Doctor Fate wrote:I'm willing to take such complaints seriously--as soon as you and Ricky start blasting liberals by name for the same sorts of things. It hasn't happened and it won't. You want this to be a "right-wing" thing--despite momentary acknowledgments that "all" do this.

When examples have been shown to me, I have condemned Liberals for the same thing. There was the guy who said that someone should be put against the wall and shot. There was the guy who compared people to Goebbels.

I don't say that this is a "right-wing" thing. I've been saying that it's an "American" thing. But when I do say that, you whine that I'm changing tack. Seems you will damn me either way.

How many times has Palin's name been raised by liberals in this debate? How many times with any specificity has a Democrat been mentioned by a liberal? If this is serious outrage about the tone, then how about a little actual balance?

Palin was mentioned (and this really is not hard to follow, surely?) because she put up a map with the name of GIffords given and her district highlighted using a gunsight, and because this had the coincidence of targeting the (presumed) intended victim of the shootings. I mentioned Kelly a lot as well, the guy who ran against Giffords. However, my first post, the one all you righties are wetting your panties over, doesn't contain party names, or say which 'wing' people are on. Just that it was opponents of Giffords who used imagery which seems to eerily presage the actual shooting.

Had a 'liberal' done that, I would condemn it just the same. When you lot have presented actual comparable examples from the left, I have agreed that they were just as bad.

That this does not conform to the view of me that lives in your head, and that Tom can't be bothered to read what I write before ranting on about it, that PCH doesn't like the idea of moral comparisons, and that Mach wants to make this out to be simply a Brit sore about losing a war that ended nearly 200 years before my birth is really not my problem.

I don't say that this is a "right-wing" thing. I've been saying that it's an "American" thing.

Oh really? I guess Google doesn't work you your side of the pond. Fortunately Facebook does. It appears Godwin doesn't exempt Britain, either. No indeed.

Perhaps, Dan, you'd like to try yet another tack?

pc

I'm honestly confused about the health angle though. Loughner was an adult and, apparently, never referred himself to a doctor

What ? You're wondering why a man who has lost touch with reality and acts irresponsibly didn't admit himself?
To quote from the book, "Hitler,My Part in His Downfall", the great Spike Milligan said after his special duty judging a talent contest in the North African Desert during WWII, "I'm convinced crazy people don't realize they are crazy".

The point behind early intervention psychosis iwhich I raised much earlier is that it is an out reach program. Identified people are tracked down and approached by teams in order to evaluate, assess and provide assistance at whatever level they feel is essential. For someone like Loughner that might require a period where he is confined until an appropriate chemical balance can be established in his brain....
You can see where the university might be reluctant to act to have Loughner committed. They become liable for all kinds of legal actions against them, and don't have the medical expertise to make an appropriate judgment. You might understand how his parents might not know exactly what he was up to, or recognized any particular threat. They might also not have the wealth required to act, and since Loughner was an adult he wouldn't have been covered on his parents insurance. If they had it and if it covered mental health needs... (Thanks to George Bush it probably covered some)
Because the US is unwilling to "socialize" medicine and make the industry work towards its goals efficiently, you end up with these huge gaps. The people who most need mental health help are generally poor and unemployed. (Being irresponsible makes it hard to hold a job.). So it is hard to understand how to pay for the need for specialized intervention. In the system in the US now it requires private insurance or an individual driving the intervention who is personally connected to the ill person, or alternatively a committed group or individual who is willing to go to the expense and accept the risk of legally committing the individual.
Funding of early intervention psychosis teams seems a quicker. more efficient and more effective way of dealing with people like Loughner. If that eliminates some dangerous people that would be beneficial.

Tom, you keep referring to a shooting at Dawson college in Montreal, and the inability of stricter gun laws and mental health intervention in Quebec to prevent that event as a reason to beleive that stricter gun laws and socialized medicine wouldn't offer a partial solution in Arizona...
Let me explain one more time why your line of reasoning is faulty.
We know that seat belt laws save lives. That when people are required by law to wear seat belts, the incidence of wearing them increases and the incidence of fatalities in accidents goes down. Way down.
By your line of reasoning if you found that all people didn't wear seat belts OR if you could annecdotally ppoint to an accident where someone had died despite wearing their seat belt that would mean that seat belt laws were not useful.
And of course you'd be wrong.
In Canada there are far fewer gun deaths and far fewer incidents of mass shooting than in the US. But we haven't eliminated them because we haven't completely eliminated guns, and we do not have a 100% effective mental health safety net. But according the article in the Toronto Star I linked to earlier, in Ontario there are 30 early phychosis intervention teams. In the entire US 10.
We've probably got a better chance in Ontario of reaching our Loughners before they become violent. But we can't guarantee that...obviuously. If you require 100% certainty before you decide to act, why how do you get out of the bed in the morning?

