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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A History of the Violent Left


A recent discussion concerning why the Left is inherently more violent than the Right failed to produce a single coherent thought or rambling from anyone that could name a single, conservative group or movement that was inherently violent in nature. Columnist Kelly O'Connell expounds on this idea while providing examples of the largely ignored history of violence on the part of Leftists in his recent article. First he explains why Leftists are so much more violent in nature...

"What is fashionably called “liberalism‚” today is not what the term originally meant 150 years ago, when it was used to describe the philosophy of freedom. The Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment all influenced the creation of original liberal theory. For example, the Founding Fathers were all political liberals and the writing of the Declaration and Constitution were the high points of the ideas of political liberalism. But at the turn of last century, socialists began referring to themselves as “liberals‚” and they poisoned the term from its original meaning, allowing leftists to exclusively adopt the term.

Socialist theory began in earnest in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Communism, Marxism, and anarchism all come from the same socialist root. Marx claimed his theory’s first stage was socialism, where all capitalist production is controlled by the state. Then comes communism, where private property is abolished by an all-powerful government. Finally, this phase is supplanted by anarchy. “Anarchism is the political belief that society should have no government, laws, police, or other authority, but should be a free association of all its members.‚” And violence was extolled by many socialist writers to help achieve their goals."

But what are some of the values/ideas closely held by conservatives that make them, generally speaking, much less prone to violence? O'Connell cites Amy Sturgis in explaining why yesterday's Classical Liberals are today's conservatives....


"1.An ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society;


2.The support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system;


3.The desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals’ rights from others and from its own expansion; and


4.The universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions.


Real Conservatism is not a violent movement, even though it does espouse a strong military for defensive purposes. But it does so for defensive purposes. Further, while Conservatism supports the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, this is also done for self-defense. To say that a person who supports gun rights is therefore violent would be like saying a surgeon’s goal is to hurt people because he uses knives on them.

Overall, American Conservatism is fixated on our democratic constitutional republic, believing only by following a well-established Rule of Law can we all be safe. Further, freedoms also results from keeping government small and its powers trimmed so that citizens might maximize their own rights. Property is considered sacrosanct, which is the foundation of our capitalist system. So, needless to say, murdering politicians is not a Conservative value."


Last week we looked at Lee Harvey Oswald who assasinated President John F. Kennedy. The history of leftist assasins in this country (US) is often not mentioned in the terms of two other examples. First, Leon Frank Czolgosz who murdered President William McKinley (above) who was said to have been heavily influenced by "famed anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman." Czolgosz was quoted as saying, "I don’t believe in the Republican form of government and I don’t believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them."


Another example is that of Charles Guiteau, assassin of President James A. Garfield. According to O'Connell, "Guiteau was infatuated with John Humphrey Noyes teachings on Utopian socialism, and produced his own work plagiarized from Noye’s book. Noyes founded the infamous Oneida community, which Guiteau joined. This commune abolished traditional weddings for group marriage. In fact, it was Noyes who coined the term “Free Love."


O'Connell wraps it up neatly for us in his closing arguments...


"The reason leftists are willing to murder in the name of politics is because they normally do not believe in God, a hereafter, or even any classic definition of morality. So whatever is done, as long as it serves Marxism, it is good.

According to P.H. Vigor’s A Guide To Marxism, since religion cannot deliver any sense of morality, it is up to humanism to create standards. But, as Virgor notes,

"Moreover, in any discussion involving ethics or morality, the fundamental point for a Marxist is that there is no such thing as an absolute Right and Wrong. Right and Wrong are relative for a Marxist: a thing which is wrong at one time, and in one set of circumstances, will be right in another…It is therefore simply not possible to settle an argument with them by reference to ethical principles—by saying, for instance, that the consequence of a particular policy would be murder, and you cannot commit murder. From a Marxist standpoint, you can—in certain circumstances"

The point here cannot be made too vigorously. There is no moral center found in socialism, Marxism, anarchism, or communism, as we discover in the Bible’s Ten Commandments. There is therefore no such thing as absolute wrong or right action to a true leftist. So,where resistance to Marxism is encountered, a sincere leftist always has the option of picking up a weapon to further his “liberalism.” In fact, virtually every Marxist revolution has involved murderous attacks to gain power.. And this is why leftists will always be infinitely more dangerous than Conservatives."








19 comments:

GentleSkeptic said...

JD, here's the list you "couldn't even read."

-- July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how "liberals" are "destroying America," walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.

-- October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.

-- December 2008: A pair of "Patriot" movement radicals -- the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted "to attack the political infrastructure" -- threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.

-- December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear "dirty bomb" in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.

-- January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.

-- February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.

-- April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.

-- April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama's purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.

GentleSkeptic said...

…continued:

-- May 2009: A "sovereign citizen" named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

-- June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

-- February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one "domestic terrorism" too.)

-- March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.

-- March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.

-- May 2010: A "sovereign citizen" from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.

-- May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.

