Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said NO to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine's proposal to write a joint statement condemning threats to members of Congress.
The draft text of the statement says that while Steele and Kaine disagree on the health care bill, they would "together call on elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry" and ask "all Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior."
Sounds civil to me.
DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse told reporters that Kaine sent the letter to Steele today and then phoned him asking the chairman to release a joint bipartisan statement "condemning the threats and acts of vandalism over the past week, calling for an end to such tactics and urging a more civil tone in our politics." "This afternoon, Chairman Steele, through staff, declined Chairman Kaine's offer," Woodhouse said.
Oops. Stonewalled again.
RNC spokesman Doug Heye whined to TPM, "Gov. Kaine had an opportunity to condemn such activities when he was sitting next to Michael Steele on the set on Meet the Press. He chose not to, and instead decided to use it as an opportunity to raise money,"
Heye added:
Obviously, a large majority of Americans - a broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats and Independent - are upset that President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid pushed through health care legislation that increases premiums and raises taxes and did so through strong-arm tactics, closed door meetings and sweetheart deals. Voters have a right to be angry. Unfortunately, some have chosen to engage in language and actions that go too far.
So that's it. The Republicans are just mad that they didn't get their way and they want to punish the outlaw Democrats. One thing for sure, the right-wing nuts have learned well from their mentors if their blog comments are any indication. SOS. SOS. SOS.
NO, that's not it. How can the party of "you lie" and "baby killer" say YES to civility? Why, they could never be uncivil again! They could not abuse traditional rules of House decorum! Worst of all, they could not encourage the wing-nuts to get down and dirty!
HELL NO, they don't want civility.
They want to keep the party going and blame the Dems. when the fight breaks out.
ReplyDeleteIt's only going to get worse. I know Dems just want all conservatives to STFU, but it ain't gonna happen.
ReplyDeleteFor the left, it's all about the meta-narrative. They are civil, reasoned and caring, while anyone who disagrees with them are selfish, racist haters.
Every idiotic action by anyone to the right of Pelosi will be put under the white hot spotlight by the Obamamedia, and the DNC will pull stunts like this, and the rubes will shower them with money.
P.T. Barnum was right...
Dems just want all conservatives to STFU
ReplyDeleteNo, Silver. Dems (if I can speak on their behalf, ha) just want the violence to stop. For that to happen, the violent and dishonest rhetoric from the right, which whips unstable wingnuts into a frenzy, needs to be toned down. Is all.
Silverfiddle - “ For the left, it's all about the meta-narrative. They are civil, reasoned and caring, while anyone who disagrees with them are selfish, racist haters.”
ReplyDeleteSF, I suggest you learn more about this forum before you go off halfcocked. Here are some past posts for your reading pleasure:
DEMOGRAPHIC CLUSTERING AND THE SELF-SEGREGATION OF AMERICA, a post that makes an impassioned plea to engage in dialog with conservative bloggers. Please be sure to read the comment thread to understand the controversies, risks, and rewards of doing so.
A BLESSED KRISTALLNACHT TO ALL. a post that defends a conservative blogger from attacks by groupthink reactionaries on the far right. Please read the comment thread wherein the named conservative blogger thanks the Swash Zone for support.
Grrrrr and Minor Impact Tremors: Please read the comment at 10:52 PM, March 25, 2010 which discusses conservatives bashing conservatives. Some examples to whet your appetite:
Al Swearengen - I think the HCR debate and the ugly aftermath will have a lot of thinking conservatives pondering exactly how we've reached this vile, debased point.
Denver - When politicians egg on the crowd with apocalyptic language and then shrug innocently when violence is threatened we are in trouble. Conservatives are supposed to respect the essential elements of government and rule of law. When they don't they cease to become conservatives and edge toward outright totalitarianism.
Remainder - I didn't leave the conservative movement; the conservative movement left me.
The above comments are written by conservatives about conservatives. About this remark of yours:
SF - Every idiotic action by anyone to the right of Pelosi will be put under the white hot spotlight by the Obamamedia, and the DNC will pull stunts like this, and the rubes will shower them with money.
