The voices of Progressivism (nice fascism). This comes on the Room For Debate page, and, of course,
It’s become clear that the man who is accused of slaughtering nine people in a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., had becomederanged by racial hatred, and was inspired by organized groups who shared his views. Since 9/11, national security agencies have focused on Muslim terror threats from abroad. But the threat of domestic hate groups has grown as government resources to combat them have shrunk.
How should we deal with the threat of rightwing extremism?
Is there any point in delving into all the left wing extremism, the violence, the threats, the fact that so many of these domestic murderers share many beliefs with Progressives? Na. We know it, Leftists are in denial. The NY Times will never admit it. But, let’s consider that 4 out of the 5 Leftists involved with this debate call for suppression of free speech and thought. For the most odious, we do not even have to go beyond Jessie Daniels’ headline
A clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Mark Pitcavage starts down the right road, then goes off the tracks
Rightwing extremism takes many forms and its adherents engage in many activities, from spreading propaganda to major acts of terrorism. The most effective strategies for responding to these activities involve exposing and countering them, while respecting constitutional boundaries.
As a general rule of thumb, the best response to hate speech is more speech. The First Amendment protects freedom of expression, including hate speech. But people have a right to speak out when they encounter hate: Whether in town halls or on social media, they can drown out the voices of hate and anger. People of goodwill outnumber extremists.
The best response to criminal conduct is effective law enforcement action. When someone engages in bias-motivated violence, law enforcement should enforce hate crime laws. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books but some, including South Carolina, do not. Accurate hate crime reporting is also a must.
Criminalizing thought. Then we have Cornell William Brooks
Five states, including South Carolina, do not have hate crime legislation on their books. All states should have hate crime laws that impose harsher penalties for crimes motivated by a victim’s race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, color, national origin or age.
We need to engage faith communities, business communities and our civic organizations in a robust campaign to combat symbols used by hate groups. Whether for the Confederate flag that flies in front of the American flag at the South Carolina state house or the Confederate flag embedded in the state flag of Mississippi, we must demand an unqualified rejection of such symbols of hate and call on Americans, as both citizens and consumers, to boycott companies that support these symbols as well.
So, enforcing thought crimes and banning certain symbols. Remember, it’s Free Speech to trash, jump on, and burn the U.S. flag, but Free Speech should be stopped for things like the Confederate flag. But, hey, if Mr. Brooks wants to talk about hate, as part of his job with the NAACP, what about charging all those Blacks involved in 50% of the murders, an a goodly chunk of other violent crime, as haters?
William Braniff also starts strong, then finishes with a whimper
Between 1990 and 2013, there were 155 ideologically motivated homicide events committed by far-right extremists in the U.S., killing 368 individuals. From 1995 to 2010, there were 239 arson and bombing attacks committed by the ecoterrorism groups Earth Liberation Front (E.L.F.) and Animal Liberation Front (A.L.F.), approximately 90 percent of which targeted businesses and private homes. And between 1980 and 2013, there were 196 failed and foiled plots associated with Al Qaeda. (In addition, NBC news recently cited a statistic, alleging that 52 U.S. citizens and/or permanent residents have been charged with supporting the Islamic state over the last 15 months – a significant uptick in arrests).
Oh, look, lots of Left wing attacks.
In all of these cases, community-based approaches to countering violent extremism have an important role to play. For instance, Dylann Roof’s acquaintances were generally aware of his racism but were not primed to take it seriously and direct him to an intervention program. It is also possible that existing programs, such as those addressing gang violence, school violence or violent Islamist extremism were seen as the wrong fit for Roof’s issues.
Once we acknowledge that rightwing extremism is among the many forms of violent extremism tearing at the fabric of American society, raising awareness and developing community-based prevention, intervention and rehabilitation programming are the next steps in minimizing the threat.
So, not only deeming thought crimes and restricting free speech, but forced rehabilitation.
