Last week, the op-ed page was all about love, but there is little love in America’s current political climate-instead there is mostly hatred and intolerance. We have been hearing a lot lately from the left about how conservatives are hateful.
Just hours after the Tucson shootings liberal pundits seized what they saw as a chance to demonize conservatives for their alleged “hate speech.” But reality quickly turned this ill-conceived blame game against them. Much to liberals’ dismay, the shooter, Jared Loughner, doesn’t like Sarah Palin, he doesn’t listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and didn’t even vote in the 2010 elections. Instead, it was revealed that Loughner was “left wing, quite liberal” as a former friend described him. Worse yet, he liked to read “The Communist Manifesto” which has zero conservative admirers. Finally, in his deranged video that he shot at his college he rambles about how “the war that we are in right now is currently illegal under the constitution,” hardly a right wing mantra.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has spearheaded the liberal assault on decency. Perhaps he was just trying to cover up the fact that this crime happened in his district where he is responsible for stopping mass murderers like Loughner. At multiple press conferences he talked about how the vitriol and hatred from the right was responsible for the attacks. He insulted his own constituents and said that Arizona is the “Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” Perhaps he should have said that “Pima County is the Mecca for incompetent far-left sheriffs.” Liberals pundits and columnists followed Dupnik’s despicable example in the days and weeks following the shootings.
It is particularly interesting that after Army Psychiatrist Major Nidal Hassan shot fellow soldiers at Fort Hood-killing 13 people and wounding dozens more-liberals urged us to avoid making assumptions about the shooter’s motive even though Hasan had “soldier of Allah” on his business card, yelled “Allah Akbar” before opening fire, had been in contact with radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, and had shown many other warning signs of being a radical Muslim. Yet, in the mind of these same liberals, there was no question that Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh motivated Loughner to go on his murderous rampage despite the fact that all of the evidence has proven that ill-conceived theory wrong. Clearly an uncanny political hatred of conservatives and the desire to be politically correct to “victim” groups (which obviously does not include conservatives)-rather than a fair evaluation of the evidence and the use of common sense-motivate such irrational liberal judgment
Even all of that is largely irrelevant, though, when one realizes that, while hateful and violent rhetoric exists, the blame is being largely misplaced. Make no mistake about it, the overwhelming majority of the hate speech in this country comes from the left.
Most of the accusations against the right are bogus and show just how fallible the left’s argument is. The best they have to offer is a map made by Sarah Palin about Congressional Districts that she “targeted” for GOP takeover, one of which was Congresswoman Giffords. The map liberals cite as a potential call to violence for mentally ill people like Jared Loughner is not uncommon in politics, and neither are the war metaphors.
Battleground states, the very word campaign, targeting of certain candidates, and so on are all war metaphors commonly used by Republicans and Democrats. In fact, Democrats made a map essentially the same as the one Ms. Palin did for previous elections where they saw an opportunity to pick up GOP House seats.
But facts didn’t stop Sheriff Dupnik and other liberals from specifically naming Sarah Palin and Sharon Angle as conservatives’ whose “irresponsible” statements led to the shootings. Other liberals have also doubled down on their accusations and attempts to baselessly demonize conservatives.
The main focus of this article is the hateful and violent speech and actions from the left. Since the examples are so numerous, not all of them can be included due to space constraints, but I will do my best to provide a diverse set of examples that represent the many different types of hateful speech and actions of American liberals. I think it is evident that liberals have selective moral outrage.
First it is appropriate to start with the intense hatred shown toward conservative women. The left’s obsessive malicious hatred of Sarah Palin is hard to comprehend. The things that liberals were saying about Sarah Palin and conservative talk show hosts after the shootings constitute libel and could potentially incite unstable people on the far left (sorry for the redundancy) to commit acts of violence. In fact, a Palin aide reported that death threats had increased since she was falsely blamed for the shooting.
