Er… they’re complaining about being blamed.
Look, I’m going to stop trying to guess what you mean and just ask you to state unequivocally what you mean.
There are so many things that don’t work on you…reason and logic being at the top of the list.
Nor do empty insults.
Ok, conservatives and so called “moderates” like Bricker and others let’s put ya to the test.
Since the new, descending, “moderate opinion” of this tragedy is that it wasn’t a politically motivated shooting, but the act of an insane man without political motivation, then I’m sure we can do away with the legal language and charges of asassination of a judge and attempted assasination of a member of congress. Those would just be adjusted to murder and attempted murder. Also, since you all seem to have come back with the unjustified basis that this was the act of an Insane man, then you would of course, by logic, agree that Loughner is legally insane and therefore should be found not guilty by reason of insanity on all charges, and he should not face the death penalty in this case, if that is the consensus.
But why is it that I think that will not be the case, and this man will face the death penalty… Conservative justice at work.
I’m moderate on this topic I guess. He should be found not guilty by reason of insanity if his behavior fulfills the legal requirements. How much longer will you continue playing politics with his disease?
Ha, that’s a joke… I’m playing politics with his disease? I see a diseased board playing politics. I advocate for his life to be spared and I’m the one playing politics?.. sweet!
Er… no.
Where to start? Let’s take these seriatim:
Why? The law is not intended merely to reach someone who kills for political effect. The language of the law reaches the conduct here, so the charges are appropriate.
“By logic?” What sort of nonsense is this?
There’s a huge difference between legally insane and having a mental disease or defect.
Loughner is clearly mentally disturbed. But the test for legal insanity, such that we as a society are prepared to excuse him from criminal liability, is that because of his mental disease or defect he was unable to appreciate the difference between right and wrong, or unable to appreciate the nature and quality of his act.
So no. That difference is what skewers your “logic.” Loghner did what he did because of a mental disease or defect. But if he still knew right from wrong, then he’s criminally liable.
Finally, I completely oppose the death penalty. Not sure what the relevance of my personal feeling on the issue might be, but you seemed to be painting me with a brush that approved of it for some bizarre reason.
Exactly the response I would expect, Brick.
If there is one thing I have learned in this world of insanity, as an insane man, you are only so insane as the insane judge you to their litmus of politik, religion, money, and whim.
That’s good, careful wording: the themes are popular among conservatives. What he says about those themes is not identifiably conservative. It’s incoherent, and it’s not the kind of thing you would hear from Glenn Beck and his ilk. Loughner says some things about English grammar and says people who don’t know what he knows are illiterate, but it’s not like he is arguing for English-only education. When he talks about grammar and literacy and currency, he’s not using them the way you and I use them. He means something else that isn’t clear. And when has Beck ever said the government is using grammar to brainwash people? What’s Hannity say about “conscience dreaming?” There are a couple of kernels of understandable political language in there, and it’s possible he picked those up from conservative media. But here’s what Mernieth said:
Your cite doesn’t support this. I’ve watched his YouTube videos. I don’t watch Glenn Beck or anybody like him, but if he or other conservative commentators normally say these kinds of things, I’d like to hear it.
I don’t know what this means.
But since your earlier post spoke of putting me (among others) “to the test” then I’m curious what the parameters of the test were and what the result was.
We’re not in a Court of Law as you full well know so stop with your usual, tedious handwaving attempts to distract from inconvenient truths. The Right has reacted with insanity to the election of a liberal President from Clinton onwards. It reached a new pitch with a black person being elected.
The Right has used unbelievably inflammatory language and the Republican Party has mainstreamed and legitimised views that would be and should be beyond the pale in a civilised political process.
Your spokespeople have constantly metaphorically and literally waved guns in the face of the electorate and still refuse to back down.
You’ve attempted to make ‘liberal’ = ‘traitor’ with your inflammatory rhetoric. You want people to stop thinking the Right encourages violence as a response to political decisions that don’t go your way, stop doing it.
Disown Palin, Angle, Beck, and the mass nuttery of the Tea Pot Party instead of continuing your hand-waving apologetics.
Of course we’re not. If we were, I’d be talking about even more exacting standards like “preponderance of the evidence” or “beyond a reasonable doubt” and your position would be even more untenable.
No, here I’m simply observing the traditional standard for DEBATE.
And, see, we ARE in “Great Debates.”
As you full well know.
I don’t think there’s a burden on myself to apologize for this. I’ve discussed how wrong it is for the right wing to intentionally inflame people and incite violence as they have as a political tool - and just because this incident didn’t happen to be directly inspired by that (if that’s the case) doesn’t make them any less wrong for doing so. To apologize for what I’ve said would be roughly equivelant to apologizing to NAMBLA after I criticized their behavior because one particular child molester in the news wasn’t inspired by their organization.
I mean - what’s your goal here? Are we supposed to admit that what the extremist Republicans are doing isn’t wrong? Or that it isn’t designed to inspire exactly this sort of violence? That they’re forgiven because this incident is probably not directly inspired by them, and that no nutjob has taken their hints yet and started taking their country back from the communist traitors?
Your strongest case seems to be “their implicit calls to violence and radicalization of the crazies didn’t cause this particular tragedy! So they’ve done nothing wrong, and you should all apologize!” - well, bullshit. What they’re doing is wrong regardless of the outcome of thes particular case.