Liberals shouldn’t forget the old saying: “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.” And their fascistic anti-free speech/thought prescriptions would certainly come back and bite them in the ass.
Our host quoted:
Uhhh, Dylann Roof is facing nine counts of first degree murder, which carries a penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty; just how much more does Cornell Brooks think could be done to him?
Nor do I see why, in cases which are less serious than murder, there should be some sort of greater penalty for beating up someone because you don’t like his skin color than for beating up someone because you wanted to steal his wallet; is the victim of robbery somehow less injured, somehow less a victim, because the criminal’s motivation was more plebian?
Dana the people of the United States passed those laws because they felt that some groups needed more protection because of the history of violence against them.
Teach no one is trying to stop flying the rebel battle flag on your own private property, or the Nazi flag.
But on public property ? I say no to both.on public property we fly the flag of the Unitrd States of America.
This is what it’s Americans feel is correct.
Teach don’t forget that jihadists are right wing, not left
Ani abirtion anti gay anti women’s rights anti union
Pro religion in government pro small government
And of course pro use of fossil fuels since Allah gave them do much of that to burn Unlije almost every other government the fossil fuel extremist Muslims care nothing about AGW
Reduce the power if extremist Muslims by reducing fossil fuel use
All too often hate speech is only hate speech in the mind of the person listening.
OMG !!! He will not stop !! That damn Surrender Monkey has ripped down the war flag at the Alabama state capital. Is there no one who can stop him ?
Every GOP POTUS wannabe will be called out on their prior position on this. There will be a penalty that must be paid to pander to their most extreme rebel rightwing base
In America its either/or. Your either left or right….you cant be insane, fuking nuts or just plain evil….your either right or left.
Anti abortion yes….its murder….sorry you and your lefties dont see killing an unborn baby as murder. Anti gay……no….anti gay marriage yes…..anti gay rights……no. Anti women’s right? Seriously? Most of the CEO’s of large corporations are Democrats…the ones you know that your angry at because they do not pay the same as men. Have the righties removed condoms, birthcontrol or for that matter removed abortion from America?……..
Once again Saul Alinsky bait and switch tactics…..and a poor job of it.
Yes we are all for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism and any other peaceful religion that teaches family values, work ethic and morality…..Small government is subjective….what we consider small government is actually SMALL…..er then what progressive consider government which would include controlling nearly everything including speech.
A rather bizarre rant….blaming AGW on Muslims now. Isnt that a hate crime. I mean after all progressives seem to hate Christians, Jews, Muslims, Straight couples, and hetrosexual marriage……which accounts for about 90 percent of the world……
So when you get right down to it….Conservatives hate 10 percent of the world………liberals hate 90 percent……..
I rest my case….you should open a new shop John and call it the school of unhinged blather……it pretty much suits a progressive commenter…they just throw shit out and hope to piss people off.
Societies that require uniformity of thought do not allow liberty, of any kind.
Oh, so a black victim of a white criminal has been injured more greatly than the black victim of a black criminal?
Perhaps one might ask whether the young black men in Chicago have more of a history of violence against themselves from white or black criminals. But, then again, we already know that the history of violence against young black males by other black males is a virtually ignored topic.
Liberty is the antithesis of liberalism; freedom is the enemy of socialism.
John wrote:
Frack, baby, frack! Use our own fossil fuels!
File under ‘dindu nuffin’ column:
“Cause to me, he didn’t do no wrong. He just shot a cop…”
http://m.wisn.com/news/man-accused-of-shooting-wauwatosa-detective-charged-with-armed-robbery/33718566
Hate crime statutes add punishment to a physical crime. Do you really object that two Black teens who assault a white man because of race serve an extra year in the slammer? The intent of the statutes is further deterrence to protect certain groups.
Neither individuals nor companies can violate free speech rights, only the state can be guilty of that. So Wal-Mart deciding not to sell confederate or Nazi paraphernalia is not violating your God-given and constitutional right to hate Black people. You can still type whatever white supremacist crap you want, you can still tie a confederate battle flag to you antenna or your dick and parade it around.