Silverfiddle, you don’t get it, and I am more than annoyed with your insinuation.
Folks can pretty much say what they like, of course--however stupid and dishonest it may be--but when their "political speech" becomes a misspelled word on the brick they just tossed through somebody's window, I think they really do need to STFU -- and there's something called LAWS, I've heard, that agree with me. I should hope that the Republican leadership will recognize that most citizens don't find such, uh, "exremism" (sic) at all attractive or even acceptable.
ReplyDeleteMcCain said it when he stated that the Dems wouldn't get any cooperation from this point on.
ReplyDeleteNot that I can see where they'd gotten cooperation up to this point.
But the last 18 months or so have really seen a swing in public, politically related violence that is, if not implicitly endorsed and 'egged on' by politicians, is definitely tacitly approved of and encouraged. I hate that phrase 'coded language' but that's just what it is.
And meanwhile, I'm reading comments from cons saying that all of this violence is made up by the left specifically so we can blame the right for it...
...this is the part that really scares me. Ignorance and weapons just don't mix.
I am tired of being called a racist and a hater by implication just because I belong to a certain group.
ReplyDeleteI'm not accusing you of that, but this does feed the meta-narrative I mentioned earlier.
I guess I was just surprised at how simplistic and bereft of critical thought this post was. Don't take that as an insult. I'm not exactly Dr Spock over at my place.
SF - I am tired of being called a racist and a hater by implication just because I belong to a certain group
ReplyDeleteDid anyone in this forum call you a racist and a hater? Do these words appear anywhere is this post? This post is about civility, and the lack thereof.
Instead of being part of the solution, it appears you choose to be part of problem, so stop playing games. Be civil or be gone!
Infidel just posted an impressive piece that links to a Marine's defense of the Constitution. It is a must read for all of us, regardeless of our political beliefs.
ReplyDeletehttp://infidel753.blogspot.com/2010/03/defending-constitution.html
This is an intellectually honest blog, and I am honestly telling you how I feel. Note that I explicitly said I am not accusing you of calling me names.
ReplyDeleteThe news media and much of the left has taken the criminal actions of a few fringe-nuts and tarred everyone right of center by implication.
Civility.
Are you calling Steele uncivil because he won't engage in a DNC fund-raising publicity stunt?
I also don't see anyone on the right denying these action or encouraging them.
Some of the more tenuous charges where there is no evidence do make one think twice.
The left (not democrats, the American left) has a history of making hay out of this kind of stuff, even to the point of perpetrating acts themselves. Democrat HQ in Denver being vandalized by liberals last year is a good example.
Excuse the blogwhoring here, but I invite you to read
Cultural Vandalism
so you can see the historical roots of my skepticism.
SF (aka Not-Dr-Spock), documenting the Republicans' refusal to act civilly (and civil-mindedly) may be simple, unfortunately, but simplistic? I don't think this term applies here at all. You don't need an in-depth socio-political analysis to show (again and again) how the GOP fuels the flames of hatred and violence. Yet it is important to keep pointing it out, especially as those responsible continue to disavow their role in the dangerous spectacle.
ReplyDeletethis does feed the meta-narrative I mentioned earlier
ReplyDeleteSF, what you call a meta-narrative is reality for others, complete with dire warnings about commie-nazi Armageddon, smashed windows, cut gas lines, and death threats.
I also don't see anyone on the right denying these action or encouraging them.
ReplyDeleteC'mon, SF, of course they cannot deny these actions, as they are in plain sight for everyone to see. As to not encouraging them -- are you serious?
OK, intellectually honest, you say, so let's look at it honestly. (And because I'm lazy, even though striving to be intellectually honest, I'm going to reuse a comment I posted on another blog regarding the matter.)
For all the official denounciations of violence from the Republicans, they have really implicitly supported and fueled it with their lies and divisive rhetoric regarding health insurance reform.
