Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 1:13am

Political Thuggery

One of the hallmarks of the progressive left is its open-minded embrace of differing viewpoints, or so they tell us.  They repeatedly hit us over the head with their loving compassion for all mankind.

Sometimes, though, I have to wonder how tolerant these beacons of liberty truly are.  For example, how is deliberately trying to get conservatives blocked on twitter a demonstration of one’s warm embrace of contrary viewpoints?  I’m also not really seeing the compassion of barring people from public places because of their stance on gay marriage.

Also, orchestrated efforts to falsely accuse conservative bloggers of criminal activity just in effort to silence them does not exactly scream “open-minded.”

And I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I am reasonably certain that issuing death threats and promising to burn down Churches because of their opposition to gay marriage is, well, rather intolerant.

It’s easy to shrug off and even laugh at these idiotic attempts to silence people and intimidate others into not expressing their opinions in public.  In one sense, these goons are indeed simply laughable.  One envisions these scaliwags coming home after a long day protesting with 12 like-minded people, having caused thousands of dollars in property damage along the way without being charged.  Somehow dressing up like a zombie and throwing feces at people did not cause Americans to rise up and demand that the top marginal tax rate be increased.  Frustrated, there is now nothing to do except listen to the sound of your mom snoring in the next room.  So what’s a frustrated 99 percenter do but do all they can in their power to make sure that the person expressing their first amendment right to free speech be silenced.

What’s even more laughable is that these goons think that their efforts at intimidation are actually going to work.  You mean people with deep political feelings aren’t just going to shut up because some fool anonymously runs to twitter to block their account?  Even death threats are having no effect.  So it’s got to be frustrating that, as with most aspects of their lives, they can’t even do intimidation right.

Of course we shouldn’t so breezily dismiss what these thugs are doing.  Even if the charges against Mr. Worthing are a complete croc, he still has to expend time and money defending himself.  And it not exactly an easy feeling knowing that some psycho stalker is out there ready to pounce because he disagrees with your political opinions.  All it takes is one deranged lunatic, and a person’s life can be ruined or worse.

Make no mistake, things will get scarier as the year progresses.  Political tensions are always high during election years, and in the age of the internet and social media, we’re not about to enter into an age of reason and understanding.  And while these sad individuals might lack the power to actually shut their opponents down, there are those in positions of authority who are itching to use that authority in a way that our Founding Fathers would never have dreamed possible.

Well, I don’t want to end my post on that macabre note, so here’s a fluffy pop song to play us out to the weekend.

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Paul W. Primavera
Thursday, May 17, AD 2012 9:36pm

Good post, Paul Z. Sharing on Facebook and my blog.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Thursday, May 17, AD 2012 9:41pm

Major Andrew McClary, New Hampshire Militia, didn’t die at Bunker Hill so that one of his descendants would ever be afraid to speak his mind.

Paul W. Primavera
Thursday, May 17, AD 2012 9:45pm

It makes me proud to be associated even if only virtually with Americans such as you two.

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, May 17, AD 2012 11:28pm

As they tell you, they hate hatred. Free speech isn’t to spread hate— it’s just for acceptable things.

And they get to define “acceptable” or “hate.”

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 8:09am

I doubt this fellow Kimberlin is a ‘deranged lunatic’ or that the number of those whose lunacies have a political expression is all that variable over time. He seems more like a sociopath who has conned quite a succession of people over the last 25 years, some of whom were easy marks due to their general world view (Garry Trudeau, for example). The problem here is that the Tides Foundation (i.e. Soros) and Democratic publicists seem to think nothing of associating with someone whose gross crimes are readily discoverable.

I know our friend McClarey says vituperation is normal. For my own part, I cannot shake the impression that portside politics is in our time less and less a matter of advancing a particular set of programs and more and more a matter of taking advantage of opportunities for socially-sanctioned aggression against subcultural enemies. Nat Hentoff and George McGovern are really old; Dan Savage and Bradford deLong are not.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 8:16am

“I know our friend McClarey says vituperation is normal”

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 8:17am

Off topic, but I’ve lost the keys to my own blog. Would be much obliged for some prayerful assistance from the communion of saints. Another round of screening visits to physicians in our household today.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 8:19am

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 8:20am

Prayers on the way Art!

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 10:21am

Art: God bless you and yours.

