Apparently now our police mudering loser is a terrorist, according to the Beaver County Times. Victims of a far right terrorist philosophy.
We can debate gun control and we can bemoan the economic, social and family conditions that went into creating someone like Poplawski.
But we also need to take a good hard look at the danger that the far right poses to our domestic tranquility.
Except for brief outbreaks of left-wing violence, most recently in the late 1960s and early 1970s, political violence in the United States has been the almost exclusive domain of the right.
Oh really? This is news to me. I guess anyone who disagrees with the media’s leftist agenda is a preacher of hate and violence.
Wasn’t JFK assassinated by a communist? Oh, wait, I forgot. It was the CIA, The Cubans, the Mafia, Space Aliens, any one on Earth, but not a leftist.
What about RFK? You gonna tell me that Sirhan Sirhan was a Goldwater conservative?
Martin Luther King, Jr.? Killed by a DEMOCRAT. Whoops! Must have been an accident. Certainly crazy violent Left wing ideologies like the KKK are unique to America, right? Every where else it’s Right wing extremists who maim, massacre, molest, and mutilate.
Oh, except for a few minor groups like the Fascists, the National Socialists, The Soviets, the Khmer Rouge, the Viet Cong, the Red Army Faction, and just about every other group of murderous thugs to exist in the last 150 years.
Don’t forget the Eco-Terrorism.
Sebastian, the WTO protestors, to the best of my knowledge, did not kill anyone. They did not blow up any federal buildings.
Alcibiades, same goes for the eco-terrorists. And in fact, they appear to go out of their way to not kill or harm anyone. This does not justify their actions, but there is quite a difference between destroying property and murder.
Matt, bringing up assassinations from the 60’s—even if the politics of the perpetrators was clear—and groups from other countries in no way contradicts the statement you’re replying to:
“Except for brief outbreaks of left-wing violence, most recently in the late 1960s and early 1970s, political violence in the United States has been the almost exclusive domain of the right.”
You have a point, Guav, but I look at groups like ALF, and think they make a lot of the militia movement look like do nothings.
But the ALF, if we’re going to consider them on the left–even though their actions aren’t really politically-motivated–has an analogue on the right: the anti-abortion activists.
Both groups justify the destruction of property on the grounds that they are fighting to defend the defenseless. One group smashes laboratories, the other one bombs abortion clinics. But once again, only one of those groups takes it one step farther and actually murders those it opposes.
Well, I don’t disagree that there’s analogues on the right, I’m just pointing out that crazy comes in a lot of different flavors. I don’t really like the anti-abortions activists that do that crap either.
I never suggested that you’re an advocate of right-wing violence, or that you support the anti-abortion crowd anymore than you support the anti-animal testing crowd. I don’t consider you a crazy at all—but that’s not really what we’re discussing here.
Yes, crazy comes in all flavors. But the quote in contention here is claiming that one of those flavors, in it’s contemporary incarnation, appears to have a greater tendency to advocate and carry out extremely violent actions than the other one. As far as I can see, the evidence supports that contention.
It’s probably also a matter that I view rioting as a gravely serious offense in a civilized society. It’s hardly ever done today, and I wouldn’t say Seattle would be a particular example of where it should have been done, but under some circumstances I don’t have a problem with police shooting into a riotous crowd. Most states, Pennsylvania included, have provisions in their deadly force statutes that allows for the use of deadly force to suppress rioters, which I don’t think are inappropriate. It’s a different kind of violence, for sure, but I wouldn’t really expect left violence and right violence to look the same.
Rioting IS a gravely serious offense. But not as gravely serious as killing abortion doctors, shooting police officers, walking into a progressive church to kill liberals, or blowing up an entire building with a daycare inside.
Right-wing political violence does seem to be more violent, deadly & dangerous in general—and, in recent years, much more common. We had eight years of a Republican administration more reviled and hated by the left than any other I can recall in my lifetime, yet no liberals went out hunting for conservatives.
We’ve had Obama in office for 10 weeks, and already we have conservatives completely losing their shit and talking about overthrowing the democratically-elected government. Not obscure, fringe groups, but people with actual audiences.
This is going nowhere good, and it’s going to hurt the recent strides gun rights has made if it keeps up—whether it should or not.
P.S. Besides, there’s nothing like a good riot to scare people into understanding that they alone are responsible for defending their homes and businesses. Riots, although a gravely serious offense, helps the 2nd Amendment more than it hurts it at least :)
“When seconds count the police are minutes away” doesn’t pick political sides. Gun control in much of this country has explicitly racist roots.
Also, I’d be a little leery of handwaving the political violence of the ’60s and ’70s. It may not have been as spectacular as the Oklahoma City bombing, but it was much more prolonged.
I’m not handwaving the political violence of the ’60s and ’70s, I’m pointing out that it’s not currently relevant—it’s simply not what we’re facing today.
Nor is there the political violence of the ’90s occurring today. There’s a high degree of rhetoric on both sides, but by and large it seems that the extremists are using the soap box (while possibly threatening the ammo box).
The WTO riot instigators were, by and large, anarchists. I doubt they’d be able to “escalate” a Tea Party in the same way though – they’d be in too much danger of having the Tea Partiers suppress them before the cops do.