Left behinds
Posted by Charles II on April 6, 2010
Not just the right, but parts of the left are being swept up in madness. The latest example of this that I found was on Chris Floyd’s Empire Burlesque. Read the following and see if you can spot a problem or two:
Charles Davis (via Jon Schwarz) has an incisive take on the high fluttery flail induced in our imperial courtiers by the latest Tea Party tantrums. Davis demolishes a piece in The Nation by progressive paladin Maria Harris-Lacewell, in which she waxes lyrical — not to nonsensical — about the great threat to “the legitimacy of the state” posed by Tea Partiers disrespecting our elected officials. These acts — spitting, swearing, insulting, shouting, etc. — which might have been considered legitimate expressions of citizen anger (or at least good clean fun) if directed at, say, George Dubya or Dick Nixon, are now to be regarded as — I kid you not — “an act of sedition” when aimed at the ruling party.
If you noticed that spitting has never been considered good clean fun, but is legally considered assault, score yourself one point. Same for noticing that shouting the N-word (or the F-word at Barney Frank) may not be a crime, but neither do many of us regard it as good clean fun. Now, if you noticed that Floyd got Harris-Lacewell’s first name wrong, score five points. Her name is Melissa. But if you actually clicked through and discovered that the error on her name traces back to Charles Davis, who mis-cites Michael J. Smith, a self-proclaimed lefty who asks,quotes without shame a reader asking of Harris-Lacewell, “This is the one who writes like a ham sandwich, right? No wit, no style, no depth, no likable persona…. Is she sleeping with someone? Is she doing the column for free?” (emphasis added), then score yourself a full 25 points. [correction thanks to Red in the thread below]
Apparently Floyd never read the article before citing Davis [Added: He says he did; I’d say, maybe so, but not very closely], and apparently Davis doesn’t know enough about Harris-Lacewell to get her name right. She also happens to be a tenured professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton, even if she “writes like a ham sandwich.” Michael J. Smith is… a guy. Charles Davis is “an independent journalist,” who contributes to Inter Press Service, Alternet.org, Common Dreams and Antiwar.com– apparently the kind of journalist who doesn’t stop to get the name right and thinks that asking who a woman is sleeping with to disparage her work is fair comment. None of this is to say that the professor can’t be wrong, and the guy and the independent journalist can’t be right. I’m just sayin’.
So, on to substance. The basic complaint of Floyd and Davis is that Harris-Lacewell says:
The Tea Party is a challenge to the legitimacy of the U.S. state. When Tea Party participants charge the current administration with various forms of totalitarianism, they are arguing that this government has no right to levy taxes or make policy. Many GOP elected officials offered nearly secessionist rhetoric from the floor of Congress this weekend. They joined as co-conspirators with the Tea Party protesters by arguing that this government has no monopoly on legitimacy.
I appreciate the parallels to the civil rights movement drawn by the MSNBC crowd, but they are inadequate. When protesters spit on and scream at duly elected representatives of the United States government it is more than act of racism. It is an act of sedition.
Floyd and Davis are distressed that Harris-Lacewell is more concerned about the actions of the Tea Party than about the illegal wars, torture, kidnappings, and other crimes committed by the US government back at least to Vietnam, with Floyd trashing Harris-Lacewell’s piece as “the kind of thing that gives insipid sycophancy a bad name” and approvingly quoting Davis saying:
Perhaps they shouldn’t just be ignored, but until Glenn Beck’s followers kill two dozen people in a remote village, I’m going to spend most of my time focusing on those with control over the tanks and nuclear weapons.
Let that sink in. This is a full week after the following report:
Nine members of the Christian militia group Hutaree have been indicted on multiple charges involving an alleged plot to attack police, including seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. Attorney in Michigan announced this morning.
The deaths of two dozen people in a remote village might not be as far away as Davis seems to think.
Not only that, but Harris-Lacewell seems to have been prescient. Her article just preceded the Hutaree arrests by just a few days.
Now, as one who leans libertarian, I am very cautious about censoring speech. Such censorship is almost always selectively used against the left, and it has never accomplished anything but inflame the sense of injustice. As long as people talk about secession, but don’t do it, I see no crime. As long as people urge one another to resist taxes but actually pay them, they aren’t tax resisters. But assaulting government officials is a crime. Planning murder is a crime. Assuming the government gets a conviction in the Hutaree case, Harris-Lacewell’s concerns are fully borne out.
Is she going too far by extending the term “seditious” to the Tea Party? Many chapters of the Tea Party are uninformed loudmouths, but they are expressing protected speech in opposing (however moronically) healthcare reform and bank bailouts. I think that when she says, “The Tea Party is a challenge to the legitimacy of the U.S. state,” and connects it to sedition, she is painting with too broad a brush. When many of us questioned George Bush’s election, were we seditious? If so, nearly half the American people were seditious.
But Floyd and Davis are not so much scornful of her use of the word “seditious” as they are at her failure to hop on their hobby horse, the evil American empire. Well, it is an empire, and it does quite a bit of evil. I spent more of my life than I care to think about on one small example, the crushing of elected government in Honduras. But all empires do evil. If the Chinese rise to power, one can predict that they, too, will do evil.
And, it turns out, Melissa Harris-Lacewell is not the defender of empire that they paint her as. True, her writings are about her professional interests. She has not written about peace and justice issues, though she is affiliated with the Princeton Peace and Justice Center. Like most college professors, she shies away from advocacy in her writings. Speaking of advocacy, how much time do Floyd and Davis spend in advocating for social justice for African Americans? Maybe about as much time as Harris-Lacewell spends on issues of war and empire?
Harris-Lacewell’s analysis of the Tea Party as a seditious movement is an academic exercise, not advocacy of anything (except lawful process) per se. Nowhere does she say,Jail them, nor does she paint the congressmen who were abused as brave: they are, she says, the state. They are simply doing their jobs. She accordingly rejects the comparison of this era with the Civil Rights Movement, comparing it with Reconstruction. This is a challenge to be met with persuasion, legislation, and when warranted, law enforcement.
In summary, Chris Floyd and Charles Davis: Epic Journalism Fail.