-- May 2010: Two "sovereign citizens" named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.

-- July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.

-- September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year--old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the "Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/another-isolated-incident.html

J Curtis said...

Several problems here GS.

1. Over half of the references that you dumped en masse up above don't mention the political leanings of the person(s) who committed the violent acts.

2. Since when is Nazism considered "right-wing"?

"These supposedly right-wing extremists were calling for national health care, social security, state-run schools, communal land development and centralized government control. They were determined advocates of gun control. And if they did not believe it took a village to raise a child, they were certainly enthusiastic about public youth programs. And then there were the complaints about vast conspiracies in the private press. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Link

J Curtis said...

You are missing the overall point that none of the groups I mentioned on the earlier thread either advocate or look approvingly on violence as a menas to an end.

Froggie, when are you going to realize that nobody cares what a tired, worn-out, atheist crank has to say?

The final straw was your projecting what is quite probably the most the morally reprehensible crime imaginable, the rape of children, onto others a couple of times in a span of 2 days.

We all know that you weren't broaching the topic of what could be the most repugnant criminal act imaginable, a couple of times in a couple of days, for shock value or to suppress rational discusion of the topic that was then being discussed and didn't relate to child rape at all. Because to do so would be intellectually dishonest at best or indicate a deeper, more depraved psychosis at worst. We all know that couldn't have been the case.

I would ask why you did so, but the plain truth is I really don't want to know. Have a nice life Sherlock.

GentleSkeptic said...

Several problems here GS.

2 = several? Is that New Math? ; )

1. Over half of the references that you dumped en masse up above don't mention the political leanings of the person(s) who committed the violent acts.

The ideological leanings of the perpetrators can be cleanly inferred from the nature of their targets. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

2. Since when is Nazism considered "right-wing"?

Not gonna answer that. But I will say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are clearly right-wing if they're targeting Jewish community centers and a liberal sitting president. And since when is anarchy considered exclusively "left-wing"?

On January 10, you asked: What are some examples you could cite of right wing political violence that has occurred?

I gave you a list — en masse, as it were— of 18 events that have all occurred during the last couple of years. For contrast, you've block-quoted some casual elision of liberalism and socialism, and you've had to reach back to 1881 to find a total of three specific examples to support your thesis.

I realize that none of this is convincing to you. But you asked.

You are missing the overall point that none of the groups I mentioned on the earlier thread either advocate or look approvingly on violence as a means to an end.

And you are missing the overall point that NO "group" on either side advocates or looks approvingly on violence as a means to an end, but that SOME right-wing politicians (Angle, Palin, Bachmann, Perry) and media celebrities (Palin, Beck, Limbaugh) are much more willing than anyone on the left to dance perilously near to such suggestions, and then distance themselves when shit actually happens.

And I must say that the final straw for me is that you are now posting frothy rebuttals to banned commenters without posting their comments!

A new low, to be sure.

J Curtis said...

2 = several? Is that New Math? ; )

Want more?

1. What branch of Conservatism was Jim David Adkisson following that called for the elimination of people of a church he didn't attend?

2. What is "right-wing" about neo-nazis?

3. Were Bruce and Joshua Turnidge opportunists and scammers who were in debt or making a political statement?

4. Explain what was "right-wing" about Keith Luke.

There, that's 4 questions from the first 4 examples that you cite. Since you are convinced of the right-wing nature of these people, then also mention what conservative school of thought they were following that indicated that they should commit such acts.

I will say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are clearly right-wing if they're targeting Jewish community centers and a liberal sitting president

Targeting Jewish community centers is right-wing? Who was recently painting Isreali Jews as the equivilent of Nazis? American conservatives or rabid leftists? Link 1 and Link

Targeting the president doesnt mean they are following in the ways of anybody on the right of the political spectrum. If they are, then who?

you've block-quoted some casual elision of liberalism and socialism, and you've had to reach back to 1881 to find a total of three specific examples to support your thesis.

I realize that none of this is convincing to you. But you asked


Loughner was a Bush hating 9-11 truther. Look it up cuz.

And you are missing the overall point that NO "group" on either side advocates or looks approvingly on violence as a means to an end

Absolute, complete, 1000% BULLSHIT GS.

"Marx and Engles explicitly advocated political violence" Link with numerous examples from their writings

"The Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the skulls of Socialists" Benito Mussolini Link

Are you completely daft or just historically ignorant?

right-wing politicians (Angle, Palin, Bachmann, Perry) and media celebrities (Palin, Beck, Limbaugh) are much more willing than anyone on the left to dance perilously near to such suggestions, and then distance themselves when shit actually happens

What violence has any of them ever caused?

I must say that the final straw for me is that you are now posting frothy rebuttals to banned commenters without posting their comments!

What? Do you think I just make this stuff up?
Link 1

and

Link 2

You'll have to pardon me for not wanting such a macabre, ghoulish form of intellectual dishonesty here GS. Feel free to invite him over to your place though.