Cantor, Boehner et al can say that they do not condone violence, but in the next sentence or five will continue prattling on about the government takeover of health care, socialism, and threats to our freedom, stressing each time that "American citizens" will not tolerate these things.
And they are right, kinda, since for the American wingnut these words (socialism!, threats to freedom!, government!, etc.) are as demonic and explosive as saying that the Devil himself is coming to their house to rape their wives and daughters, and steal their possessions (same thing both, really, to a wingnut).
So they can talk from both sides of their mouth: "We strongly repudiate violence (wink, wink), but Americans will not stand for the government takeover of health care (read: socialism commie-nazi islamist threats to our freedom and guns)."
And so what's a wingnut to do? Which message will he heed?
Gee, lessee...
Bottom line: violence is unacceptable, no matter which side perpetrates and encourages (yes) it.
Ah yes, their speech is "dangerous." Control the speech and you control the debate.
ReplyDeleteWe are in the realm of political rhetoric and propaganda here. I have a problem with both left and right when partisans become "outraged" over what some politician or commentator says.
That's what political speech is designed to do! That's how politicians get elected. Keep 'em stirred up!
Social scientists have damn near proved than emotional appeals are more effective than intellectual ones in getting people to vote a certain way.
My indictment is of an uncritical news media that simply spews sensationalism with no analysis or context.
We are also to blame when we only get our information from sources we like and fail to seek out an opposing view or different take on the issue.
For this reason I don't watch Fox News and I avoid sites like World Net Daily and NewsMax like the plague.
It's about making money by sensationalizing everything and keeping everybody stirred up and watching (or reading) so they can charge more for advertising.
Lastly, hate speech from the left just doesn't outrage like that from the right (WTO protests, Bush assassination fantasies, Black Panther voter intimidation, SEIU beating up black "tea baggers")
and "tea bagger" itself is a demeaning term meant to smear and marginalize an entire group of people.
For a good discussion of this, go see the lefty blog It's My Right to be Left
I hope the FBI catches every perpetrator and prosecutes them all to the fullest extent of the law.
Control the speech and you control the debate.
ReplyDeleteAs long as we stick to facts, and not lies, we should not have the problem of "controlling" one's speech and debates. As long as the Republicans maintain that this mild health insurance reform, very much like their own proposals from the years past, is a "government takeover of health care," "first step toward socialism," or Armageddon (Boehner), we are not having a debate, but scare-mongering and incitement to violence. Demanding basic honesty and toning down wild exaggerations can hardly be considered "controlling the debate," wouldn't you agree?
Speaking of which, I wish the Dems dropped their grandiose rhetoric about how wonderful and historic an overhaul of health care their (Republican) insurance reform is -- because it's no such thing. (Though given how difficult it was to make any changes to our dismally dysfunctional system, it's hard to blame them for temporary, one hopes, gloating.)
That's what political speech is designed to do! That's how politicians get elected. Keep 'em stirred up!
That's regrettably true, SF; and I also agree with your opinion about the media sensationalizing extreme (or sometimes "extreme") and violent events and movements on both sides (yes, the SEIU "beating up"(?) one black teabagger -- were there more?, Ayers, etc.)
But, c'mon, intellectual honesty would demand that you look critically at YOUR side and examine it dispassionately, without automatically resorting to "But the other side did it too!" defense or exaggerations (again, were there more than one black teabagger involved in the scuffle with SEIU people? And were they indeed beaten up? I don't know the details, but the little what I know seems to differ from your version of this story).
We are also to blame when we only get our information from sources we like and fail to seek out an opposing view or different take on the issue.
I know what you mean -- and, in essence, I agree -- but sometimes the "opposing view or different take" is just, well, wrong. Not to get too dramatic and hackneyed, but Hitler had some convincing arguments for extermination of non-Aryans. At least they sounded so to "the other side," who swallowed them whole and without questioning. Rather than looking for a compulsory merit on "the other side," we need to evaluate its arguments on the basis of some larger and more independent (from our political likes and dislikes) values.
