealing that authoritarians, on average, reveal rather poor cognitive functioning. > > Evolution brought about a human brain and human nature that, by dint of natural selection, primed us to hold and propagate all kinds of blatantly false beliefs. Those who were excessively fearful of unusual factors in the environment, and thus often crafted bogus pseudo-explanations like witchcraft and gods or other mysterious agencies like the “evil eye” of the poor, the unusual, and the dispossessed, were more likely to avoid those situations and, though based in utter falsehoods, their undue fear increased their genetic fitness and multiplied the genes, alleles, or gene combinations in the gene pool. > > The collection of scientific results that Hetherington and Weiler report in their book establishes that conservatives/authoritarians are innately more fearful than others, especially of views, actions, or behaviors that appear to them to upset the ostensible “natural” or “God-willed” order of things, just as their fearful genetic forbears did. > > While liberals and other non-conservatives are hardly immune to these irrational fears, their worldviews are much less authoritarian in nature and so those fears do not play anything _remotely_ like the fundamental role they play in conservatives. > > So you emphasize that you’re not a Republican. Big deal. Palin’s effectively no longer a Republican, either, as indicated by her campaigning against a registered Republican in favor of a nutjob Conservative, and she recently remarked that Glenn Beck would be a fine choice for her Vice-Presidential running mate. > > That’s why I identified her as the leader of the deeply irrational and mindless authoritarian crowd when I wrote: “You should run for office, you’d do even better than Palin among your crowd.” > > - > - TLDR. If you wanna yap about me, take it to the pit. As I said before, I don’t think it’ll go well for you there, but I’m stupid, so what do I know? I’ll be gone all weekend and will check in Monday night. Otherwise, piss off. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Duality](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.duality/32/4098_2.png) [@Mr.Duality](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Duality)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/75 "2009-12-05T15:19:04Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > According to [the Wikipedia article on LGF](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs), well, here’s the pull-quote: Little green footballs = amphetamines. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19710530&id=BOcNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=33UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4866,3160934](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19710530&id=BOcNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=33UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4866,3160934) It’s easy to find references to the amphetamine epidemic in postwar Japan. “Postwar Japan was the site of the first epidemic of amphetamine psychosis; thanks to its feverish production of amphetamines for the German Luftwaffe, Japanese munitions factory workers popped uppers at an alarming rate as the war neared its end. Drug companies advertised amphetamines for the “elimination of drowsiness and repletion of the spirit,” enabling them to clean out their stockpiles, thereby creating 500,000 new Japanese addicts.” From [http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/recreationaldrugs/amphetamines.htm](http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/recreationaldrugs/amphetamines.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Cort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/77aa72/32.png) [@Cort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cort)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/76 "2009-12-05T18:06:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Bets on how long before it’s just two of them trying to beat the other to the draw with a charge of “Heretic!”? They’ve already been calling him a heretic for months. Hey, anybody want a good laugh? Check out the mad rightwing blog below and then tell me what you think about the state of American public discourse: [http://www.nicedoggie.net](http://www.nicedoggie.net) ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/77 "2009-12-06T01:36:44Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > Why do you imagine that not considering yourself a Republican is some kind of defense against my and others’ criticisms? Consider this from upthread: > > So I don’t care _what_ you do or do not call yourself. In the end, considering your facile comments and the fact that you think _“Reason”_ magazine is a credible source and that Obama is much worse a president than G. W. Bush, it’s abundantly clear that you’re a conservative (and don’t imagine that calling yourself a libertarian is any better). I’m going to take a wild guess and assume that you totally didn’t mean to quote me in there… -Joe ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/78 "2009-12-06T02:04:37Z")
