The lobbyist-funded right wing is getting violent. There have been death threats. Physical assaults. Arrests. And now more threats of violence:
Based on the news that health care events are edging into violence, an anti-health care reform protester in New Mexico named Scott Oskay is calling on his hundreds of online followers to bring firearms to town halls, and to ‘badly hurt’ SEIU and ACORN counter protesters.
This is not the way to have a debate about health care reform. Yelling, screaming, Nazi imagery, and violence are not how we solve our problems here in America.
We on the pro-reform side are committed to keeping things peaceful. We’ll be there, but we’re there to listen to the Members of Congress at these events. The right, so far, has not made the same commitment. Will the right wing – specifically Republican Members of Congress and the corporate funders of these "grassroots" protests – come out and renounce violence and threats of violence?
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
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I think some of the right wingers would be surprised that their liberal counterparts may be armed as well. I do not advocate violence, but self defence is the American Way.
Didn’t Bush pass a law that would allow this sort of violent behavior to be defined as terrorism? Throw ‘em in jail and waterboard ‘em.
It’s not the American way, it’s just the way. One of the things that fascinates me about the U.S. is that it’s one of few nations where the left-wing harshly demonizes not violence, but specifically firearms. Leading to a condition where comparatively they’re grossly under-armed compared to the right-wing. There are myriad reasons for that condition, some of them intellectually honest, but most of them being the result of an inability to tell the difference between symptoms and root causes.
I happen to own a pistol for range shooting, but most of my liberal friends don’t know that, because they’d be furious if I let them find out. I half expect to get a few shocked and angry phone calls for admitting it here.
As for when the right will denounce violence; they won’t. Right-wing movements historically come in two flavors at their culmination; military and paramilitary.
I’ve got nothing against guns, you just shouldn’t bring them to town halls with your members of Congress, as is being advocated here.
With today’s gun culture in the U.S., I’d have to agree. What Mr. Oskay is calling for is a de facto militia movement to present itself at these rallies. I was mostly responding to weekendclimber.