Ever since Palin came onto the national stage she has been the favorite target of lift wing hatred. Liberal “comedian” David Letterman said that Sarah Palin had the style of a “slutty flight attendant” and that her then 14-year-old daughter who went to a Yankees game with her “was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” Another “comedian,” Sandra Bernhard, said in a hate-filled tirade that Sarah Palin should be gang-raped. Hateful left wing professor Wendy Doniger of University of Chicago said that “Her [Sarah Palin’s] greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.” Joe Klein said “people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious.” A liberal nut named Jeremy Olson was arrested for attempted assault after throwing tomatoes at Palin in a Minnesota mall.
Gawker.com called Oslon a “hero” for what he did. And the list goes on and on. All of this is best called Palin Derangement Syndrome. This article cannot adequately represent the sheer hatred of Ms. Palin by liberals but suffice to say that she, along with her children, disgracefully enough, is a favorite target of liberal hate speech.
Sharron Angle, Democrat majority leader Harry Reid’s tea party backed Republican challenger in the 2010 election, was bad-mouthed by “The View”‘s Joy Behar. A visibly angry and hateful Joy Behar said that “She [Sharron Angle] is going to hell, this bitch.” The self-righteous outrage was fueled by an anti-illegal immigrant ad put out by Sharron Angle which Joy Behar thought was racist even though it wasn’t. The hateful right wing Sharron Angle responded by sending Ms. Behar flowers. Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann is another person liberals love to hate. Liberal talk show host Montel Williams made a graphic and perverted appeal for Bachmann to kill herself: “Michele, slit your wrists. Go ahead. Why not? And if you don’t want to, I mean, or — or you know, do — do us all a better thing, move that knife up about two feet. Start right at the collarbone.”
Michelle Malkin, a conservative journalist and pundit, receives many, often racially-charged, death threats from “tolerant” liberals. Here’s what liberal talk show host Keith Olbermann had to say about that: “.She received death threats and hate-filled voicemails all thanks to the total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk fascistic hatred, without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” Apparently he doesn’t realize the irony in making such a hateful statement in a pathetic attempt to paint Ms. Malkin as a “fascistic hatred.”
The hatred of Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Michelle Malkin, and many others (who, for reasons of space cannot be covered) by liberals is no doubt over the top but they hated Bush even more. There is a movie that was made by liberals about Bush being assassinated called “Death of a President” which was produced in the middle of his second term. Just imagine if such a movie was even proposed about Obama. Left wing fanatics als
o constantly called Bush the “world’s no. 1 terrorist” and constantly held signs depicting his death or calling for him to be killed outright. That was all okay but dare respectfully disagree with President Obama and all of a sudden you’re a hateful racist.
For some reason the especially sick and twisted liberal speech finds its way to Rush Limbaugh. Liberal talk Show host Mike Malloy shared his sick fantasy: “I’m waiting for the day when I pick it up — and pick up a newspaper or click on the Internet and found out he’s choked to death on his own throat fat or a great blob of saliva or something.” But such twisted hate speech is nothing new. In 1995 Liberal NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg said that if there was “retributive justice” then conservative politician Jesse Helms and his grandchildren would get AIDS. Jeremiah Wright has accused, on multiple occasions, the federal government of using AIDS to kill black people. Yes, that is the same pastor that was Obama’s spiritual mentor and friend for two decades. Wright also is infamous for saying things like “God damn America,” and perpetrating 9/11 conspiracy theories.
A few days after the shooting, I read an article in The Huffington Post by Gary Hart, professor and former Senator, called “Words Have Consequences” which was a self-righteous demonization of conservatives for their mythical role in the Tucson shootings.
Speaking only about conservatives (which is evident from the rest of his article), he said “The degree to which violent words and phrases are considered commonplace is striking. Candidates are ‘targeted.’ An opponent is ‘in the crosshairs.’ Liberals have to be ‘eliminated.’ Opponents are ‘enemies.'” That rhetoric does sound familiar. Where might we have heard that before? Oh, I know.