GentleSkeptic said...

lol

You can only continue this debate by conflating 100-year-old history with 2-year-old history.

Let me rephrase:

NO "group" on either side of the contemporary American political spectrum advocates or looks approvingly on violence as a means to an end.

As far as I know, Marx and Engles aren't part of the debate in America since 2008. Except in the paranoid and profitable rantings of Beck.

And I did not say that any of those right-wing politicians and media elites 'caused' any violence. I said, and still say, that they continually float the ideas, nuzzle up to the vision of armed insurrection, and then back away quickly anytime someone actually arms themselves and rises up against the government. They are instigators and thought leaders, but of course they will always be innocent of any actual wrongdoing. They leave that to their audience.

Now, how about that evidence that "leftists will always be infinitely more dangerous than Conservatives."

INFINITELY! To Infinite Violence, and Beyond!

J Curtis said...

As far as I know, Marx and Engles aren't part of the debate in America since 2008

although it wasn't in the US, you can be certain that they were certainly there in spirit yesterday. Link

(I linked this example to the English language version of Pravda for you so you'll feel more at home ;-))

GentleSkeptic said...

Got anything from, say, the last couple of years, in this country?

18-0, the score so far.

J Curtis said...

In case it somehow escaped your attention, I do not concede the "18-0" figure that you cite at all.

Would you mind answering the most basic of questions concerning the examples that you cited, starting with the first four questions that I asked up above? Something a bit more substantive than some pot head living in his mommy's basement would be preferable to the opinion of some guy you seem to accept as Gospel truth for now.

J Curtis said...

Got anything from, say, the last couple of years, in this country?

I have something from the last couple of weeks if that's what you like, quote.

"Fight the Right! Obama and the Progressives will overcome the tyranny of big business and the racist Tea Party." Link

J Curtis said...

I don't know if that screen shot was independently verified though. Feel free to check it out.

It calls to mind one blogger on a certain left-wing, pro-homosexual site who recently posted this video claiming that Glenn Beck was urging people to shoot others in the head without showing what he said leading up to the quote mined comment which changed the context entirely.

I don't know why they were hatin' on GB. I don't believe he has hang-ups about gay people to my knowledge.

Glen20 said...

I have something from the last couple of weeks if that's what you like, quote.

I don't think he would spell his own name incorrectly.
Jared did not have a facebook page but at least 30 appeared after his name was released. Most of the fake pages have him either far-right or far-left.

J Curtis said...

GS, I think we're getting a little bogged down here.

At no point did I even remotely state that it's impossible that a misguided someone with conservative leanings (or thinks they are) is incapable of commiting a terrible act of violence. Basically what I stated was that in the past,
I put the question " that in the vast majority of cases, conservative movements were (historically) not heavy on violence while the Left cannot say the same.

I asked the question "What conservative school of thought as espoused by anyone from Rush Limbaugh to the Old Right to neocons the Family First Party condones acts of violence as an acceptable means to an end?" 3X to no avail. Youre welcome to examine it and answer it if you can.

NeoNazis, an the other hand, are white supremacists; you do know that?

Compare their attitudes to that of certain Progressives if you will and expound on whether eugenics was pushed more said Progressives or Conservatives.

GentleSkeptic said...

Def agree with the bogged down part, if by "bogged down" you mean I'm doing a good job of substantiating my argument, and therefore you need to move the goalposts again. If you don't want to get "bogged down", perhaps you shouldn't generate question lists for your guests to chew through.

You've got 18 examples of contemporary American right-leaning violence to deal with, and a hyperbolic (borrowed) claim that "leftists will always be infinitely more dangerous than Conservatives."

3x to no avail, as they say. ALWAYS and INFINITELY. Please explain. Seems like if this was true we'd all be dead.

J Curtis said...

if by "bogged down" you mean I'm doing a good job of substantiating my argument, and therefore you need to move the goalposts again

Actually, I recall stating, to the effect, that Leftists movements, from their inception, have been markedly more violent (historically) whereas those on the right of the political spectrum are much less so. That's about all.

3x to no avail, as they say. ALWAYS and INFINITELY. Please explain. Seems like if this was true we'd all be dead

Perhaps it was hyperbole on the part of the writer. Ask him, and post his response here.

That being said, I generally agree that the Left is more violent. No doubt about it.

You still havent posted your comparison of Nazis and Progressives when it comes to eugenics. Whenever you get around to it will be fine.

J Curtis said...

If you want a recent example of socialist inspired violence, check out the foundations of the group called the Muslim Brotherhood which seems to be news alot lately. Link

GentleSkeptic said...

I think I've completed enough of your assignments on this thread.

J Curtis said...

So just to bring us up to speed,


A. The list you provide is "right-wing" basically "cus I sez so".

B. When asked to explain the concept of Nazism being to the right of the political spectrum, you are uninterested.

C. When asked to explore the similarities between German Nazis and American Progressives, you are uninterested in doing so, thus you seem quite comfortable in your bias.

Is any of the above untrue?