Nice example (the seat belt laws) the problem here is we can name all sorts of things that could reduce the chance of happening, each one costing more and more money, each one reducing our freedoms. With freedom comes an associated risk. Hell, we could have yearly tests for all to determine if they are mentally fit to live in society, this would certainly reduce the chances of this happening. Should we enact such a plan? It fits your example quite well.

It boils down to a matter of freedom, we certainly do not want psycho's running around the streets, but we don't want such yearly tests either. So we have a balance and with that balance run the risk of nut jobs going crazy like this.

danivon wrote:Had a 'liberal' done that, I would condemn it just the same. When you lot have presented actual comparable examples from the left, I have agreed that they were just as bad.

Still, my point stands. Pointing to Palin and Kelly, then trying to make a generic "poisonous rhetoric" argument AFTER your original post, while never pointing to any Democrats, is indicative of a reflexive attitude. You presumed much, then backtracked. You can deny all you want now, but you're going pretty far out on a pretty thin branch.

You didn't use the term "right-wing." Big deal. You didn't try to paint a balanced picture or claim this was/is "an American problem" until the initial thrust of your argument was shown to be in error.

Machiavelli wrote:

I don't say that this is a "right-wing" thing. I've been saying that it's an "American" thing.

Perhaps, Dan, you'd like to try yet another tack?

Well the first one was talking about his own side, not opponents, and he's from the right. The second, the facebook group, is labelled 'just for fun - outrageous'. It was not set up by a politician. Again our right wing wanting to load the bullets.

As for the Godwin, you are right (although it's a separate category), we in the UK have an unfortunate habit of looking back, and looking back to our 'finest hour' when we were the last European nation to stand up to the Nazis makes that a very attractive hook. Dan Hannan, however, is of all our politicians one who seems to be taking a lot from the US right. He appeared on Beck to lie about the NHS in 2009. And the third right winger in a row.

Wow! Maybe I was wrong to say it's not largely a right wing problem? Well, I must thank you for your diligence in searching.

Still, I never said it was not a problem anywhere else. I just think it's worse over there. And the reason I worry is partly because we have a saying over here: if America sneezes, we catch a cold. In some things, the UK does copy the USA. This is one area I'd rather we weren't (and it would be good if there was less to copy).

Any more 'tu quoque?

Danvion never fails to disappoint--so now he's off the "American thing" and back on the "right-wing" tack. Your contortions are so...energetic, Dan, that I often get dizzy trying to follow them.

Mach, I'm not 'back on' it. I'm just wondering why the only ones you found from my own little nation seemed to be from right wingers.

The sentence you are picking up on has a 'maybe' in it, and a question mark at the end.

You seem to be catching Tom's medical condition, which has the symptom of not reading things properly before jumping on them. You guys love assuming that a question is a statement, huh?

Tom reads quite well thank you, maybe, just maybe you have a problem spelling it out? (since we have so many that think the same thing) Oh wait, you seem to be the end-all when it comes to grammar as we can all recall.

tom

Nice example (the seat belt laws) the problem here is we can name all sorts of things that could reduce the chance of happening, each one costing more and more money, each one reducing our freedoms. With freedom comes an associated risk. Hell, we could have yearly tests for all to determine if they are mentally fit to live in society, this would certainly reduce the chances of this happening. Should we enact such a plan? It fits your example quite well.
It boils down to a matter of freedom, we certainly do not want psycho's running around the streets, but we don't want such yearly tests either. So we have a balance and with that balance run the risk of nut jobs going crazy like this..