Vehement criticism is not violating your 1st Amendment rights. Getting fired for harming the company you work for is not a violation of your 1st Amendment rights.
You poor white supremacists are such victims. Why do you expect the state to support your personal beliefs by erecting flags and monuments? Use your own money and your own property.
Should the government use surveillance on potential terrorist groups, like radical Muslims, the ALF, “sovereign” citizens and right-wing extremists like Dylann Root? I think we should.
Did you know the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose literature Dylann Roof mined for his manifesto, is a 501(c)(4)tax-exempt organization for promoting social welfare. A spokesman for the CCC disagreed with Roof’s murderous rampage but stated his manifesto made a lot of good points, and that Roof’s sense of justice was upset by the treatment of whites by Blacks.
Did you know that the cops that ever so gently arrested Roof took him through Burger King on their trip to the station? And paid! Kill 9 Black folks, win a free Whopper!
Do you think that’s how Freddie Gray died in Baltimore? The cops being extra nice to him? Maybe they stopped and bought him a latte not knowing he had a milk allergy.
How about Eric Garner? Choked to death by over-affectionate cops?
I know that, at best, you simply skim the posts, John, hence you missed the part the other day where I stated that Confederate flags should not be flying on government property.
I object to people being sentenced for thought crimes, regardless of color, creed, religion, etc. Furthermore, hate crime sentencing is not applied the same across the border. Further furthermore, the use of hate crimes has gone completely overboard. The notion of committing a hate crime becomes more important than crimes like rape, assault, and murder.
LOL. Despite all your invective and attempts to anger and smear, you’re a buffoon, falling for that already debunked story about Roof being taken to BK. Yes, he was brought BK. No, he didn’t go in nor go through the drive through. As despicable as feeding him is, you should consider the law, and that this will be a very high profile trial. Do you want his lawyers to have any latitude? Hopefully, once he is sentenced, SC will have the proper drugs to administer the death penalty. If not, what say to the electric chair or a firing squad?
And now you’ve proven you’re off your meds.
Funny how you like to throw around racist accusations, yet, you care now a whit over the plight of Black people living in Democrat run ghettos, living with high levels of crime, assault, murder, shootings, stabbings, rape, along with poverty, poor education, and hopelessness, all thanks to Democrat policies. Your policies. Congrats! Racist.
Teach,
My policies? If you think liberal policies made the ghettos, you’re even more appalling than I originally thought.
The contrasts between liberal and conservative ideology depend largely on race. Conservatives don’t like anyone but white, straight, Christians. It’s not a coincidence that conservative policies always have and always will harm minorities. It’s in your DNA (actually epigenetic according to Harvard, at least for southern whites, what with the “shock” of desegregation).
That’s not to say that macro policies supported by both our political parties don’t harm the poor, and especially poor Blacks. “Trade” agreements that serve the donor capitalist class at the expense of the poor and middle classes are widely supported by moderates and conservatives, Dem and Repub alike. Tax, labor, immigration, trade, entitlement, fiscal, regulatory, banking, defense and monetary policies – configured to reward the wealth at the expense of the working classes – are largely supported by both parties, who are dependent upon the corporate and donor classes.
Jeffrey asked:
Yes, actually, I do object: it is the assault which should be punished, not the motive behind it. Nor should some victims be somehow more (or less) protected than other victims.
You can never get to a society in which race doesn’t matter when the law treats people differently due to race.
Jeffrey wrote:
[Guffaws!] It was The Washington Post which just told us that Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA), who many white Republicans like, doesn’t have much Indian left in him, because he did something really, really radical like assimilated into American culture.
Remember Duke professor Jerry Hough, who was excoriated for a comment he made on a New York Times article:
And so Bobby Jindal, an Asian, did take a very simple old American first name, and assimilated, just as we (supposedly) expect immigrants to do. The problem is that, for the Democrats, immigrants who do assimilate become Republicans, and that’s the last thing that the left want.