___________________________
Additions:
1. 4/6: Please read Sara Robinson, an experienced right-watcher who cannot be accused of being a pointy-headed, ivory-tower academic:
The challenge I once threw down on the conservatives still stands. Do they want a civil war? Are they out to overthrow the US government?
If this is just political grandstanding to energize the base, they’re playing with fire, and they need to bring this incendiary campaign to a screeching halt. Right now. This Mickey Mouse pussyfooting around, play-acting at sedition is criminally dangerous chickenshit politics that puts the short-term needs of the Republican party ahead of the long-term viability of the American democracy they’ve sworn to uphold. In case the party leaders haven’t noticed, their base has taken them as seriously as a heart attack — and they’re genuinely making ready for armed revolt.
On the other hand, if they’re actually serious about seditious rebellion against the US government, then let them stand up, follow through, and face the charges. They’re either Americans, committed to working in good faith within the democratic process to create our common future; or else they’re seditionists in intention or fact — and thus enemies of the state, plain and simple.
For the good of the country, we cannot continue to let them have it both ways. They need to choose whose side they’re on: America’s, or their own.
2. 4/6: Some examples of how Davis uses improper rhetorical devices
a. Straw men
“Because of the Tea Party movement, you see, whose flashes of racism and disrespect toward politicians is of more concern to Ivy League academics than the ‘legitimate’ state violence they applaud.” Has Harris-Lacewell ever applauded state violence? Can one name any other opponents of the Tea Party among “Ivy League academics” who applaud state violence?
“the mistaken belief that most taxes the state levies go to gumdrop bridges and fairy dust health clinics” Does Harris-Lacewell believe that taxes go only to innocuous things? Or is she aware that only a small fraction of government revenues go to “state violence,” while most of them go to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other non-violent activities?
“while sanctimoniously dismissing those who see no distinction between state-sponsored and private sector murder Has Harris-Lacewell done this? Is this not just another they do such wretched things, these anonymous theys argument? In fact, do not most people who are part of the peace movement recognize that they are a minority, and that if they want to delegitimize state violence, they need to win a few elections?
“Put another way: offenses against the state are inherently more despicable than any offense one could commit against some poor schmuck civilian. An overstatement? Well, no, as Harris-Lacewell herself demonstrates in writing about Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who “is no longer just a brave American fighting for the soul of his country- he is an elected official. He is an embodiment of the state.” This represents a major misreading of Harris-Lacewell by a lazy mind. Her point is not that Lewis should be immune from verbal abuse. Her point is that now that he is an embodiment of the state, it’s his job to stand up to abuse. He gets paid to walk past screaming idiots.
“I just don’t fear a rollback of the Reconstruction period ‘and the descent of a vicious new Jim Crow terrorism’ as much as I fear and abhor the actual, happening-right-now terrorism.” But of course an African American, especially one who actually knows what happened in Reconstruction, might well genuinely fear it.
“That female civilians are being killed at a level on par with Afghan males is no doubt being hailed in the halls of Brookings as a feminist triumph” Is it?
Perhaps they shouldn’t just be ignored, but until Glenn Beck’s followers kill two dozen people in a remote village…” But of course, it was just such a person who killed over 160 people in the Murrah Federal Building 15 years ago. The SPLC has documented 75 terrorist incidents, some of which could have been far worse, in the intervening time period. And they say that the threat of domestic terrorism is rising rapidly.
b. ad hominem:
“Ivy League academics”
“The Nation’s house political scientist” This sounds distressingly close to “house Negro.” Let’s hope that it’s just an unfortunate turn of phrase.
The point is, once you strip out the strawmen and ad hominem from the argument, it’s a major rhetorical fail. To be as generous as possible, the argument is that There are larger issues than domestic terrorism to confront. People who care about justice should focus on the US’s unjust wars and the civilian deaths they cause, on the number of prisoners held in her jails, and on extrajudicial killings. There’s nothing wrong with such an argument… if it were to recognize that other people might feel called to do different things.
3. 4/7 Chris Floyd complains that I don’t address his main point, that the American government is so evil that it has no legitimacy. I contend that I have addressed it in saying that all empires are evil. Doesn’t the American government do what the American people tolerate, if not what they desire?
The real problem is not the government “them”– it is the people “we.” If one were able to magically subtract the conservatives from the political, would we continue to engage in illegal wars, crimes against civilians, and so on? I don’t think so. The meanness in American politics has its focus in the conservative movement. At its root, a belief in an all-powerful “them” is what creates these circular firing squads.
52 Responses to “Left behinds”
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Mercury Rising 鳯女 
Allen said
The Tea Party is a distraction.
The Tea Party/Teabaggers is not really a movement, but rather a relatively small number of right-wing extremists who have been used by the Democrats as a scapegoat for their own hypocrisies.
It’s an Astroturf movement by such figures like Dick Armey and other Republican and conservative lobbyists who are manufacturing right-wing dissent to distract from the real left-wing dissent that is ignored by the media.
Think about it; what better way of getting the right-wing fascist message out there than giving it media exposure? And indeed, that is what we have.
If you follow the media narrative in America, there is no left-wing dissent. There is only right-wing dissent. This simultaneously legitimatizes the right-wing narrative and gives justification for the Obama administration to crack down on ANY dissent-because a handful of right-wing fanatics are given media exposure.
The point is to get liberals to react, and it keeps working again and again.
No tea bagger or Limbaugh or Fox news nonsense can stand up to a strong left wing narrative for even a minute. How any of us could ever lose a debate with those talking points, or be frustrated or worry about it is a mystery to me.
The worry is the potential for violence from the right wing media, it is not the “ideas” they present that are the worry. Those ideas only have traction because so many are chicken shit scared to be real leftists, for fear of being too radical or something, because they are too weak and confused and cowardly.
Teabaggers et al, are moving into the vacuum created by this timidity and confusion and playing on liberal/progressive identification with the Democrats.
The reason people like Fox news, Glen Beck etc. is because it is entertaining and because they can pick up talking points that will drive liberals crazy. For the ruling class agenda to be advanced, it requires BOTH the right wing media AND the predictable liberal reaction.
That said, it is dangerous. We contribute to the danger by taking it so seriously (the “opinions,” not the pandering to bigotry and hatred – that needs to be taken very seriously) and reacting so predictably.
What better way to “legitimize” the center-right policies of the Obama administration than to contrast them to the full-blown, ultra-right insanity of Sarah Palin-like Teabaggery.