Who said anything about annual sanity checks? (You may be late for yours BTW)
Loughren was identified by his school. In a system where early psychosis intervention was funded by the state he would have been attended to by a team. How would that effect anyone's liberty? (In a totalitarian state like Communist Russia this was abused, but we're talking about a nation that allows people to challenge their detentions in court. ) The cost for helping people like Loughren must be balanced with the lives saved, and the cost of caring for the injured. And the benefit of knowing that unbalanced people aren't walking the streets unattended. And the benefit of knowing that if i fell ill in that way I too might be helped...
Presumably, when the physcocis intervention team attend upon him, he would have been identified as a risky individual for gun ownership due to his mental health and in a functioning gun control state he would have been barred from ownership of a gun. Or purchase of ammunition.
By the way, there does exist such a list in the US. However Arizona is slow to contribute their known individuals who have been identified as such.
I fail to see how mandatory reporting to a central list, or mandatory background checks with a waiting time ...effect basic liberty. I fail to see why "private sales" and "sales through gun shows" can't be controlled in the same way. What is lost here is not liberty but convenience. If inconvenience is the price of greater safety, only those inconvenienced by accountability and responsibility complain.
At one time people made the arguement that mandatory seat belt laws abridged and constrained liberty.

GMTom wrote:Tom reads quite well thank you, maybe, just maybe you have a problem spelling it out? (since we have so many that think the same thing) Oh wait, you seem to be the end-all when it comes to grammar as we can all recall.

No, you do not. Well, that's one possible explanation for the level of cognitive dissonance you display.

Just because lots of people agree with you (well, three - who usually agree with you) doesn't make you right. Sheep go in herds, and are dumb as posts.

Excuse me, where did any of the "righties" try to point blame anywhere other than on one sick individual? Please re-read the posts and tell me who was the side trying to paint blame on their favorite enemies.

Very amusing, Dan. You start out claiming that violent political rhetoric is a phenomenon of the right, then when you are bludgeoned with contrary examples you claim that all along you've not been saying it's a "right-wing thing" but rather an "American thing," then when confronted with contradictory examples you revert to saying it's a conservative trait and that we've mis-read you all along.

I've known snakes that couldn't manage such contortions.

So in the interest of fairness, please try once more to spell it out for us--exactly what in the world are you trying to say about violent metaphors in political speech, the Giffords shooting or whatever else it is you're on about? Please do be clear, old chum, because I'm afraid you have only managed to date to confuse us all.

Machiavelli wrote:Very amusing, Dan. You start out claiming that violent political rhetoric is a phenomenon of the right, then when you are bludgeoned with contrary examples you claim that all along you've not been saying it's a "right-wing thing" but rather an "American thing," then when confronted with contradictory examples you revert to saying it's a conservative trait and that we've mis-read you all along.

That will be you reading between lines, rather than what I've actually written. I don't think it is solely a problem of the right. But they do seem to be pretty keen to use guns and violence as a way of helping to express themselves (personally, I think it may be overcompensation, like those guys who buy expensive sports cars).

I don't thing it is solely an American problem, but your nation seems to be quite prone to it (and each bout of actual violence appears to have been preceded by an increase in violent political speech).

However, you still seem to be confusing a statement with a question. Here's a hint for you. When I ask a question, that doesn't mean that I agree with it, or with the answer that you supply in your head when you see it.

Got it yet? Or still 'confused'?

So in the interest of fairness, please try once more to spell it out for us--exactly what in the world are you trying to say about violent metaphors in political speech, the Giffords shooting or whatever else it is you're on about? Please do be clear, old chum, because I'm afraid you have only managed to date to confuse us all.

Easily done, I'd warrant. Min X seems to get it, but he is a very clever chap.

What I'm trying to say is that violent metaphors on political speech are dangerous, that a pattern of them is more dangerous, and that it will tend to increase the risk of actual violence.

Those of you who read the Wall Street Journal may have noticed today that 400 Rabis signed an open letter to Rupert Murdoch decrying the use of extreme and antisemetic language by Roger Ailes and especially Glenn Beck....(lots of use of Nazi, and holocaust) also see Daily Show recently on Fox personalities regularly using the term to describe their opponents. (Well, I assume opponents. One doesn't use the term for friends does one?)
Are the Rabbis protesting because they've learned that if you tolerate the use of such, that it only encourages an escalation? I think so....
Those who've been victims of escalating rhetoric that turns violent , recognize when its happening. Words and imagery matter.