You’re saying that they’re getting blamed for something they didn’t do - but that’s not exactly the truth. They did it - their words have still been spoken, their imagery purposely designed - it just may be that this particular incident wasn’t the result of it. But that doesn’t absolve them nor mean they are not guilty of anything. If one of the crazies killed another representative tomorrow, and this time very much inspired by the rhetoric on the right - by your logic, while guilt-free today, suddenly they’d be guilty tomorrow. Yet their words and actions and imagery wouldn’t have changed at all, just whether or not some crazy got around to acting on it yet. No, they’re guilty for doing their best to instigate it, whether 0 or 1000 crazies bite.
I’m still not convinced that this guy was just a random blip that did his stuff totally in absense of inspiration from the crazies. If nothing else, the sort of escalation of rhetoric that declares that your political opponents are not merely good people who disagree about how to run the country, but TRAITORS WHO ARE TRYING TO DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU LOVE, bleeding into the mainstream, very well may have emboldened the crazy. They’ve brought the extremist, crazy shit to the mainstream and there’s a lot of fallout for that.
Incidentally, I will probably come to mind as one of the “vocal” people coming to blame the right wing for this guy, but even my first posts on the subject basically said I didn’t know nor did it matter to me if this particular shooter was inspired by that. My attacks were on the bullshit apologists who were handwaving away the calls to violence by extremist politicians. I acknowledged early on that essentially by sheer coincidence, this may not be that sort of case, but this is exactly the sort of thing they’re daring people to do. So I don’t think I was wrong at any point about this subject.
Yes. They’re complaining about being blamed, whether rightly or wrongly. The same party that has painted the opposition as everything but actively out to destroy the country (oh, wait, they’ve donethat, too) is now whining that someone should *dare *to imply that maybe they should ratchet the rhetoric down.
You’re very quick to point out Liberal hypocrisy… but this shameless attempt to play the victim doesn’t bug you at all?
Maybe instead of proclaiming that Liberals are being mean to them, they should say something like, “This is a good opportunity for both parties to be more civil to each other”.
This is a good point.
I am curious if Bricker will accept that if this is all an unfair attack on the right will it be a fair accusation if someone does attack due to their right-wing convictions?
I certainly agree that would be a better reaction.
But let’s go back to my statement, which you objected to and denied: you seem perfectly content to let folks get blamed for what they didn’t do.
Can you explain to me why this isn’t a correct assessment of you? You aren’t bothered by the fact that they were blamed for this incident; instead, you point out their other bad behavior. This is why I offered up the little vignette about Tom Sawyer and the sugar bowl.
Can you explain to me why that was misplaced when applied to your reaction here?
I’ll certainly agree the discussion needs to happen. I’d probably want to exlore what kind of balance should be struck between the exercise of unfettered expression and the social responsibility of avoiding these outcomes. I’d want to explore why the Sixties rhetoric from people like Bobby Seale and the Weather Underground (the latter issuing a formal declaration of war against the United States government) were revered and considered valuable part of the Left’s evolution. I’d want to ask why that even more violent rhetoric, which not didn’t simply happened to persuade unaffiliated people to take action but whose members specifcally planned and executed violent acts, were at that time not viewed with the same kind of anger and loathing that Palin et al engender today.
But I wouldn’t dismiss the discussion as utterly unfounded.
Tom had a history of stealing sugar, boldly and unapologetically, while Sid did not. Polly was quite right both to suspect Tom when the bowl was broken and to come down harshly on Tom when he pilfered under her nose.
Tom was getting blamed for being an habitual sugar sneak, which held true regardless of Sid’s actions. This is simple stuff.
Your guys did it too! 50 years ago! Really?
This isn’t the pit, so I won’t go further, but the method of trying to deflect something by saying “we agree that X is bad, therefore we need to investigate why your side did X before” is so well practiced now that we might as well be arguing with robots. My Glenn Beck watching semi-friend tries to use this exact thing on me (almost down to the exact wording) about twice per conversation. Ironically usually about things I don’t even support - but it doesn’t really matter, it’s all boilerplate. It’s such a cheap way to try to deflect from admitting your side did anything wrong that it’s quite frankly pathetic.
That’s beyond the absurdities of the actual argument. The weathermen weren’t the defacto leaders of a major party, elected officials, etc. They were a terrorist group that resonated with people. Possibly more similar to, say, people who kill abortion doctors on the right who I’d imagine have a lot of followers. I don’t really know that - the 60s were before my time and I don’t have a good grasp on the popularity of those particular movements.
Oh, it all comes down to liberal hypocrisy, as every political question must do. Unless Seale and the Weather Underground aren’t actually “revered” by the amorphous Left
There’s plenty of discussion about 60’s radical groups on the internet, Bricker so I’m sure you’ll have no problem finding a cite or two from a verifiably leftist mainstream source praising those entities for their approach to social change (and not a rightwing source describing it as reverent attention).
Even at the pinnacle of their fleeting popularity among the disaffected youth counterculture, neither the Weathermen nor Bobby Seale were ever close to being part of a political or ideological establishment. They were much less influential in their heyday than Palin is even two years after her failed VP run.
Thanks for that.