The great orator-in-chief Barack Obama shortly before the 2010 elections: “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies [Republicans] and we’re gonna reward our friends [Democrats] who stand with us on issues that are important to us’.'” The hypocrisy is stunning. President Obama, who looks the least hateful compared to his left wing base, has said quite a few other things that liberals conveniently ignore. He wanted to “find out whose ass to kick” after the BP Oil Spill-very presidential. He also said “If they [Republicans] bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Before the 2010 elections He threatened that there would be “hand to hand combat” in Washington D.C. if Republicans won back Congress.
Other threats of violence are more menacing and serious. In an ironic twist of events that further undermined liberals’ disgraceful attempts to blame conservatives for the Tucson shootings, a far left shooting victim, Eric Fuller, made a death threat against a local conservative leader, Trent Humphries, whom he took a picture of him before yelling “you’re dead.” He was apparently angry with Humphries for suggesting that we wait until we bury the dead before debating new gun control laws-which is apparently an offense punishable by death even though liberals don’t like the death penalty.
Liberals’ inexplicable ultra-sensitivity to the feelings of Muslims often result in them accusing conservatives of being anti-Muslim or, as many love to say, “Islamaphobic.” They warn about how conservatives are inciting hatred and violence against Muslims (most recently by opposing the Islamic Center near Ground Zero). Isn’t it interesting, then, that the most high-profile anti-Muslim hate crime (that I know of at least) was committed by a staunch liberal? In August, a 43 year old Muslim cab driver named Ahmed Sharif was asked by a passenger if he was a Muslim. When Mr. Sharif answered affirmatively, the passenger screamed and cursed at him before viciously stabbing him in the throat-with the obvious goal of murder. The attacker was a far left college student named Michael Enright. He was a member of Intersections International which was a left-leaning group that staunchly supports the Islamic Center near Ground Zero.
That didn’t stop people like Nihad Awad, national executive director of the far left Council on American-Islamic Relations, from saying “As other American minorities have experienced, hate speech often leads to hate crimes. Sadly, we’ve seen how the deliberate public vilification of Islam [by conservatives] can lead some individuals to violence against innocent people.” Once again we see who the truly violent and hateful people are-liberals.
Far left former Congressmen Alan Grayson-one of the most hateful and vile leftists in the country-has called for people who want to drill for oil to be thrown in jail. Grayson’s list of offenses is long and includes a libelous campaign commercial against his opponent Dan Webster in which he called him “Taliban Dan” based on a doctored clip of Mr. Webster that made it look like he was saying husbands should demand that their wives submit to them when in fact he was saying just the opposite. Far left pundit Markos Moulitsas wrote a whole book called “American Taliban” which argued that conservatives are just as bad as the Taliban-as if American conservatives throw acid in girls’ faces for attending school, hang seven year old boys, and stone young women to death for fleeing an abusive husband that they were forced to marry, among other atrocious human rights violations that the Taliban are notorious for.
All of this is just a small sample of the left’s hateful and violent rhetoric. It is of the utmost irony that liberals would call for civility in our political discourse and admonish conservatives for alleged vitriol and hate speech. It’s like being mugged by a thug who, in the process of roughing you up and stealing your stuff, urges you not to steal because theft is a big problem in America. If the mugger was serious with his call for less stealing then he’d start by putting down his weapons giving you back your wallet and apologizing. Likewise, if liberals were serious with their calls for civility they would stop their hatred and uncivilized diatribe and apologize for the damage they have already done.
A few days after the Tucson shootings, a former member of Congress, Democrat Paul Kanjorski, said: “It is incumbent on all Americans to create an atmosphere of civility and respect in which political discourse can flow freely, without fear of violent confrontation.” This is the same guy that, just a few months earlier, said the following about now Republican Governor of Florida Rick Scott: “That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida, Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.” So who is he to stand on a soap box and preach about how our discourse should be civil and not result in anyone fearing violence? Who is any hateful liberal to tell us to tone down our rhetoric and be more civil?
We must demand that liberals stop with the excessive hatred and urge them to stop trying to cover their tracks by accusing conservatives of the same-it’s not working.
Bill Hanrahan is a third year student and the Secretary of the College Republicans. He can be reached at WH750431@wcupa.edu.