**TWEEEEET!** This thread ostensibly started as a discussion of one political faction either eating its young or waking up after coyote sex. It has now morphed into a discussion of the tack that individuals ought to embrace regarding political parties with far too many comments regarding what specific posters should do with their lives and beliefs. Despite the organic nature of the hijack/derailament, it is still a train wreck. Either return to the original point of the OP or I am going to close the thread. Those feeling a need to continue the personal attacks may resume them in the BBQ Pit. **[/Moderating]** ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2009, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/79 "2009-12-08T02:35:11Z")
> [@furt](#): > > America has a long history of people freaking out over politics (what was the Boston Tea Party but an organized political riot?) as well as a long history of [people freaking out with the fear that other people are freaking out.](http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/15/the-paranoid-center/) Very **interesting** article. This passage was especially telling: > [@](#): > > In the popular imagination, the militia movement of the ‘90s was a paranoid pack of racists plotting terrorist attacks. The University of Hartford historian Robert H. Churchill calls this “the narrative of 1995,” a storyline cemented after McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that year. “In this narrative,” Churchill writes in _To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant’s Face,_ a perceptive new study of the militias, "the militias and the Patriot movement took on the guise of a perfect, racist ‘other,’ and the threat they posed was best articulated by Morris Dees’ apocalyptic vision of a ‘gathering storm.’" > > \ > > Churchill offers a more persuasive origin story. By his account, the militias overlapped with the older, broader populist right, but their origins were distinct. The movement began to congeal not in 1992 but in the early months of 1994, as activists reacted to the lethal federal raid on the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas. Rather than tracing the phenomenon back to groups like the Order, Churchill uses a series of case studies to explore **the long American tradition of armed resistance to intrusive government.** I have not read Churchill’s book, but found a thumbnail review on [Amazon:](http://www.amazon.com/Shake-Their-Guns-Tyrants-Face/dp/0472116827) > [@](#): > > In reality the militia movement was neither as irrational nor as new as it was portrayed in the press, Robert Churchill writes. What bound the movement together was the shared belief that citizens have a right, even a duty, to take up arms against wanton exercise of unconstitutional power by the federal government. Many were motivated to join the movement by what they saw as a rise in state violence, illustrated by the government assaults at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992, and Waco, Texas in 1993. It was this perception and the determination to deter future state violence, Churchill argues, that played the greatest role in the growth of the American militia movement. > > Churchill uses three case studies to illustrate the origin of some of the core values of the modern militia movement: Fries’ Rebellion in Pennsylvania at the end of the eighteenth century, the Sons of Liberty Conspiracy in Civil War-era Indiana and Illinois, and the Black Legion in Michigan and Ohio during the Depression. Building on extensive interviews with militia members, the author places the contemporary militia movement in the context of these earlier insurrectionary movements that, animated by a libertarian interpretation of the American Revolution, used force to resist the authority of the federal government. Had to look all of those up. [Fries’ Rebellion:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fries_Rebellion) > [@](#): > > John Fries (1750-1818) was born in Pennsylvania of German descent in about 1750; he was locally famous for having defeated a foraging raid by the British during the American Revolution. (This may not have actually happened, but it was a local story by 1799.)[1] Ironically Fries had been among those called out to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. > > As an itinerant auctioneer, he became well acquainted with the Germans in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania. In July 1798, during the troubles between the United States and France now known as the Quasi-War, the US Congress levied a direct tax (on dwelling-houses, lands and slaves; sometimes called the Direct House Tax of 1798) of $2 million, of which Pennsylvania was called upon to contribute $237,000. There were very few slaves in the state, and the tax was accordingly assessed upon dwelling-houses and land, the value of the houses being determined by the number and size of the windows. The inquisitorial nature of the proceedings aroused strong opposition among the Germans, and many of them refused to pay, making the constitutional argument that this tax was not being levied in proportion to population. Fries, assuming leadership, organized an armed band of about 60 men, a force that grew to about 400 by mid-day, which included his son Ben Fries, who marched about the country intimidating the assessors and encouraging the people to resist. In March 1799, the governor called out the militia, and the leaders were arrested. > > Fries and two others were twice tried for treason (the second time before Samuel Chase) and were sentenced to be hanged, but they were pardoned by President John Adams in April 1800, and a general amnesty was issued on May 21, 1800. Fries died at his home south of Trumbauersville, Pennsylvania in 1818. A segment of PA Route 663 near Trumbauersville is named in his honor.