Problem is, our values shape our political likes and dislikes, and this is where usually the unbridgeable gap between the right and left opens.
As to tea baggers being a smear term -- isn't a tea bag a self-chosen and proudly displayed symbol of the Tea Parties? IMO, it's no worse or less accurate than liberal (or librul).
I hope the FBI catches every perpetrator and prosecutes them all to the fullest extent of the law.
I hope so, too.
P.S. For this reason I don't watch Fox News and I avoid sites like World Net Daily and NewsMax like the plague.
Good for you (I think). Yet -- I can't resist -- on your blog you encourage trolling on The Swash Zone and other left-leaning sites... Trolling? Really?
Just sayin', what with the intellectual honesty 'n all.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteMy argument is not one of Tu Quoque, since that would be logically fallacious anyway.
I guess I just don't get wound up about what other people say. I also get tired of charges of hypocrisy and lying and irresponsible speech. These are the hot gasses that fuel political dirigibles.
I don't want to re-argue health care, but the dems did employ some trickery and the repubs pointed it out. That's politics, the repubs do the same when they are in power.
Once again, this is not a "you too" defense of repubs, I'm just pointing out that all of these things are part of the tragic political theater, and to focus on just one aspect for political gain is a distortion.
I must admit that I do watch Fox every now and then when something big is happening or when I'm at the YMCA when I'm exercising on a machine.
I also like CNN. I think it is a sad commentary on our society that their numbers are so bad. They really do strive to be the professional, grown up news organization and play it down the middle, but we want our politics extra-spicy.
Finally, I have since been educated that what I do is not really "trolling," since I engage in sincere dialog and don't needlessly provoke people. So I guess I'm misusing the term. I have written a couple of posts on trolling and I always encourage my fellow righties to be civil.
Ann Coulter would never convince someone like you of anything, but Professor Bill Bennett just might. Reading Nat Hentoff (unfairly labeled a lefty) is what really turned me on to constitutional rights issues.
btw, I am more a libertarian than a conservative, but it's a mixed up world and I hate labels. Conservative is easier for everyone to get a handle on...
No, I don't want "conservatives" to shut up, but if one out of ten thousand self-identified conservatives actually is one and can define it or even spell it, I'd be amazed.
ReplyDeleteFace it, it was always too broad an epithet to be anything but blurry and now it's essentially meaningless and too often confused with plain old hostility to an equally meaningless group of straw men with falsely and often ludicrously attributed characteristics.
I want the idiots to shut up - the ones who tell me that if we allow historians to say BCE instead of BC they'll soon be rounding up Christians. The ones who wrote the e-mail I got from a sporting goods catalog saying that the H1N1 vaccination program is the beginning of "tyranny" so we need to stock up on ammunition. I want the Palinists with their witches and death squads to shut up; the people with stories about FEMA death camps and screaming about how Adam Smith was a Marxist and Jefferson, Madison and Paine were Christian fundamentalists. There's nothing conservative about being a liar and profiting from lies. There's nothing right or left about most things, in fact.
You know who I'm talking about, they're the same people who fought voting rights and desegregation and racial discrimination and fluoridated water and they're not conservatives. It's the people who lecture me about how Eisenhower was a far left Liberal and the very word "progress" is the great venus flytrap of communism we'll inevitable walk into if we try to keep people from being rapacious bastards. It's the people who tell their listeners to stop going to church since social justice is COMMUNISM. Are they conservatives? Are they Liberals? Both terms are misleading here and almost everywhere.
You may in fact be a conservative; believe in balanced budgets, getting people off welfare and all that, I am too but I don't know whether I'm a Liberal or a Libertarian or a conservative liberal, since everyone speaks his own language today and has his own axe to grind but I know they're not, these howling Ann Coulters and Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs and their listeners; not in any way and they're the ones we talk about since they're mostly the only voices we hear. They're the ones we need to be rid of, seeing how stupid and gullible our countrymen are.
