Indeed they were at the man's home. If they encroached onto his property then (as I already have said) then that is too far. Still, a politician's home address is public knowledge, and people will try to lobby their representatives.

Violent rhetoric and images are a bad thing. Doesn't matter much who it comes from either. I'm so glad that you see how dangerous it is.

Oh, I forgot, that's not what you are saying - you are just trying to demonise the left while at the same time denying that the right do anything of the sort.

oh hell no, the right do protests and get crazy of course. But wasn't it in this very thread we heard people demonize the right for being violent and crazy. The lefties refused to admit that they too have done the same thing. I would even go so far as to argue the left may very well do so even more, they tend to be younger and the young are the ones who more often protest and get violent. But absolutely it happens on both sides, I'm happy to see your sudden shift and acknowledge so.

If you can find where I said the left didn't do it, you'd have a point.

I can find plenty of places where I said it was all sides, and where I've agreed that a Dem has gone too far.

You too are consistent with your 'but the left are worse' arguments.

really?
You yourself started this thread with the intention of painting the right as having caused this shooting, before anyone even knew the facts. And my left is worse argument... yes, I am indeed consistent. Excuse me, both sides can do something but one side do it more. Men and women can both get breast cancer but women get it more...same thing. The left is worse, no doubt about it.

Not true. I started it to bemoan that the rhetoric used was eerily coincident with the shooting. It is you who inferred that I meant a direct causal connection. As in the welfare thread you presume intent in others - now even when they deny it.

The left is worse, no doubt about it

Well, never let it be said that your mind was open enough to let doubts enter into it, eh?

Danivon has not said the right has caused this shooting. He stated:
It's more shocking that before this, her political opponent and Sarah Palin both used the imagery of guns as part of the election campaign.

Perhaps he was just name dropping with the Palin reference. The main issue that I have is the lack of holding the left accountable for the same thing (Whataboutery defense). RickyP is the person who has said it is a problem of the right that caused the shooting.

RickyP states the position that is was caused by the right.
Danivon states that the left and right both do it, but only mentions Palin in the beginning.

Sorry if I linked both our lefties together like that, their positions, though slightly different, are remarkably the same. Nobody ever confused something I said for Steve or GA?

...and please tell me how the right 'tends" to be more activist in nature. You can point to recent tea party rallies and that's about it. While I can point to a whole host more lefty rallies, but I am wrong to do so? Sorry, that's just the way it is and that's the nature of the lefty position. Like it or not, the left is more prone to rally and protest. Sure, both sides do it but that's not to say both are equal as you seem to insist it must be?

danivon wrote:Oh, I forgot, that's not what you are saying - you are just trying to demonise the left while at the same time denying that the right do anything of the sort.

Not at all. I would, however, say the mainstream Left is more given to it than the mainstream Right.

Peace.

But you can't say that!
If the right ever does this, then (apparently?) it must be equal.

Thanks, GA. Glad to see you get my point. I did also agree that some 'left' examples were just as bad - such as the Dem Congressman (Kanjorsky) who said Rick Scott should be put against the wall and shot instead of running for Fl Governor. Indeed, I pointed out that the more examples found from whatever side, the more it seemed to suggest that the US has a problem.

Arguing about who is or was worse is not as important as trying to reduce the problem.

Danivon,
Do you think there is a bias for the left being able to say outrageous things and have less grief than the right from the media?

green

RickyP is the person who has said it is a problem of the right that caused the shooting

.
Well, actually I said it was a specific interpretation of the constitution held by some on the right, but not all, and perhaps some on the left .
And I wasn't suggesting direct causation, just that the environment for violent actions is created when one tolerates such a radical misunderstanding. Why just yesterday a republican Congressman was asked in a Town Hall meeting ""Who's going to shoot Obama" and his response was actual tolerant of the question.

what I said:

defenders of the 2nd amendment of the constitution bulwark their defense by claiming that the 2nd amendment and citizens right to bear arms is intended by the founders as a way to assure that a tyrannical government can't take away citizens liberties.
My first question is really? How?
Isn't this just a coded call for armed insurrection? And its an insurrection to be acted upon based solely upon the individual citizens judgment of the actions of the government? And isn't that incredibly dangerous to provide individuals with both the means and the assumed right to violently attack their government at any time? Surely that's NOT the founders intention.

Based on the shooters history of paranoia about the government (including his question asked to Giffords at a public event a few months ago) isn't this likely what he was responding to?
Surely this view is pure madness and has wrought consequences that sane people should consider when asking why armed individuals are a necessity to "liberty".