Democrats are using the tea baggers’ antics as a tool to stifle dissent from the Left. How dare we criticize Obama when doing so is to be on the same side as the tea baggers? Obama apologists won’t even listen to any argument from the Left against Obama’s policies, they automatically categorize it in the same category as the crap being spewed by tea baggers.
The tea bagger thing serves the purpose of making sure the intellectual liberals get all worked up about Palin et al and are therefore estranged from and irrelevant to the general public. It works like a charm, every time, to decapitate the working class.
Charles II said
Allen, setting aside for a moment the accuracy of your claims, Melissa Harris-Lacewell is being criticized basically over a difference of her interests vs. those of her critics. She is a political scientist, one focused on African American issues. She sees this as an African American issue, because she sees parallels with what happened in Reconstruction. Her critics don’t want her to write about her interests, but about their interests. I happen to think there’s evidence of misogyny if not simple envy on their parts, but there is inarguably evidence of knotheadedness.
OK, to turn to your claims.
1. You say: “The Tea Party/Teabaggers is not really a movement, but rather a relatively small number of right-wing extremists…”
Response: According to Wikipedia, “A December 7, 2009 poll made by Rasmussen found, in a three-way generic ballot test featuring a hypothetical “Tea Party” candidate, Democrats attracted 36% of the vote, the Tea Party candidate picked up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%.” “A late-January 2010 poll made by CNN/Opinion Research Corporation found that “one-third of Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party movement,” while “26 percent of the public has an unfavorable view.” 40 percent either “have not heard of the movement or don’t know enough to form an opinion.”
So, it might not be as fringe as you think.
2. You say, “No tea bagger or Limbaugh or Fox news nonsense can stand up to a strong left wing narrative for even a minute. How any of us could ever lose a debate with those talking points, or be frustrated or worry about it is a mystery to me.”
Response: The reality is that any strong contradictory narrative of any kind is hardly ever permitted on the media. Someone like Melissa Harris-Lacewell is about as good as we are likely to see. So, how could any of us lose? By being locked out, and especially by fighting with one another over who is sufficiently pure.
3. You say, “Democrats are using the tea baggers’ antics as a tool to stifle dissent from the Left.”
Response: please name some names. Random people on the Internet do not count, since you can always tell them to go stuff themselves. I have not heard any elected official tell me to shut up and you can believe me when I say that I write some very hard letters to them.
Now, they may ignore me or, like Obama and single payer, they may lock me out of meetings. And I can refuse to contribute to such people and refuse to work for them. But they have a right to their opinion, just as I have a right to mine.
4. You say, “The tea bagger thing serves the purpose of making sure the intellectual liberals get all worked up about Palin et al and are therefore estranged from and irrelevant to the general public.”
Response: I have said that I think Harris-Lacewell is overgeneralizing. But, that said, I suggest you read a very well-considered post by Sara Robinson, an experienced right-watcher. An excerpt:
No, we cannot ignore what is going on. It’s not the Tea Party people per se who are the threat. It is the people who are using them, and they need to be called dout.
Montana said
I love that they asked for “Public Defenders” (and they thought they could bring down our government), undercover FBI agent, sweet. The simpleton Tea baggers keep missing the point. These are the same whiners that were crying when the McCain/Bailin ticket lost. Now they are crying again because their yelling and screaming (because they are haters not debaters or as others have dubbed them screamers not dreamers) did not stop the health care debate or the bill from passing. They think they can scare, intimidate and force others to go along with them by comments like “This time we came unarmed”, let me tell you something they are not the only ones that are armed and not all ex-military join the fringe militia crazies who don’t pay taxes and run around with face paint in the parks playing commando, the majority are mature and understand that the world is more complicated and grey than the black and white that these simpleton make it out to be and that my friend is the point. Do not cry when regular people openly laugh at your group when they see on TV that your leaders are Sarah Bailin, Orly Taitz, Victoria Jackson, Michele Bachmann and your own turn coat Glenn Beck from the LDS. They do more to discredit you group on TV (powerful) than any of comments on the blog sphere. Yee Haw!
Charles II said
Yee Haw! indeed. I certainly agree that ex-military are not usually drawn to loose cannons like the militia. A few are. Tim McVeigh was.
What paramilitary movements can do is misdirect a nation, so that it becomes less and less productive and therefore poorer, until the forces in society that hold things together are exhausted, and totalitarian forces can step in. What determines the issue is the strength of the constructive forces. If they are united, unwilling to be bullied, and steady in their efforts, eventually the paramilitary movement burns out.
The danger in this country is that the paramilitary movement is being fed by corporatist forces, which are by their nature no friends of liberty. The middle-class, which is inherently centrist, is getting tired, both financially and in morale. I have been dismayed by the retreat of academics from the role of public intellectual, of the reluctance of state and local politicians in taking principled stands, of the aging and hollowing out of traditional churches.
We need a new set of ideas that draw people in, inspire them, make them willing to sacrifice. The hope was that Obama would be a new FDR, who would make people believe in possibility, would inspire them to deeds that would inspire others. He’s not, alas. He’s competent, but apparently no visionary.
CF Oxtrot said
It’s a shame that your quarrel with Mr Floyd relates to formalism, and not substance.
Why a shame? Well, formalism is NOT substance, eh?
Who cares if he got MLH’s name wrong? You know, a technical error isn’t the same as a substantive error, right?
Where have you shown Chris Floyd’s analysis to be substantively wrong?
….
….
….
The answer: nowhere.
Boy, I bet you feel mighty superior now, don’t you? You criticized someone who hasn’t been shown to make a substantive error in at least 6 or 7 years. You criticized him for a formalistic mistake, a technical flaw. And you expanded it into multiple paragraphs.
Bully for you.
Charles II said
CFT says, “Who cares if he got MLH’s name wrong?”
Well, you know, among journalists, this kind of thing is actually considered to be important. Getting the basic facts right is a sign of how carefully someone has looked into a story. When they fluff something as basic as the name of a person that they are trashing, it makes it look as if maybe they didn’t actually take much time writing the story.
CFT asks, “Where have you shown Chris Floyd’s analysis to be substantively wrong?”