"It's about making money by sensationalizing everything and keeping everybody stirred up and watching (or reading) so they can charge more for advertising."
Yes and the science of creating false enemies, stuffing almost anyone who gets in your way into a straw man isn't -- by definition -- a Liberal thing or a Conservative thing. Extremists are extremists and it's the extremists trying to raise the hysteria level.
Oh and by the way, I hear people calling themselves teabaggers and I don't think you can blame the name on anyone outside the group -- if you can call it a group. Either way I' have no respect for social security and disability recipients howling about keeping the government out of their retirement and people who just got a tax cut saying they didn't.
You know, Captain, there's a scary amount of overlap in our outlooks.
ReplyDeleteI also shake my head at the fringe nuts and generally try to avoid them. You certainly can't reason with them. I also think both sides paint with too broad a brush.
I agree with you on terminology. Liberal and conservative are at best shorthand labels for us to identify one another with. Conservatives are no more homogeneous than liberals.
Conservatives don't want to conserve anything nowadays and now have become the iconoclasts storming statism's churches and breaking the statues and iconography.
Most liberals, on the other hand, are now far from the classical liberalism of Thomas Jefferson. Modern day liberalism has taken on its own dogmas that shall not be questioned.
I am now for all intents and purposes a libertarian. My values would be readily identified as "Christian conservative," but I don't believe government should be in the business of morality.
Why do we outlaw homosexual acts, drugs, and prostitution? I ask this even though I would not indulge in any of the three. In all honesty however, I vote Republican and am much more comfortable with conservatives, although I still have some cherished friendships with South American leftist friends I met while doing duty down there.
Dammit, I hate labels! but we've got to hang our hats somewhere even though very few of us subscribe to a strict and pure philosophy unadulterated by crosscurrents.
I don't see liberalism as a danger to this country as much as progressivism/statism, which both parties indulge in.
Pardon my Beckian language, but I see the struggle as between the forces of tyranny and the forces of anarchy: Pull too hard one way or the other and we are destroyed as a nation. The left-right battle takes place at the "tyranny" end of the continuum.
Please see my page on libertarianism. You probably won't agree with everything, but I have put some links there and hopefully provided some non-partisan food for thought.
This simple dinosaur is a libertarian in social matters (people should be able to do what they want so long as they're not harming anyone else-- that notion is pretty similar to the C19 Benthamite / J.S. Mill Utilitarian view on personal conduct, I'd say) and something of an economic liberal, based on his understanding of the historical development of capitalism and modern government: "the market" sometimes lets us down, and when and where it does, we have a duty and a right to make good what it has marred, to help the little guy, and so forth. Extreme suffering need not be allowed just to prop up belief in the infallibility of any system.
ReplyDeleteAs for Republicans on violence, why don't they just hold their own damn press conference and -- without the slightest equivocation or hedging -- denounce the a-ho's who are engaging in foolish extremism and violence? That would be a great way to reingratiate themselves with the mainstream, because right now, I think, they're narrowing their support to the most paranoid, violent fringe elements of American society. We need them to stand for something viable again, not pander by omission to the worst among us.
"Extreme suffering need not be allowed just to prop up belief in the infallibility of any system."
ReplyDeleteThat's just what I've been trying to say in my rambling way. Markets may eventually self correct but the pendulum does a lot of damage and sometimes leaves a lot of people in hobo jungles before it manages to come back to the center. No system can be said to be so perfect that if rigidly followed, won't require you to support unjustifiable things.
I can't quite achieve that saurian succinctness being a mammal and all that.
Capt. Fogg, we saurians are indeed simple, thanks -- makes it easy sometimes. A brain bigger than a walnut just gets in the way.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the libertarian and labeling theme that has developed on this particular post, I wrote a post last year on it that may be of some use; here's the link if anyone's interested. The quintessence of it was that while libertarian opposition to outlawing personal conduct that does no harm to others is excellent, I outlined what I believe is the chief flaw in the philosophy: it promotes achieving the ideal free society with capitalism as the vehicle without sufficient scrutiny of that economic system's limitations. In other words, it fails to account for "capitalism" in a genuinely historical context, instead relying more or less upon unhistoricized, floating concepts like "the free market." This blind spot, this common failure to historicize, endangers the truly beneficial insistence on liberty of thought, movement, and action (which insistence really should be a point of agreement amongst all of us).