Thus we can see the basis for Republican support for Governor Jindal: he is the son of legal immigrants, and he became an American in thought and word, and not just by the technicality of his birth. Conservatives and Republicans support people who are Americans, period, regardless of the color of their skin.
It’s not the conservatives who are trying to divide us along racial lines; it’s the Democrats who keep pushing that. And it makes sense: if the Democrats ever lose that 90% voting loyalty they have among black Americans, they will lose almost every election, and thus they need, need! to keep dividing people by race.
Bobby Jindal is a lot more Indian than Elizabeth Warren! :)
But race does matter. As does ethnicity, gender identity, disability, language, nationality, physical appearance, religion, or sexual orientation.
Should intent matter at all? It seems to in homicide cases, right? Do you recommend that 1st, 2nd degree homicide and voluntary manslaughter be rolled into one? They are all the intentional killing of another differentiated by motive.
Should terrorist attacks be treated any differently than assault or homicide, understanding that an act of terrorism is meant to frighten/terrorize dozens or hundreds of individuals. Isn’t that a worse crime than simple assault?
No one is going to prosecute a right-winger for hating Negroes or gays or Mexicans or Muslims. You can still call them animals, savages, violent, niggers, sand niggers, spics, lazy and stupid.
We get it. Most hate crimes involve attacks against Blacks and gays – and the perpetrators are usually conservative extremists, and you hate having that pointed out.
Dana,
Like most white supremacists you believe that Negroes are not capable of deciding for whom to vote – that for some reason Negroes are mesmerized by liberal smoke and mirrors.
It’s how we identify you as a white supremacist (that and your confederate flag belt buckle).
J-“Like most white supremacists you believe that Negroes are not capable of deciding for whom to vote. Really? Well, like most white liberal closet racists you believe Negroes are incapable of obtaining an ID card and of competing for a job straight-up without affirmative action. Jeffery, that word you’re grasping for is “hypocrite”.
Nope.
Not even close.
The difference, of course, is that terrorism is and of itself is a crime. As you point out later on in your screed, hating someone is not a crime.
Of course, this is self fulfilling as a crime is rarely labeled a “hate crime” when the victim is a white person or a heterosexual make. Even though the actual motives for those crimes is the hatred of a white person or a heterosexual male, the additional “hate crime” stipulation is seldom added to the charge.
So in one little post, Jeffery screws up the law and shows that he doesn’t really understand the issues at all. All he can do is play the race card since the facts are against him.
j,
The word you are looking for is “myth”, e.g., such as the myth of affirmative action.
You should look up the meaning of affirmative action.
This conservative myth is just another expression of your white supremacy.
Jeffrey wrote:
The obvious question for a liberal ought to be: why should it matter? And if you are going to codify such differences in the law — the Fourteenth Amendment be damned, apparently — how can you ever expect race to not matter?
Unless, of course, that is your goal.
Jeffrey wrote:
You’re right: intent shouldn’t matter.
No, terrorist attacks should not be treated differently. If we are “understanding that an act of terrorism is meant to frighten/terrorize dozens or hundreds of individuals,” we also have to realize that rapes and armed robberies also frighten people in the area who were not the immediate victims, leading them to believe that their neighborhoods are unsafe, and they might be the next victims.
Look around neighborhoods in our major cities, and you’ll see all sorts of urban homes with bars on the windows, bars to defend homes against burglaries and break-ins, because other people have been victims; why ought we to say that intentional terrorist attacks are actually any less threatening to those who weren’t the immediate victims than “ordinary” crimes?
We have severe enough penalties for the crimes themselves; we don’t need to try to pile on mind-reading on top of them. One of the larger problems is that we too frequently impose less than the maximum sentences for these crimes, too frequently sentence criminals to probation instead of hard time.