Well, evidently Chris is not the only person who gets hasty in reading. Among the points on which I criticized the article are:
1. Chris failed to understand that spitting is a crime, making his …eh, joke… about how spitting on people is just good clean fun sound crackpot.
2. Chris completely misunderstood what Harris-Lacewell was saying about the significance of abusing a congressman.
3. Chris approvingly quoted a statement (about why we should ignore the dangers of extremism) that is, to put it generously, a bit loony.
4. Chris apparently doesn’t understand what sedition is. Most people who do, like Sara Robinson, would agree with Harris-Lacewell.
Now, I realize that to Chris and the claque that seems to have gathered at his site, the only thing that matters is what the American government does. Anything else, like context, is not…eh, substantive. But some of us happen to believe that getting facts right, not trashing people over a careless reading of what they’ve said, understanding a subject before writing about it, and being careful to reflect on how what one writes might sound are just as much part of good journalism as whatever it is one is trying to say.
Too many pieces like this and Chris will end up with no one except the claque listening.
Charles Davis said
[HTML is not my friend — sorry]
Charles II,
Since you appear to have no advanced degrees or tenured position at any Ivy League university, I’ll try to say this as clearly as I can: your continued insistence that Chris and I have misunderstood Harris-Lacewell’s remarks about John Lewis only further showcases your own inability to comprehend that which you have read. In fact, you should take your own advice and read the piece more thoroughly.
You allege I engaged in a “major misreading” of Harris-Lacewell’s comments, demonstrative of my apparent “lazy mind”, and that her point was not that Lewis is deserving of more respect than a mere civilian because of his status as a congressman, but only that that, as an embodiment of the state, it is his “job to stand up to abuse.”
Here’s what Harris-Lacewell actually wrote:
—–
“The Tea Party is a challenge to the legitimacy of the U.S. state. When Tea Party participants charge the current administration with various forms of totalitarianism, they are arguing that this government has no right to levy taxes or make policy. Many GOP elected officials offered nearly secessionist rhetoric from the floor of Congress this weekend. They joined as co-conspirators with the Tea Party protesters by arguing that this government has no monopoly on legitimacy.
I appreciate the parallels to the civil rights movement drawn by the MSNBC crowd, but they are inadequate. When protesters spit on and scream at duly elected representatives of the United States government it is more than act of racism. It is an act of sedition.
John Lewis is no longer just a brave American fighting for the soul of his country- he is an elected official. He is an embodiment of the state.”
—-
Go ahead, read that one more time — slow-ly.
Harris-Lacewell’s point is that Lewis is a “duly-elected representative of the United States government,” and as such, racial obscenities shouted at him are “more than act of racism” (my god, is that a typo? From a Princeton professor?), it’s “an act of sedition.” There’s nothing there about Lewis just needing some thicker skin for dealing with his constituents. There is, on the other hand, the very clear suggestion his position as an “embodiment of the state” affords him a certain status — a status that means screaming at him is more than just an act of ugly racism, as had been directed against him during his civil rights days, it’s a criminal offense: sedition.
On the name thing, well: fair enough. Following your example, I should have spent less time on the substance of the argument I was confronting and perhaps a little more on ensuring I didn’t type one feminine name that begins with an M and ends with an A when I meant another.
Charles II said
RichardCharles, I don’t discuss personal issues on the Internet. If you want to believe that I have a fourth grade education and suffer from mental disability, you’re welcome to do so.This fourth-grade educated, mentally-disabled person (or whatever) has listed six instances of strawman arguments and two of ad hominem arguments, including one that could be taken as racially offensive, comprising the substance of your argument. Why don’t you start by explaining that to me?
You’d like to isolate the actions of the individuals who verbally-abused Lewis from the rest of what was going on– calls for insurrection, death threats against congressmen, bricks thrown through the windows of congressional field offices, paramilitary groups planning to murder people. That would enable you to think that all that was going on was a little rough play– no harm, no foul.
Harris-Lacewell did not, nor do many people who understand the right.
CF Oxtrot said
Look! More paragraphs making a big, monstrous deal about getting a name wrong.
And still no analysis of Floyd’s analysis, nor of Davis’s analysis.
And a conclusion that Floyd’s readership is in dire peril! Because he got a name wrong!
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Melissa Lacewell-Harris, Harris Lacewell-Melissa, Lacewell Melissa-Harris,… look! It’s a probability problem! How many ways can we say it?
Say, Double-Chuck: I have an analogous suggestion, a model of your argument, done in a nutshell. Here it is. Please treat it with the respect it’s due.
FINAL JEOPARDY QUESTION:
He is America’s most winning professional golfer playing today, and currently is engaged in trying to win his fourth Master’s green jacket.
JOE SMITH:
Who is Tyger Woodes?
ALEX TREBEK:
Wrong. You spelled it wrong. You lose!
MEC said
“More paragraphs making a big, monstrous deal about getting a name wrong.”
You asked who cares about getting a name wrong. Charles answered. Now you ridicule him for answering your question.
It gives me the impression you’re not really interested in meaningful communication on the subject.
CF Oxtrot said
I am a silly little troll.
Watch me dance!
(edited slightly by siteowner for clarity)
Richard Estes said
Charles II: here’s another opportunity for you
here’s my critique of the Harris-Lacewell piece
feel free to have at it, and people can continue to give this important debate the attention that it deserves
Charles II said
Richard, your critique of Harris-Lacewell is entirely reasonable. I might disagree with it in places (I think Lacewell was not placing John Lewis above abuse; rather, I think she was saying that putting up with it is what he gets paid to do), but it’s reasonable.
There are two key questions on which an accurate analysis of Harris-Lacewell’s column hinges. First, does a given government represent the will of the people? If one believes that it does not, then the violence it uses is not legitimate. If it does, then the violence it uses is legitimate within the context of national law (but may be illegititimate within an international legal framework). It may err in the use of violence, but since it represents the will of the people, the people have the means to correct the error. Anyone who opposes a representative government by means other than persuasion (which can extend to demonstrations, minor civil disobedience, and strikes) is engaged in sedition. All of these are basic propositions.
