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Originally Posted by somerfrost
I think you are missing my point....folks on both sides routinely are engaging in what I consider hate speech and personal attacks, I'm not sure what could be gained by judging who is "the worst"...it's all bad...shameful and dangerous! In the 50's...if you disagreed with someone, you accused them of being a Communist and lives were destroyed, Dr King was called all sorts of names and his sex life the subject of J Edgar Hoover's interest (which, considering JEH's lifestyle...well, you know), Malcolm X was called a "terrorist" by mainstream media....go back further in history and folks were tortured and murdered cause someone called them a "witch"...the list is long and all of history contains examples of this folly...rather than debate differences and respect same, attack and accuse....worked for Hitler, Pol Pot and apparently the leaders of Sudan and now Iraq. This nation is becoming more divided every day and the rhetoric more and more vicious...there's a storm coming!!!
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Somer, I applaud and admire your passion for a kinder world, but I get tired of the hateful, awful, bigoted things flung around by the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh getting dismissed with, "Oh, liberals are just as bad." Because I really don't believe they are-- I don't hear anything coming out of leading liberal commentators that rivals the filth that Coulter spews. And it's probably why she makes more money, because, as I said, America loves a freak show. If you can find things from liberal commentators on the level of Coulter or Limbaugh that equals the things she's said, please post it. (Not the crazy blogger with an audience of six- we'll be here until the end of time if we start doing that). Otherwise, I think Coulter occupies a very special place in the "Making money by promoting hatred" Department.
Regarding the attacks on "Communists" and Martin Luther King-- was it liberals or conservatives that led those movements? Your examples aren't helping the "liberals are just as bad" argument.
Somer, believe it or not, political discourse has been this ugly in the US before-- check out the late 1800's. Whenever the divide between rich and poor gets great, the discourse gets uglier, because the haves must figure out a way to keep the have-nots voting for them. And there's nothing like morality and personal attacks to get people to vote against their own economic interests. From the NYTimes (I'll post the link, too), about the AMT:
<<Meanwhile the stated goal of the original tax is not being met under the successor tax enacted 21 years ago. A far greater number of well-off families still pay only small amounts of tax. More than 41,000 taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more in 2003, the last year for which figures are available, paid less than 10 percent of their income in individual income taxes. And the number of untaxed high-income families — once 155 — grew to 2,824.>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/we...ew&oref=slogin
And yet, people on this board claim the wealthy are currently "taking it on the chin" and continute to vote for policies that keep the wealthy paying less tax than I do. Go figure.
Hugs to you for your always thought-provoking, kind posts.