The right wing paranoia about tyrannical government seems to be exactly the motivator necessary for unhinged individuals to attack members of the government. Tied to the hysterical notion that the Constitution actually provides for their role as armed insurrectionists provides for them a legitimacy.
(Didn't Sharon Angle refer to "2nd Amendment remedies"?)

Yep, sounds like you are attempting to smear the conservatives only, several examples of conservative whackos, zero from the left, toss is such gems as "Right wing paranoia".
I would say GA hit the nail on the head, was this supposed to be a defense of that claim?
...didn't do a very good job, only seemed to reinforce the claim.

rickyp wrote:And I wasn't suggesting direct causation, just that the environment for violent actions is created when one tolerates such a radical misunderstanding. Why just yesterday a republican Congressman was asked in a Town Hall meeting ""Who's going to shoot Obama" and his response was actual tolerant of the question.

Since you only read/watch lefty sources, I presume you missed Rep Capuano (D-MA) encouraging a crowd of union activists to get bloody this week? Maybe you missed some of the violence by union supporters in Wisconsin? The signs comparing Governor Walker to Hitler, Mubarak, and Mussolini?

Based on the shooters history of paranoia about the government (including his question asked to Giffords at a public event a few months ago) isn't this likely what he was responding to?

Amazing. You think Hasan was insane, but you keep trying to make Loughner a coherent individual.

Surely this view is pure madness and has wrought consequences that sane people should consider when asking why armed individuals are a necessity to "liberty".

Yeah, wasn't the American Revolution the first implementation of Gandhi's theory of non-violence?

The right wing paranoia about tyrannical government seems to be exactly the motivator necessary for unhinged individuals to attack members of the government.

Uh-huh. How about some left-wing paranoia about tyrannical government? See Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio.

Green Arrow wrote:Danivon,
Do you think there is a bias for the left being able to say outrageous things and have less grief than the right from the media?

I don't know. depends on what you define as 'the media'. I know that there's a general belief that the major TV networks are biased towards the liberals. But 'media' includes the print press and increasingly the internet.

Tom, Steve, here’s the point I’m trying to make. It’s related to our discussions on welfare:

The use of anecdotes can be sufficient to establish that a thing happens (that people work the welfare system, that politicians use dangerous rhetoric). However, it is not sufficient to do much more in terms of quantification. We could count anecdotes, and try to apply a subjective scoring for how bad each one is, but those are pretty inaccurate methods and don’t account for various biases that might enter into it (reporting bias, observer bias, omissions, false positives, etc). I’m not sure I can say which ‘side’* is worse, I just wonder how you guys can be so certain that it’s not yours, and whether you have for one second considered whether your opinion may possibly be coloured by your own allegiances and positions. We’ve seen on another thread that Steve’s surely held belief that the Dems are more of a voting bloc than the GOP doesn’t tally with the data presented by Min X after looking at actual voting records. Is it possible that his firmly held belief on this may be contradicted by proper data? Well, let’s gloss over that, hey, and make snide remarks about things I haven’t said, as if I did. Because that is the grown up way to discuss grown up matters, hur hur hur.

Tom, on your assertion that the right has the TP rallies and not much else, I would refer you to the anti-abortion/pro-life movement. Not only do they protest quite a bit, they have been linked to several violent attacks on people, including murder. According to Steve, as reliable as that provenance may be, the Dems won’t countenance a pro-lifer among their ranks, so it seems that the mainstream ‘left’ are little to do with it. Yet many people on the mainstream right do support the pro-life argument, if not the more activist wing of the movement. Then there are the anti-mosque protests, which appear to me to be more generally supported by the ‘right’ than the ‘left’.

*By the way, I find it a little frustrating that it always comes down to two ‘sides’. Firstly, there are people in between them, the squeezed centrists, who appear to be forced to choose between one or the other of the big two parties because there’s not much in between them organisationally, . Secondly there are people at the ‘fringes’ who defy the traditional ‘right/left’ dichotomy, such as those who call themselves ‘libertarians’ – socially very liberal and economically to the right of the mainstream GOP. Of course, the hegemony of the Republicratic parties means that anyone outwith them is ignored, and the simplistic way to present an issue is to have a ‘pro’ and an ‘anti’ pair of sides, and to ignore all the subtler ‘perhaps both have a point’, or the ‘actually, they are both wrong’ positions get ignored. So the left-right dichotomy is preserved.