By the way, SF, went over to your page and found it very interesting. Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteA dino-thought: the risk of untrammeled libertarianism would not be anarchy; I suggest that because of that philosophy's faulty reliance upon the inextricability of capitalist practice and social liberty, the result is far more likely to be the kind of monopolism and corporatism we now see all around us. Those who get the edge, if not held in check, will quite simply abuse their own freedom to take away others' -- Marx was quite right when he said 150 years ago that capitalism tends towards monopoly; invoking "competition" wouldn't invalidate this observation because competition is by no means a guaranteed effect of market forces. Paradoxically, then, "libertarianism" is precisely one of those admirably artificial orientations that would REQUIRE some measure of governmental support (which entails the wisdom to know where a philosophy, an ideology, a system, is vulnerable and unstable) to ensure its sustainability and its benefits.
Dino:
ReplyDelete"Those who get the edge, if not held in check, will quite simply abuse their own freedom to take away others"
No doubt. We're seeing that right now from the elected ruling class. What flavor do you like your tyranny? Republican or Democrat?
Also, untrammeled socialism brings about the greatest monopoly of all, just ask the Venezuelans who stand in line for toilet paper as the favored "Bolivarchs" zoom by in air conditioned hummers and Navigators.
It's a balancing act, isn't it?
Balance -- yes. Never perfectly achieved, and achieved at least in part only when citizens are paying attention to what's going on.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't see the HRB, as everyone is calling it these days, as "tyrannical" at all, if indeed that's what you're aiming the adjective at. I don't see it as outrageous that the gov should tax my lizard hindquarters if I won't pony up for health insurance -- annoying, maybe, but not outrageous.
Aside from that, what freedom is being taken away from me -- the right not to be able to get help if I am ill? The right to have my expensive individual insurance policy canceled by greedy plutocrats, etc? This is an indisputable social good we're talking about here -- almost everyone needs serious and expensive health care at some point.
Old Uncle Karl said it well, I think -- for some, freedom is simply the freedom to starve. So we can't absolutize the term to the point where it becomes an engine of destruction against human dignity. I make this case in a general way, and am not aiming it at you specifically, SF.
I share your disdain for those who deal in absolutes, but my argument is one of property rights. What gives anyone the right to confiscate another's property and redistribute it?
ReplyDeleteWhat is a mandate to buy insurance but corporate America using the absolute confiscatory power of the US Government to take my money and put it in their pockets?
I'm not trying to start a fight here, just letting you know where I'm coming from.
SF,
ReplyDeleteIt's probably a fair statement that in many ways, corporations and gov. are already ganging up on us and we aren't even getting anything for it, other than, well -- that unmentionable past participle. I'd at least like to get something worthwhile for a change. It's true that the most troubling thing about this legislation is the way it has the feds channeling citizens towards gigantic, uncaring private entities. I'd just as well have the government take care of insurance, while private enterprise handles the actual care. Which is pretty much -- Medicare. and most of us like that program.
I also think that while property rights should be strong, I can't live in a civilized space and assert an absolute right never to part with anything I own, pay any taxes, etc. "Ownership" is vital, but it's also a social phenomenon and it should be understood in dialectical relationship with other rights, responsibilities, and benefits. Don't have time at the moment to develop this farther and it's important to be precise on such matters (getting them wrong is risky, no?), but perhaps in future I will.
Dino,
ReplyDeleteYup, and I think a lot of folks like me would be less upset with the federal government if it had to balance the books each year like many states, including my Colorado, do.
They play the candyman and we let them. Shame on us.
It's ironic to me that some are being uncivil (no one here on this post) about a simple pledge for more civility!! LMAO
ReplyDelete