Jeffrey wrote:
[Guffaws] Well, it’s at least how you attempt to attach labels to people, at any rate.
In any other system, we’d identify an election in which the winner got 90+% of the vote as rigged. That 90+% of black voters vote Democratic hardly seems as though there are any careful considerations being taken.
And, Alas! I don’t have a Confederate flag belt buckle! I do have a CS belt buckle, bought in the gift shop at Gettysburg, in a drawer, but it’s not on a belt. But, that’s OK, you keep putting up those straw men; it’s what the left do. You don’t really understand your political opponents, being completely unable to comprehend that anybody could see things differently than you, so y’all have to construct caricatures of conservatives, and attack those.
Conservatives are intelligent enough to understand liberal thinking, even if they don’t agree with it; liberals are not smart enough to comprehend how conservatives think, so they come up with their own fantasies.
Jeffrey wrote:
As for me, I prefer to look up the actual implementation of Affirmative Action under the law. Regardless of what meaning you assign to it, in practice Affirmative Action has meant using race to discriminate in favor of minority candidates. The Supreme Court said that hard quotas (Gratz v Bollinger) are unconstitutional, but that race can be one “consideration” (Grutter v Bollinger) among several, which still means that it is a point of decision.
As far as I am concerned, private institutions have a right to use race-based considerations, but government should not.
Dana,
Race matters to liberals because it matters to conservatives – and conservatives act on their beliefs.
Contrary to closeted conservative dogma, Blacks are not genetically inferior to whites. Contrary to white supremacists’ literature (and conservative dogma) they are not lazier or dumber than the dominant whites.
Yet as a group, Blacks have lower family wealth, lower income, lower levels of academic achievement, greater rate of arrest and incarceration for similar offenses, greater rate of unemployment, decreased longevity, decreased quality of life, substandard schools etc etc.
Recall that Blacks have been equal Americans for only a generation, and largely in name only.
Someone please explain how the right-wing bête noir, “Affirmative Action”, has harmed whites?
Jeffrey builds and attacks another strawman:
Well, I’m sure that’s what you think is the case!
Where, other than marginalized extremist internet junk, do you find that “conservative dogma” is that blacks are genetically inferior to whites? Oh, wait, I see it: you called it “closeted conservative dogma,” meaning that that is what you think conservatives believe, but have absolutely no proof of it. :)
It only takes one statistic to answer every point:
That’s the Council of State Governments, not some left or right wing institution.
Failing to be graduated from high school is about the biggest thing that negatively impacts earning potential, and the large differences, in the aggregate, will have a huge downward impact on aggregate black economic results. And dropping out of school is not something that we wicked white supremacists force blacks to do; those are decisions taken by 14 and 15 and 16 year olds, people too young to be taking decisions on almost anything, which impact the entire community.
Yet, in states with relatively small black populations, the graduation rates for blacks and whites are virtually identical: when blacks are actually integrated with whites, when they aren’t stuck in the inner city culture, they perform reasonably identically with whites.
This is entirely a cultural issue!
Jeffrey plays dumb:
If a decision is taken between two candidates based on race, then the candidate not selected has been harmed. You would absolutely agree with that point, if the decision based on race was against the black candidate; why are you unable to see the same thing when the decision goes against the white candidate?
Dana,
If you’re claiming that giving an equal chance to a non-white harms the white status quo, I guess we agree.
But how did a company become 99.99% white in the first place?
Many years ago, I recall sitting in our packed 300 seat auditorium at the world’s biggest agrochemical company, listening to our House Rep (Jim Talent R-Mo). I was surrounded by techs, techies, managers, VPs, researchers … all very well paid, great working conditions, outstanding benefits (Cadillac medical, pension, profit sharing, disability insurance and on and on). There were 2 Blacks in the crowd, and that was pretty representative of the company. These were dream jobs on which a person could support a family, buy a house, send kids to college and retire comfortably. There were 2 Blacks in the crowd.