Paul W Primavera
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 10:41am

For Art Deco and the keys to his blog:

Av? Mar?a, gr?ti? pl?na,
Dominus t?cum.
Benedicta t? in mulieribus,
et benedictus fr?ctus ventris tu?, I?sus.
S?ncta Mar?a, M?ter De?,
?r? pr? n?b?s pecc?t?ribus,
nunc et in h?r? mortis nostrae.
?m?n.

trackback
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 11:46am

[…] […]

Mary De Voe
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 12:34pm

Prayers and a rosary

Paul W Primavera
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 12:41pm

Lots of Rosaries, Mary DV, and lots of Chaplets of Divine Mercy, too.

PM
PM
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 12:56pm

On the way to plant flowers at the St. Anthony statue and will think of you, Art.
Among other things, he’s prayed for lost things from keys to souls.

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 2:18pm

Something’s lost and can’t be found.
Please, St. Anthony, look around.

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Friday, May 18, AD 2012 4:13pm

[…] American Catholic: Political Thuggery […]

G-Veg
G-Veg
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 6:41pm

The world is full of cowardly and reckless souls.

We see these odious, mean spirited, self-indulgent fools on the roads, weaving in and out of traffic. They are the same jerks who watch chaos from the sidelines until there is a chance to indulge their base inclinations without consequence. They plaster stickers on trains, break up public art and gardens, and look for trouble at every turn. The first ones to claim abuse, they are curiously given to abusing others.

In one sense, these folks are sociopaths. They injure others for no other purpose than to cause injury. The guy who would invade the privacy of internet commentors and bloggers, seeking to destroy their livelihoods would send out computer viruses to destroy the memories and property of millions… If only they had the skills to do so. They are pathetic posers.

It is sad. Really, really sad that they waste their lives and satisfy themselves with living on the pathetic fringe, never becoming even a shadow of what God intended for them.

trackback
Friday, May 18, AD 2012 10:25pm

[…] WorthingBob Belvedere: Connections: Soros, A Terrorist, Democrats and Obama???American Catholic: Political ThuggeryThe Lonely Conservative: This is HorriblePOH Diaries:  The Company We KeepTony Katz: The Quick […]

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Saturday, May 19, AD 2012 7:59am

[…] American Catholic: Political Thuggery […]

Mark Noonan
Mark Noonan
Sunday, May 20, AD 2012 12:42am

This sort of thing, though, is a grave threat – I blog, myself, and once upon a time even gained a small amount of public notice…and had my computer hacked, my car vandalized and was stalked at my place of employment. Kindly liberals suggested over the blogosphere that I was a fit subject to be hanged from a meat hook while a liberal radio host hoped that someone would beat me up. And it makes you think when you write – it telling the absolute truth about this, no holding back, worth the wave of venom and, perhaps, threats to personal safety it will bring? And this, remember, is just the reflection of a small-time blogger.

But the story of the conservative blogger who was threatened with prosecution over his views (well, strictly speaking, it was over a false allegation of assault…but we all know it was simply because he said something a leftist didn’t like) shows where the solution is: if we want to get rid of these creeps, the sure-fire way is to cut off their funding. Sure, this will mean that some conservative non-profit groups may lose their tax free status, but conservatives won’t worry too much about that. And the payoff would be enormous – quite honestly, when you really look at it, the left took hold in this nation just as soon as it started to become taxpayer-funded in the 30s (the massive growth of government under FDR allowed, for the first time, a host of leftists to enter government…where, over the years, the made sure that non-government leftist groups got funding, either directly from government or by the setting up of liberal non-profits as a tax dodge for rich liberals). No one really supports these people – they can bring out, from time to time, a rent-a-mob but they can’t ever win in the battle of ideas: the fact that they had to hide who they were (and who Obama was) so carefully in 2008 was just the 10,000th bit of proof of this. Without government support (direct or indirect) they would simply dry up and blow away…become what they were in the 20’s: a collection of half-educated cranks who write books no one reads while congratulating themselves on their superiority over average Americans.

Cut them off – end the funding, end the left. Victory beckons, if we will just have the guts to endure the shrieks for 6 months it’ll all be over…the shrieks will die down as the money runs out.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, May 20, AD 2012 6:00am

To some extent, turning off the funding spigots would be helpful. You would still have state and local governments, however, and Soros. Requiring foundations to liquidate their capital within 60 years or so might also be helpful, but I do not know if you could in all fairness and with respect to the Constitution and common law apply that retroactively to the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, the latter of which in particular does nothing in furtherance of its benefactor’s purposes.

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Monday, May 21, AD 2012 9:20pm

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