During the height of the Tea Party movement, the stylish thing for liberals to do was wax poetic about the need for “civility” in our public discourse, particular after liberals (wrongly) implied that the Tea Party’s rhetoric and symbolism was the motivation behind the Gabby Giffords shooting (cite).
Fast forward a couple of years and you have liberals going bonkers over the comments of Chick-Fil-A’s president, Dan Cathy. Call it the “tastes like hate” campaign. I see the ‘All instances of opposition to gay marriage support a bigoted position which is hateful’ attitude on display in this thread in that same vein.
Now we’ve got an LGBT activist who shot up the Family Research Council’s HQ (cite). Why aren’t more liberals asking each other to tone down the rhetoric? Too timid to stand up to ideological allies? Blatant hipocrisy? A sincerely-held belief that over-the-top rhetoric is ok as long as it’s targeted at conservatives?
Your comparison fails since the left and middle are not as a group calling for intimidation, oppression, violence and murder against the other side, while the Right is.
As I recall, the Tea Party “rhetoric and symbolism” for which they were criticised included such things as calling for “Second Amendment solutions” and “don’t retreat, reload”, and maps showing gunsights over “targeted” Democratic-held congressional districts - that is to say, referring to or explicitly calling for violent action. When has the left ever used similar explicitly violent imagery?
It is not bigoted to call out bigotry, and it is not hateful to call people’s hatred exactly what it iis.
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[li]This shooting just happened, there hasn’t been much discussion of it at all, period.[/li][li]Chick-Fil-A’s president isn’t just being criticized for his comments, but for his financial support of hate groups. The Right keeps trying to gloss over that and pretend that he’s only getting flak for speaking out, but that’s just an attempt to divert attention from what he’s actually done.[/li][li]To be blunt, any honest discussion of the anti-homosexual movement is going describe them as hateful, bigoted people who are out to harm and oppress others because that’s what they are. If someone walked up to a KKK rally and opened fire, would you say that we should tone down our condemnation of them?[/li][/ul]
Liberals are using a more passive form of brain washing, rejection and ridicule. Not unlike high school kids who dictate how you have to think or dress to be cool. Works great when you are working with sheep.
I don’t think you should shoot people, and although I probably agree with this gun man on the issue I think it is tragic, stupid and counter productive to do what he did.
I also don’t think hateful or over-the-top rhetoric is ok against conservatives. However, calling bigotry bigotry does not classify. Saying “XXX should be shot” would qualify.
The things I referred to were all put out by leaders of “the right”, people like Sarah Palin, people with influence. The things you point to were (with one exception) as far as I can see put out by random people with no particular influence. I certainly agree that “Kill Bush” signs are inappropriate, but you must admit that a random protester waving such a sign has nothing like the influence of Sharron Angle calling for “Second Amendment remedies” or Sarah Palin saying “don’t retreat, reload”.
Anyway, we were talking about the Chik-Fil-A situation. The most “violent” rhetoric there, as far as I know, was the one person who graffitied a Chick-Fil-A, and the twit referred to in the other thread who berated a CFA employee. Now I’ll happily say both of those people were in the wrong; but you seem to be arguing that we shouldn’t point out bigotry and hatred when we see it, and that’s just BS.
The argument seems to be that the anti-gay people can be as hateful as they want - supporting the Ugandan “kill-the-gays bill”, advocate kidnapping the children of same-sex couples, etc. etc. - and somehow it’s calling them out that is the problem? Nonsense.
No, you can stop. I get that pointing out supposed “liberal hypocrisy” has a tendency to make you feel better about your own political convictions, but who are you trying to hold responsible here for the “kill Bush” message? Unless you can point out a specific instance of a specific liberal individual condemning a “kill Obama” message while previously endorsing the “kill Bush” message, you don’t really have a case for “hypocrisy” - and even if you could point out that individual, your case would be limited to them. Not “liberals” as a group.
Let’s start a new thread: Why no acknowledgement that liberals have called for more civility amongst their ranks while conservatives continue to excuse, endorse and elect prominent hatemongers?
I’ll just siphon off some of the well poison from the OP; there’s more than enough there.
Ah, so you’d recommend that members of the KKK or neo-Nazis be treated with reverence, instead of with rejection and ridicule? We wouldn’t want to engage in any brainwashing after all!
Just for the record, it seems reasonably clear to me these are whackos, whose actions cannot fairly be imputed to “The Left.” And I loves me some liberal hypocrisy. But this ain’t it. I’m not seeing any overt or covert suggestions from the left as a whole that these tactics are acceptable or wanted.
Destroying someone’s property is wrong. Calling them a douchebag for supporting virulently anti-gay legislation and groups is good.
Tolerance doesn’t mean you tolerate intolerant people. Tolerance requires that you push against intolerance.
All opposition to gay marriage is bigoted. If your shitty religion thinks gays shouldn’t have rights, or your shitty parents told you gays shouldn’t have rights, it doesn’t matter. Not wanting someone to have rights is prejudice no matter who told you to think that way.
I, for one, would like to formally call for civility in the Chic-fil-A protests and would like to express my profound disagreement with vandalism and shooting security guards as a valid form of political discourse.
Use of the term “liberal” and “conservative” is pretty useless. Using them to lump entire groups of people under a single banner that is somehow responsible for the behavior of everyone else in that group is even worse. We should stop.
I support gay marriage, but I know marriage is by definition a judgment on who should be married and who shouldn’t. Once you include gays, you’re still excluding lots of others who might want to get married. What about polygamy? Do you support it? If you don’t, does that mean you hate Muslims and Mormons?
I have no doubt that plenty of opposition to gay marriage is based on hatred, but it’s not automatically bigoted.
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