[2] [Sons of Liberty Conspiracy:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperheads#Copperhead_resistance) > [@](#): > > The Copperheads were a vocal group of Democrats in the Northern United States (see also Union (American Civil War)) who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. Republicans started calling antiwar Democrats “copperheads”, likening them to the poisonous snake. By 1863, the Peace Democrats had accepted the label, but for them the copper “head” was the likeness of Liberty on the copper penny, and they proudly wore pennies as badges. [1] > > \ > > **Copperhead resistance** > > The Copperheads sometimes talked of violent resistance, and in some cases started to organize. They never actually made an organized attack, though. As war opponents, Copperheads were suspected of disloyalty, and their leaders were sometimes arrested and held for months in military prisons without trial — one famous example was General Ambrose Burnside’s 1863 General Order Number 38, issued in Ohio, which made it an offence (to be tried in military court) to criticize the war in any way: the order was used to arrest Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham when he criticized the order itself. However, Lincoln commuted his sentence while requiring his banishment to the Confederate states. > > Probably the largest Copperhead group was the Knights of the Golden Circle; formed in Ohio in the 1850s, it became politicized in 1861. It reorganized as the Order of American Knights in 1863, and again, early in 1864, as the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with Vallandigham as its commander. One leader, Harrison H. Dodd, advocated violent overthrow of the governments of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri in 1864. Democratic party leaders, and a Federal investigation, thwarted his conspiracy. In spite of this Copperhead setback, tensions remained high. The Charleston Riot took place in Illinois in March 1864. Indiana Republicans then used the sensational revelation of an antiwar Copperhead conspiracy by elements of the Sons of Liberty to discredit Democrats in the 1864 House elections. The military trial of Lambdin P. Milligan and other Sons of Liberty revealed plans to set free the Confederate prisoners held in the state. The culprits were sentenced to hang but the Supreme Court intervened in Ex parte Milligan, saying they should have received civilian trials. [Black Legion:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legion_(political_movement)) > [@](#): > > The Black Legion was an additional organization within the Ku Klux Klan which operated in the United States in the 1930s. The organization was founded by William Shepard in east central Ohio.[1] The group’s total membership was estimated between 20,000 and 30,000, centered in Detroit, Michigan, though the Legion was also highly active in Ohio, and one of its self-described leaders, Virgil “Bert” Effinger, lived and worked in Lima, Ohio. > > The Associated Press described the organization on May 31, 1936 “as a group of loosely federated night-riding bands operating in several States without central discipline or common purpose beyond the enforcement by lash and pistol of individual leaders’ notions of ‘Americanism.’” The death of Charles Poole, kidnapped and murdered in southwest Detroit, caused authorities to finally arrest and successfully try and convict a group of twelve men, thereby ending the reign of the Black Legion. > > The Black Legion was organized along paramilitary lines and had five brigades, 16 regiments, 64 battalions, and 256 companies. Although its members boasted that there were one million legionnaires in Michigan, it probably had only between 20,000 and 30,000 members in the state in the 1930s, one third of whom lived in Detroit. > > Black Legion was also the name of a 1937 Humphrey Bogart film, featuring a fictionalized version of the group. > > Members wore black uniforms with skull and crossbones insignia and were allegedly responsible for numerous murders of alleged communists and socialists, notably Earl Little, Malcolm X’s father. If those are the best examples Churchill could find of “the long American tradition of armed resistance to intrusive government,” then, to put it as mildly and charitably as possible, he is describing nothing that should be suffered to survive in the 21st Century. And if the “militia movement” is part of that tradition, it might not be new but it certainly is utterly irrational. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585/80 "2009-12-08T02:50:44Z")
> [@furt](#): > > To repeat: simply allowing conspiracy-theory nuts under the “big tent” is SOP for both parties (Michael Moore/Glenn Beck, etc.). Kids, can you say “false equivalency”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/right-wing-blogosphere-schism-little-green-footballs-parts-ways-with-right/519585.md?page=5)