The international legal questions are a more complicated story. If a state does represent the will of its people, but is engaged in actions that are contrary to international law, then in principle everyone on earth is obliged to oppose it, including any citizens within its borders who are not corrupt. But international law is not well-established and it is honored more as an exception than as a rule. And, one should note, the world has not invoked the mechanisms it has it its disposal to rule that the actions of the United States are contrary to international law. Not even someone as courageous as Baltazar Garzon.
The second is, what is the Tea Party? It’s not a well-defined organization. Some people think that it’s just a collection of libertarians and conservatives, more or less harmless except in the individual misbehavior of its members. But there may be reason to believe that this may be the nucleus for right-wing paramilitary groups that are being formed to mount armed resistance. Like I say, read Dave Neiwert/Sara Robinson, the SPLC, and other professional right-watchers. For that matter, read this blog, where we have documented what right-wing death squads have meant to Honduras, where the people have mounted a non-violent response to a government that is illegitimate by international standards– and then imagine what that would look like in the US.
In conclusion, I think persuasive arguments can be made on either side of these issues. As long as they’re made reasonably respectfully, I have no fundamental disagreement with them. The US clearly has broken international law, though not to the degree that the international community has rebuked it, and there certainly are questions about how representative the government is.
I would point out, though, that if people genuinely believe that the United States either does not represent the will of the people or has broken the restraints of international law and become a rogue state, then they have in essence declared for rebellion. If that’s what they really believe, then their time for talking is over. Certainly their time for talking to me is over, because I think that anyone who is seriously planning on rebellion is as nuts as the Tea Party.
Richard Estes said
I would point out, though, that if people genuinely believe that the United States either does not represent the will of the people or has broken the restraints of international law and become a rogue state, then they have in essence declared for rebellion.
I do believe that this is, in fact, the case, and, internationally, it is a proposition that is hard to refute. But, there are many ways to rebel, and the Tea Party approach, if they are actually organizing along the paramilitary lines you suggest, will do nothing more than further concentrate arbitrary power in the government, and particularly, the Executive. It will take awhile for either the American public and/or the rest of the world to bring these excesses to an end, probably through actions of passive resistance, sort of like union members “working to rule” instead of striking, but it will eventually happen, possibly within my lifetime.
If you are so inclined, please consider reading my Vote or Die series over at American Leftist as to why I don’t think that the US political system is very representative of the public will.
Charles II said
I disagree that there are many ways to rebel. Rebellion has a precise legal meaning. The black letter is here. The main group that claims that there is such a thing as lawful rebellion are the Freemen. They are not the company I keep.
Rebellion is serious stuff. The word has been so debased that it’s been used to mean having long hair or listening to music. But it has a meaning, and that meaning is violence and murder. That meaning does emphatically not include demonstrations, marches, strikes, civil disobedience, or other traditional peaceful forms of petitioning for redress or opposing the government.
Richard Estes said
well, there are, of course, morally supportable rebellions, such as, for example, John Brown’s attempt to seize weapons at Harper’s Ferry and arm the slaves to free themselves
similarly, the people of Iraq have every right to violently resist the US occupation, and still do, although it appears at this point that they have decided to adopt a political approach at this time, but the important point here is, that’s a question for Iraqis, not us
but, I digress, there is not going to be an armed rebellion in the US anytime soon, with the possible exception of private military mercenaries mentioned downthread, and they are more likely to get their way covertly
there are more ways to rebel than violence and murder, and, as I said, I think that more and more people will embrace them if things don’t change, as I don’t ascribe to your legal definition
Charles II said
Just a point of information to the person posting from the following IP: 174.xx.x.xx:
I have the rest of the IP saved to disk. If you’d like to continue being an ass, I can contact your ISP and ask them to remind you of terms of service. Impersonating a member of this blog and personal abuse simply aren’t acceptable behavior.
Stormcrow said
Data on a read-write medium is vulnerable to tampering.
Suggest you burn your log data to a read-only medium in situations like this one. That way, spoliation does not enter the picture if the data is needed at some later time.
Charles II said
Thanks, Stormcrow. Very good suggestion.
I think and believe that our noisy user is just that. But a number of the people who are trashing Harris-Lacewell seem to think that they’re the ones who should start a rebellion.
That qualifies as crazy.
No Comment said
There is a pretty good analysis of the Harris-Lacewell writing/reasoning style by Michael J. Smith at
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/09/melissa_locuta_causa_finita.html
Smith has admitted in a comment at SMBIVA to an ‘utter fascination’ with Harris-Lacewell.
As for the untenured criticizing MHL: “even a dog can look at a princess.”
Charles II said
Michael Smith is the guy who so-classily
asked,quoted a reader asking “Is she sleeping with someone?” [correction: thanks to Red in comments below]I can’t find anything except ad hominem, mostly personal attacks on Harris-Lacewell, in his piece. I count:
* gout of dribble
* pretentious double-barreled name
* fatuous, incoherent, and frequently incomprehensible
* delusional
* even though Melissa’s face is in fact a shade less pale than my own
Maybe you can show me what I am missing. I would guess that Smith, who claims to be a person of color, envies Lacewell and is trying to put the woman in her place.
As for grammar and spelling (below), I could care less. The point I made about Floyd and Davis misspelling Harris-Lacewell’s name has to do with professional journalists getting one of the cardinal questions wrong. It happens, of course. Humans are human. But when one is trashing someone, the professional instinct is to make sure to get the basic facts right– unless rage has overcome one’s better judgment.
No Comment said
I was referring to the section of the linked item that begins with “Where — as I so often ask — does one start?” and ends just before the Tonto reference, and contains the term “delusional”, which is only slightly excessive in the context of Smith’s argument. Or so it seems to me.
Do you actually believe that the excerpt of the MHL piece “Lose the Love/Hate, But Keep the Hope.” does not succumb to Smith’s criticism? Especially in the light of 15 months of Obama’s governance? I would say that MHL doesn’t know when she has been thrown under the bus. But then personal success can be a blinding condition.
Thank you for your tolerance of my poor proof reading. Just erase comment #11 if you like. But perhaps you could fix my spelling blunder in comment #10 at the same time. I also noticed the Floyd misnaming when it appeared but I was not making an attempt at drollery with my #11. I remain genuinely mortified when I ship garbled text. Old school, I guess. I only hope I don’t do it again right now!
Charles II said
Usually one expects people who ask, “Where does one start?” eventually to do so, No Comment.