Somehow, even in the late 80s, the culture/system/economy appeared to be excluding Blacks from, or guiding Blacks away from, this path to the “good life”.
So now conservatives say sure, there was overt and discrete discrimination until a few decades ago but we’re going to start over. Here’s the starting line for Blacks. The starting line for whites is 40 yards ahead. Ready. Set. Go.
Except, of course, that a 22 year old white applicant and a 22 year old black applicant does not have the white guy starting out 40 years ahead. It could be that his father started out ahead, but you are attempting to state that that advantage passes down from father to son.
And our Constitution states that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” You would have the state take actions which deny the equal protection of the laws to some people because of advantages their parents might have had, all based on the colors of their skins.
Even if this wasn’t an impediment, even if we agreed that government action should be taken to balance things out, to make the races equal in practical and economic outcomes, you’d never get it right. Either you’d end it too soon, leaving whites with whatever advantages they had, or continue it too long, giving an advantage to blacks; only God could be wise enough to get it right. Social engineering rarely works out the way that the engineers thought.
Now, if you, owning a private company, wanted to engage in Affirmative Action, and favor black applicants over white ones, to redress whatever inequities you believe exist, I’d have no problem with that at all; private is private. But that cuts both ways: if you, as a private businessman, wanted to favor blacks in your hiring programs, then why couldn’t gitarcarver, as a business owner, decide that he’d prefer to favor white employees over blacks?
Jeffrey misrepresents the argument:
No one said that. What was said is:
That is a statement on the effects of race-based or race-influenced selection on individuals, not the “white status quo.” Is it your position that random white individuals must be discriminated against to somehow equalize the respective white and black status quo?
There were many white Americans who owned blacks as slaves 150 years ago, but all of those slave owners are over a hundred years in their graves. There were white Americans who enforced de jure segregation in the first half of the twentieth century, but the vast majority of them have gone to their eternal rewards as well. As you try to use Affirmative Action to rectify some of those past wrongs, you aren’t penalizing the slave owners or the Jim Crow beneficiaries, but the 18 and 22 and 31 year olds who had nothing to do with any of it.
And, of course, you get good, liberal institutions like Harvard discriminating not just in favor of “disadvantaged minorities,” but apparently against successful minorities, as there is a prima facie case that Harvard, and other Ivy League schools, discriminate against Asian students.
Asian families in America have a cultural norm which encourages students to work hard, to get the best grades, to get the best college admissions, a cultural norm we all ought to have. Trouble is, if admissions were based strictly on merit, Harvard and MIT and Yale and Princeton would look like Tokyo or Beijing, and we can’t have that, can we?
But, that’s a tradition in the Ivy League; it wasn’t that many years ago that there were too many Jooooos getting in, so a quota had to be put on them as well.
Yes Dana the Ivy League did have quotas for Jews and certainly also for blacks. Of course that was when Conservatives ran those institutions. The Ivy League has become much more liberal since then.
Most Ivy League schools want a diverse student body one that mirrors the racial proportions of our population. They also weight very heavily to children of previous graduates. These are private universities and can choose to admit whom they wish. Just as Liberty University can choose only good christians.
And MIT isn’t really part of the Ivy League, and admissions has never been based solely on academic merit.
Sounds to me like you were someone who needed a safe school besides your Ivy applications
Certainly the good conservative colleges and universities are still choosing whom they wish to attend. I don’t think there are many pagans at liberty University. Do you have a problem with that ?
I’ve already said that private colleges and institutions should be able to discriminate on whatever bases they choose. But I was noting that it was the left who were engaging in racial discrimination, pointing out that they are perfectly willing to discriminate against racial minorities if they aren’t the approved minorities.
You should have stopped at “I don’t think,” john.
From the admissions application of Liberty University:
Liberty University prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, age, disability or status as a veteran or
disabled veteran. The school maintains its Christian character, but does not discriminate on the basis of religion, except to the extent that applicable law respects its right to act in furtherance of its religious objective.