Civil Discourse

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It’s been reported that Joe Biden referred to Republican opponents on the debt issue in the following terms:

They have acted like terrorists.

Biden now denies that he used that phrasing. But there’s no question that Democratic representative Mike Doyle, who was in the same meeting, said:

We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.

Numerous other Democrats and Democrat-leaning media types have used the T-word or close synonyms of same in referring to their American political opponents, for example NYT columnist Joe Nocera, who refers to the Tea Party Republicans as having “waged jihad on the American people” and Maureen Dowd, who approvingly quoted “some Democrats” as having described the Tea Party as “the Republican Taliban wing.”

Note that this vitriol is coming from a party which rejects the idea of calling actual terrorists “terrorists.” They prefer to call terrorist attacks man-caused disasters, and to refer to wars as overseas contingency operations.

I’m reminded, as I often am, of something Neptunux Lex wrote in 2008:

The innate character flaw of the political right, with its thrumming appeals to the logic of blood and soil, is its lamentable tendency to go in search of enemies abroad. The left, on the other hand, with its own appeals to the politics of envy and class warfare, is content to find mortal enemies closer to hand.

Today’s American leftists view American citizens who strongly differ with them politically as enemies to a much greater extent than Islamic terrorists or any hostile nation-state.

Regarding Mike Doyle’s complaint about it having been made “impossible to spend any money”…the Democratic politicians are like teenagers who have been unwisely been given a credit card and who, now that consideration is being given to not raising the credit limit yet again, whine that “you won’t let me spend any money at all“…indeed, they also follow the typical teenage pattern of whining “but all my friends get to spend more”…in this case their friends from Europe…while ignoring the little problem that their friends’ parents are being driven into bankruptcy even more rapidly than their own are.

Links: James Taranto

Sister Toldjah

Neptunus Lex

The era of the condescending President

Some of the above links via Instapundit and Maggie’s Farm

13 thoughts on “Civil Discourse”

  1. The hegemonic discourse is being challenged, so the incumbents will use increasingly shrill and violent rhetoric to try to delegitimize the challengers. We will see more and more of this, because it works. How much longer it will work is another questions. The MSM is trying to do to the Tea Party what it successfully did to Gov. Palin. It will be harder, but they may succeed.

  2. I’m just fed to my back teeth with it, no matter what their rational is, for slandering ordinary, patriotic and law-abiding citizens, exercising their rights to petition for redress of greviences, to educate themselves on the workings of government, to vote, and to dare think that their voices will be heard.

    I posted a picture essay on this topic on Open Salon — where I usually don’t uncork my political opinions, but I am so sick of being nice and tolerating this kind of thing, that I don’t much care.

    Just for fun, here’s the link … relish the prog-lib ranting and wailing. Honestly, I wonder how some of these people can keyboard coherantly when their brains are dribbling out of their noses.

    http://open.salon.com/blog/sgt_mom/2011/08/03/terrorism_tea_party_hobbits

  3. This topic is widespread across the conservative blogosphere. There are implications and probable consequences to what is coming out of the Left. If I may I will quote part of a larger piece I did. If that is not allowed, feel free to delete this post.

    The American Left, including the Democrats and the New York Times [sorry for the redundancy], does not have the cultural concept of “legitimate disagreement” or “legitimate political opposition”. Their beliefs are built on an innate sense of self-righteousness that would be appropriate in a Knight Templar on Crusade. [and that particular comparison would make Leftist heads explode!] The closest thing that they have to the concepts are when Republicans capitulate. Any delay, any reduction in the scope of their victory, any effective opposition in objective terms is considered by them to be illegitimate, criminal, immoral, and deserving of correcting by any means necessary. 99%+ of Leftists and Democrats have never read or heard of Lenin’s 1901 work “What Is to Be Done?”; but its tenets are ingrained in their worldview.

    Words and cultural mindsets define and guide actions. For everyone.

    A little more history, if I may. I ran across this from a commenter at BELMONT CLUB, and found it striking.
    =========================================================================
    12. Ignominious

    I was reading Michael Braddick’s history of the English Civil War, “God’s Fury, England’s Fire.” It’s a huge, complicated work. The footnotes alone almost constitute a book of their own.