Let me re-write Harris-Lacewell into a more masculine style, and see if that changes your perception of what she said:
That’s what she said. It doesn’t look delusional or dribbly to me. It looks like plain vanilla, good advice from a political scientist to people whose hopes have been raised so high that they’re sure to be disappointed. It also looks to me like a timely caution against hubris. But it’s written in a feminine, academic style… which is not surprising, since she is a woman who works at an academic institution.
Tell me if I haven’t fairly paraphrased what she said.
Also, you said, very correctly, that a dog may look at a princess: just because Harris-Lacewell is tenured does not make her opinion inherently more correct than those of Davis, Floyd, and Smith. I heartily agree. But comments like “This is the one who writes like a ham sandwich, right?” aren’t legitimate criticism. People actually pay to read Harris-Lacewell’s reading, so it’s probably intelligible. Do they pay to read Michael Smith’s writing? Because he’s chosen not to advertise his background, I don’t know. When one chooses to preserve anonymity about one’s accomplishment, one forfeits the right to present oneself as an expert.
By the way, I admire people who are willing to concede an error, no matter how small. Regular readers of this blog know that I not only correct my errors, whenever anyone points one out, but I thank the people who do point them out. I regard that as a basic requirement of my faith.
No Comment said
I see that the debate has moved on since your reply to my 10:45AM reply, etc. I am looking at your paraphrase of MHL. It is an improvement over the original in my opinion, although your skills at masculinization are (perhaps understandably) not all that impressive. Whatever the reality, few ‘masculine males’ are likely to admit to ‘moping’ about a political disappointment, for example. But I digress.
I took it that the hammering trope of MHL was meant to apply to Obama as a threat held in reserve by the ‘movement’ against his backsliding. The screwdriver trope defeats my understanding unless it refers to some sort of political finesse or jiujitsu. I suppose there are examples of such things in the history of democracy, but I doubt that they have ever been performed by movements operating against an executive, but rather in the context of palace politics within a formalist elective-representative system. For movements it is hammer or nothing.
The dispute between Smith’s supporters and advocates of MHL’s writings may well have a gender component. But, if so, I think such is confounded/conflated with what I would identify as skepticism versus hopefulness. Or, skeptically, skepticism versus self-deception. The skeptical Smith perceives the accession of Obama as a scam on the Bush-disgusted body politic, while MHL sees the event as a reason to rejoice (mildly) in the renewal of hope. Having lived through many cycles of hope and its destruction, I fall on the Smith side of things. I find it difficult to take seriously the notion of the Obama electoral-victory coalition as a ‘movement’, much less a hammer-wielding one. The coalition coalesced around disgust with Bush’s wars, bank bailouts, general incompetence, fear of looming economic hardship. Nothing that Obama has done since inauguration has altered the status quo distribution of power in the USA and there is no reason to suspect that an alteration is coming (i.e. through intentional policy decisions).
MHL’s success is impressive. But who else benefits if she focusses her efforts on apologetics on behalf of another standard corporatist-imperialist US administration.
Charles II said
Ignoring certain impertinent personal comments:
No Comment says, “I took it that the hammering trope of MHL was meant to apply to Obama as a threat held in reserve by the ‘movement’ against his backsliding. ”
Yes, that’s acceptable. The point is that the movement has goals, and can apply pressure to whoever opposes them, even Obama. But should it apply pressure, or should it negotiate? You ask whether movements negotiate? If they’re well-organized, they can. But a mob of people with hundreds of different demands is unable to do so. Only when a movement’s power and coherence has declined is it forced to go to all-or-nothing tactics.
No comment says, “The skeptical Smith perceives the accession of Obama as a scam on the Bush-disgusted body politic, while MHL sees the event as a reason to rejoice (mildly) in the renewal of hope.”
Right. It’s a difference of opinion. People who go nuclear simply because they’re more pessimistic than someone else are not to be taken seriously. There’s simply no excuse to ask [added: or to use a reader to ask] questions like, “Is she sleeping with someone?” simply because the person in question doesn’t have your identical viewpoint. [Correction thanks to Red in comments below]
No comment says, “MHL’s success is impressive. But who else benefits if she focusses her efforts on apologetics on behalf of another standard corporatist-imperialist US administration.”
Melissa Harris-Lacewell has issued no apologetics for the corporate state. That’s a strawman. But who benefits from her giving her viewpoint? It depends on whether the movement that elected Obama can get its act together. All of this energy that is being poured out on Melissa Harris-Lacewell should be directed toward electing Bill Halter, Connie Saltonstall, Marcie Winograd, and other candidates that are challenging Blue Dogs. Or toward replacing ACORN as an organizing force of the poor. Or toward organizing soldiers in opposition to war. Anything except wasting effort trashing someone who is, at the very least, not an opponent of reform. Those who could benefit from listening to her are people who go on purity witch hunts against allies because they’re too cowardly to face the real opposition.
The left all too often gives up because it psyches itself out, imagining impossible odds against a seamless corporate state. The reality is that there there are far more openings nowadays than there were in the 1930s. The people who pushed FDR– after two years of dithering and ineffectual policies on his part– into finally doing the right things were, compared to this generation, giants. Giants who endured great suffering and injustice in order to bring justice and healing to America. This generation thinks that one can win one election and go home, then whine when one doesn’t immediately get your way.
Pups is what they are, and not very well-mannered.
No Comment said
I just couldn’t resist behaving like a complete ass. There’s something about being confronted with facts and reason that turns me into a troll. Help me before I start dribbling and ….
ooh. shiny distractions. say nasty things about host. ha-ha. me so funny.
(edited slightly by siteowner for clarity)
Michael Dawson said
OMG. You’re defending Harris-Lacewell as a political scientist? She can’t even keep the basics of PoliSci 101 straight!
The state is the established rules for forming governments. Governments are the actual formations of actual people who wield state power.
The Baggers are opponents of the Democrats, not the whole U.S. political order. Ergo, they oppose this government, not the state itself. Indeed, they never shut up about how much they love our half-baked Constitution, as everybody knows.
They are committing minor crimes in opposing the Democrats. Some of them may be plotting major crimes. Minor crimes are not evidence of major crimes.
All this is simple reality. But it’s either beyond Harris-Lacewell, or she is a cynical game-player. Either way, it is she who is the source of confusion on this subject, not those who notice how horrible her arguments are.
