Brain Fertilizer

Check out this (link via Drudge):

CAMPAIGN RAGE: FLORIDA DEMOCRATS PLACE NEWSPAPER AD CALLING FOR RUMSFELD HIT; FUNDRAISING FOR KERRY

Campaign 2004 turns extreme in Florida with the placement of a newspaper ad calling for physical retribution against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld!

"We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger," the ad reads.

Then there's the flap over Kos' derisive comments about the contractors killed in Iraq.

And let's not forget the verbally violent troll Annika encountered in her comments here. Excerpt:

You know, I used to think that all Americans were arrogant, narcissistic pricks. Then a couple of years ago I got on the internet newsgroups and discovered that it was the Reich Whingers who were the arrogant, narcissistic pricks. After a year of arguing with these rubes over the Iraq war and subsequent occupation, I really began to despise you. Now, after spending the past half year roaming through the right whinge blahgosphere, I just wish you Reich Whingers could be exterminated like vermin. Fortunately, the valiant Iraqi insurgents will do just that.

Her reaction has already been linked, but I'll link it again, because the question she raises is quite valid:

So when an idiot like this morning's troll says that he thinks conservatives should be "exterminated like vermin" and "need to be snuffed out of existence," how am i supposed to take that? Is it rhetorical hyperbole, or is the guy a real nutjob who needs to be monitored closely?

My point is this: in the cultural war that's been going on in this country for the last forty years, one side always seems to be more violent than the other, if not in deed then in rhetoric. i'm sure there's some psychological or sociological reason for that phenomenon, but i have no clue what it might be, nor at this point do i give a shit. i just think it's worth noting.

And then the left deliberately organized an attempt to intimidate Karl Rove, who isn't even elected.

The more radical left (which includes the Dem Underground and LOTS of lefty blogs) is increasingly advocating violence toward people with whom they disagree. Should this be taken as overblown rhetoric by people who don't really understand the literal meaning of the words they use? Or should Democrat violence on Republicans now be considered a Hate Crime?

Now, we all know liberals who aren't violent. Who would never consider using violence to bring about their goals. Obviously, we cannot hold them accountable for what their crazier comrades do or say, any more than I can be held accountable for what Pat Buchanon says or what white supremacists do. [...however, that is precisely why I bought rifles: to have a way to hold them accountable...}

On the other hand, the record of the left is inescapable: more people dead as a consequence of leftist regimes in the range of 50 million dead by starvation in China and the USSR alone (...how many in Cambodia and North Korea...?) Okay, those were inadvertant. Nobody on the left actually intended for them to die, right? Well, except for maybe Stalin and Mao, et al. That was liberalism improperly applied. The intentions are pure, so the mistakes are excusable.

I see the logic of that. For instance, look at the death and misery caused by Christianity inaccurately applied. And yet, and yet...I still find it an argument sadly non-compelling, because of other historical realities.

Take a look at the French Revolution. The revolutionaries were liberal, and were pushing for more freedom. The only problem is that using the language of revolution and freedom, successively more liberal groups were able to seize control and the first thing they did each time? Execute the former leaders who weren't "liberal" enough. They justified it by saying the previous leaders were standing in the way of freedom. And yet, the French Revolution was still a bloodbath, and the majority of the dead were not the nobles, but the populace themselves who found the movement shifting farther and farther left.

The extreme right is still responsible for more direct deaths than the extreme left, yes. Even broken up in components, Timothy McVeigh alone probably exceeds the number of deaths in race riots. The KKK killed and terrorized its share of people, and ELF and PETA will probably never even come close, even at their worst.

But the increasingly violent actions and rhetoric on the part of the liberal extreme is troubling to me, as is the lack of condemnation from the less-extreme left. I found it increasingly troubling that Dean attracted followers through his "anger" at the establishment. I was gratified that when it led to a rather embarassing verbal explosion that many of his followers melted away...but the rage component is still there.

It's still there in examples like the attempt to intimidate Karl, in the "Bush=Hitler" assertions, in the increasingly prevalent unwillingness to accept that the Bush Administration can be mistaken without having lied or misled (much less the very real probability they were correct about Iraq), in the original refusals to accept that President Bush might actually have noble and worthwhile goals in pursuing the Global War on Terror and his decision had nothing to do with oil profits. I wonder what violence is going to occur by "peace" protests at the upcoming International Monetary Fund conference in Washington DC.

And I fully expect no one the left will even say one word in condemnation.

My conclusion is that while the bulk of Democrats/lefties/liberals may not encourage or condone the increasingly violent rhetoric and actions, their unwillingness to confront, shame, and expunge such extremists from their ranks establishes a very dangerous situation in potentia. This potential situation is based on the mob mentality model as demonstrated in liberal revolutionary periods such as the French Revolution, the post-war anti-capitalist movements in China, and any situation in which stimulating rage is a tool to gather power. I fear for the future of America if this boil is not lanced.