    There’s a lot of things that could be said, but if I were to put into nutshell one possible lesson to draw from Braddick’s history, it would be this: the descent into societal chaos is accompanied by a breakdown in the meaning of the terms of mutual political discourse. For a big segment of Americans to get dismissed as “terrorists,” tells me that many in the ruling segment of our republic no longer have the wherewithal to even understand what a whole category of Americans are talking about, or what their concerns are. This is very bad news, and besides that it degrades and confuses the meaning of the term “terrorist.”
    August 1, 2011 – 8:13 pm
    =========================================================================

    For American Leftists, Democrats or their accomplices farther Left, to actually lose either by a vote of the people or in a legislative or judicial body is both shattering to their worldview and proof of justification of going outside the law to restore the rightness of the world.

    Their increasing use of violent rhetoric and acts, and the rhetorical projection of claims of similar acts unjustified by facts on those who disagree with them, means that they are going to feel justified in moving further and further outside the law. Physical acts of terrorism, real ones, are inevitable as a byproduct of their redoubling their efforts to restore their world when they are opposed or actually lose. It is going to happen, and the fact that the columnists of the New York Times, or the Vice President of the United States are willing to dub their political opposition as terrorists while refusing to condemn or admit real physical acts of terrorism by name means that we have moved past the point mentioned in the exposition of Braddick’s History.

    There are at least three Republican politicians who are being actively demonized by the Left, and deemed illegitimate to exist. I hope that they have their own tight security arrangements, because especially when dealing with the Department of Justice, Federal law enforcement is explicitly guided by political expediency and what the military calls “unlawful command influence”. Acts of violence by the Left against their opponents are going to occur. When they do, the reaction, both by the criminal justice system and the media [including the New York Times] and by the victims are going to determine where our country goes in short order.

    It has been rationally argued for the last few years that we are engaged in a Cold Civil War. That we really are not one country anymore. No one knows what act will trigger it becoming hot, if such is to happen. But the delegitimizing of any political opposition by the Left, and Journo-List 2.0 parroting of phrases delegitimizing all people who oppose them makes such a triggering act more likely.

    Subotai Bahadur

  4. The next 18 months are going to be the worst in American politics since the “corrupt bargain” that kept Andrew Jackson from the White House. The left has seen itself propelled into the majority with delusions of a tectonic shift in US politics. Instead, it was a mass delusion that an inexperienced Senator, whose views were very poorly understood, could solve complex problems. After two years of ineptitude and fumbling, the delusion has passed and the left will not willingly give up its dreams.

    It will be ugly.

  5. “…a larger piece I did….”

    SB: Do you have a link for that? Please put in another comment if so.

  7. I’d urge everyone to follow the link I posted about as The Era of the Condescending President. The unpleasant attributes pointed out in the linked post are not merely the characteristics of Obama himself—they are also characteristics of a class of people of which he serves as the exemplar and avatar: those who believe that their credentials and verbal glibness are infinitely more important than knowledge, experience, and practical judgment.

  9. i like to pronounce (in my head) the vp’s last name in the same way you pronounce “bidet”; just for fun.

  10. Speaking of Joe Biden….as has been widely reported, he has been charging the US Secret Service (ie, the US taxpayers) RENT for use of a cottage at his Delaware residence. While this is not illegal, I think it’s pretty sleazy.

    Biden, Obama, & Co talk endlessly about “sacrifice”…anyone who has his eyes open should know that they and their allies are intending to be the *recipients* of sacrifice, not the providers of same. This incident clearly makes that point.

    People in many professions spend their own money incurring expenses to help with their jobs. Teachers often buy supplies. Executives sometimes buy computers & cell phones used mainly for work and not always reimbursable, and often spend their own money on business-related books and magazines. Biden’s idea of extracting every possible dollar from his employment is unprofessional.

  11. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait until we win in 2012.

    I predict civil disobedience and riots in summer 2013 the likes of which haven’t been seen since 1969.

    We will see just how nasty the left can really be when they lose after holding all the power for four years. This is a different time and much uglier place.

    You want to see real domestic terrorism? It will be sponsored and supported by the barfbags at MSNBC.

    Hunker down and get ready. But never, ever give up.

  13. Went to a local Tea Party meeting last night with the greeting “Hello, Fellow Terrorists!”
    The term has become adopted as a badge of honor (note that the group has now become too big for its venue – discussed splitting into two local groups and a young TP’ers for the under 30’s!)
    Terrorist, racist – its like the cursing so prevalent in modern media – it leads you to believe the speakers suffer from a vocabulary deficit…

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