Meanwhile, Harris-Lacewell’s attempt to exploit Reconstruction on behalf of a government that wouldn’t walk across the street to help black people is even more pathetic and disgusting than her overall ineptitude.
Phoenix Woman said
Dear “Michael Dawson” :
Are you the same fellow that Melissa Harris-Lacewell thanks by name in her book, on page xiv (“I owe a special debt to Michael Dawson for inspiring me before we even met and for being such a dear friend and intellectual companion since we have known one another”)? Or are you a cowardly namestealer, out to trash Dawson’s rep along with Lacewell’s?
Cian said
You do realise that Michael Dawson is a very common name shared by (among others) an English footballer who plays for Spurs, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago (who is probably the man she is thanking) and the entirely separate Michael Dawson who lectures in sociology at Portland State. It’s the last of these, btw, that you an apology to.
In your own time then.
Charles II said
Michael Dawson says, “The Baggers are opponents of the Democrats, not the whole U.S. political order. Ergo, they oppose this government, not the state itself.”
Really? They are calling for secession of states with only Republicans from states with only Democrats? They are calling for massive tax resistance only against Democratic programs? By your own definition, you’re wrong, Michael.
For that matter, you state that “The state is the established rules for forming governments. Governments are the actual formations of actual people who wield state power.” But even political scientists have differing definitions. Harris-Lacewell used a definition that is widely accepted. Quoting Wikipedia, “In Max Weber’s influential definition, it [the state] is that organization that has a ‘monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory'”. You’re such a great political scientist that you don’t know this definition?
Even your definition isn’t precisely what is generally understood as “the state.” Again from Wikipedia, “A state is a set of institutions that possess the authority to make the rules that govern the people in one or more societies, having internal and external sovereignty over a definite territory.” Your definition leaves out the primacy of institutions in creating the set of rules.
It’s not my desire to argue such trivia. But when one trashes someone as being unable to “keep the basics of PoliSci 101 straight!” it’s much more persuasive if one can do so.
I have said that I think it’s a stretch to call spitting or cursing sedition. We don’t know enough about the individuals involved to know what their intentions were. It’s also a stretch to equate the Tea Party with all anti-government groups. Some Tea Parties are completely harmless. Some appear to be criminal in nature. But what Harris-Lacewell has said is a defensible point of view. It’s by no means stupid.
Rather than this sterile debate, which convinces me mostly that many of the opponents of Harris-Lacewell are not willing to debate in a reasonable manner, I have asked her to clarify her blog post. I have no idea if she will; I have no influence over her. But that seems to me to be much better than posting endless debates about what she meant and whether she actually knows Political Science 101.
Michael Dawson said
So, Charles, you think the Tea Party is seriously calling for secession of states? Where? You also seem to think they’d be doing the same things if a Republican were President. You are charmingly simple, aren’t you? The Tea Party is an astroturf arm of the Republican Party, which is desperate, because the Reagan Gambit is a) at an end; and b) has been usurped and better marketed by the Democratic Party.
It’s also charming that you call boilerplate political science concepts “trivia.” Weber’s famous but very partial definition of the state, by the way, accords with what I said, not what Harris-Lacewell sprays on the page. To advocate overthrow of the US state is to advocate destruction of the existing halls and offices of power and the scrapping of the Constitution. This is simply not the same thing as political organizing against a particular government, no matter how ignorant and ugly the tactics.
Any decent liberal would also be rather more sensitive to the ugly, repressive origins of the “sedition” laws in this society. Does Harris-Lacewell advocate jailing the Seattle protesters in 1999? Those folks were a lot more seditious that the Tea Dorks. Her present hyperbolic, arbitrary, inept statements lend aid and comfort to future right-wing suppressors of “sedition.”
As to you, Phoenix Woman, guess what? There are more than one of us Michael Dawsons in this world. If you’d bothered to click my identity link, you might have figured that out before sticking your foot in your mouth.
Charles II said
It takes truly profound ignorance to be unaware of the secessionist strain in the Tea Party movement, Michael. Put “Tea Party” and secession into Google. Roughly a quarter million hits come up. Many of them trace to Governor Rick Perry’s statement to the Texas Tea Party stating that Texas has a right to secede. Dave Mundy of the Texas Nationalist Examiner and Patrick Buchanan are two of those. But it is hardly limited to Texas. Louisiana South Carolina. North Carolina I could probably find Tea Parties in every state in the Union represented among the secessionist movement. Glenn Beck promote secession nationally. And you know nothing of this?
Oh, and by the way, Sara Robinson– who is one of the best watchers of the right we have– said this in response to my question of whether the attacks by the left on public figures like Harris-Lacewell helped to open the path to tyranny:
Charles, I saw Melissa’s article the day after mine went up, and felt gratified that I wasn’t out there all on my own. It’s disappointing that the left is ceding the high ground here, but not surprising.
Let that sink in. Professional right-watchers are worried. You’re not. But you don’t know anything about what is happening. Who should I listen to?
As for your attempt to evade the fact that Melissa Harris-Lacewell gave her definition of the state and it was clearly Weber’s definition, that’s dishonest argumentation. Again, here is what Harris Lacewell said, and what Weber said:
Harris Lacewell: I often begin my political science courses with a brief introduction to the idea of “the state.” The state is the entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, force and coercion.
Weber–in full context: Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.
It’s a disgrace to claim that Harris-Lacewell is ignorant of political science when she’s all but quoting from one of the fathers of political science. Withdraw your false claim.
Phoenix Woman said
By the way, here’s what really should scare us about the tea partiers: The rank-and-filers who left the Republicans for the Tea Party may or may not realize that their leaders cut a deal with the GOP over two months ago to be what for all intents and purposes is a Republican Party adjunct:
In other words, the Tea Party Nation is now a part of the GOP, yet will operate under the pretension that it still is independent of the GOP in order to Hoover up those persons who might otherwise bolt to an actual third party or possibly even get out of electoral politics altogether. Kinda like the astroturf groups founded and funded by various industry lobbies to keep concerned citizens from finding and joining actual grass-roots groups.
Michael Dawson said
That isn’t scary. It’s comical. (It’s also disciplined, principled politics, by the way — something the DP can’t tolerate.) If there were any decent leadership in the Democratic Party, they’d be having an absolute field day trouncing these cretins. But to do so would require representation of the masses, rather than Wall Street and the rest of the overclass. That’s “not on the table.”
And P.S. This is the point Charles and Harris-Lacewell are trying to suppress. The Tea Bag is Republican astroturf. Nothing more, nothing less.
The problem for the Dems is that they burned up their own astroturf getting Zerobama elected, so they’re out of new gimmicks.
Charles II said
Phoenix Woman, I wish it were that simple.
It’s true that former GOP Majority Leader Armey, using money from the right-wing Koch family and others, went around promoting the Tea Party. The GOP certainly wants to capitalize on the rage it stirred up. But the Tea Party is a complex phenomenon. Some chapters are almost indistinguishable from militias and other extremist organizations. They aren’t going to be reeled in to do voter contact, unless it’s with baseball bats. Other chapters are completely harmless, more like a costume ball.
I have said (repeatedly) that Harris-Lacewell is overgeneralizing. She’s conflating Tea Parties with the Patriot movement and the militia movement. They are intertwined, but not at all identical. But this entire kerfuffle is over a 973-word blog post. When she writes an article for the political science journals, I’m sure she’ll be more precise. But overgeneralizing does not make what she says fundamentally wrong.
Richard Estes said
Perhaps, you and Phoenix Woman have posted about this, but there is already a well organized, right wing, fundamentalist paramilitary organization in the US that can do what you believe that the Tea Party may do.
Of course, it now goes by the name Xe, formerly Blackwater. And, the state, and its current President, Barack Obama, continue to pour funds into it.
It is certainly much better positioned to do what the two of year assert here, and clearly is a much graver threat to civil liberties and the US political system.
Charles II said
There have been private armies before, Richard. Naturally, Blackwater/Xe– not to mention Triple Canopy or other private armies– makes anyone who knows about it nervous. But there are significant differences between them and the paramilitary groups we are discussing.
First, there are–according to Wikipedia–fewer than 1,000 of them. They draw these from a pool of 21,000, and train many more (I would guess foreign mercs mostly, but I don’t know). The paramilitaries are in the millions.
Also, as you say, Obama is pouring money into Blackwater/Xe. He can also cut it off.
Also, private contractors are mostly overseas, wreaking murder and mayhem on others. Definitely not good, but better than them being in-country and seizing control of nuclear weapons, say.
And finally, they include individuals trained by the US military. Believe it or not, our soldiers are pretty decent people for the most part, even if they do kill other human beings for a paycheck. They know what lawful orders are. They know that overthrowing the US government is not one of them.
Richard Estes said
What makes you so sure that they can’t be used domestically?
By way of background, consider what the French paratroopers in Algeria did in 1958; they threatened to invade Paris if the government didn’t resign and put in DeGaulle to more rigorously prosecute the war
the Third Republic collapsed, DeGaulle took power, but things didn’t turn out as they hoped, although people did try to kill him several times
you say that the troops in companies like Blackwater are “pretty decent people for the most part” and then acknowledge that they “wreak murder and mayhem on others”
unlike you, I’m not so sanguine that they won’t put their weapons to use domestically (weren’t they actually dispatched to New Orleans after Katrina?), and even admit the possibility that they currently exert power covertly to shape US policy
in any event, the question is not whether they overthrow the government, but whether they push the country in a more oppressive direction
and, in this, Xe and others are far more of a threat than the Tea Party
Charles II said
Richard Estes asks, “What makes you so sure that they [Blackwater/Xe troops] can’t be used domestically?”
Of course they can be used domestically. They already have been used in New Orleans. But if there are only 1,000– or at most 21,000– they wouldn’t be much of a match for the US Army and National Guard. I do not underrate the danger, but they simply don’t have the numbers to occupy a country.
Richard Estes says, “you say that the troops in companies like Blackwater are ‘pretty decent people for the most part’ and then acknowledge that they “wreak murder and mayhem on others”
Actually I said that US military are pretty decent people for the most part. Those who choose to sell their services are not the best of our troops. The point was that all military forces wreak murder and mayhem in war. It’s what they do.
Richard Estes says, “in any event, the question is not whether they overthrow the government, but whether they push the country in a more oppressive direction”
I don’t want to get into a debate, because I really have other things to do, but I will point out that this is a vague statement that means nothing to me. How do 1,000 (or 21,000) people push any country of 300 million anywhere? No, our media are much more dangerous than Blackwater, at least at present. And so are the militias.
Red said
“Michael Smith is the guy who so-classily asked, “Is she sleeping with someone?””
No, that would be someone on the mailing list whose reaction he was quoting. Agreed that it is an unsavory remark, and Smith probably shouldn’t have reprinted it, but it was not him asking that and you should probably correct your post.
Charles II said
Thank you for the correction. I will indeed make the changes.
No Comment said
One would hope that you would not make the changes but honestly issue a retraction.
Charles II said
I think you’ve probably said about all that you’re able to say, No Comment.
I don’t appreciate your personal attacks on me. Nor do I appreciate people who think that the way to win an argument is to distract. You are now officially warned that personal attacks and off-topic postings are not permitted at Mercury Rising.
There is a reason why we impose rules that require people to discuss substance rather than engage in personal attacks and other rhetorical games. Each of us, in our own way, is trying to prevent harm and do some good in this world. My goal is to do keep people from getting killed in Honduras. But none of us have time for trolls.
Phoenix Woman said
Seconded, Charles. Unlike some other sites, we do not allow ourselves to be gamed by trolls seeking to take us over.
James L said
“There are larger issues than domestic terrorism to confront. People who care about justice should focus on the US’s unjust wars and the civilian deaths they cause, on the number of prisoners held in her jails, and on extrajudicial killings. There’s nothing wrong with such an argument… if it were to recognize that other people might feel called to do different things.”
I’ll say straight away that I think other people’s “feelings” or “callings” in this way are just wrong. Immoral.
Literally millions of people have died from these evil US wars, occupations, bombings, interventions, etc.
Millions of people. “Let that sink in”.
The real “recognition” would be one of the moral enormity of that situation – its rising to the level of the highest crimes of history.
The new innocent women and children raped, tortured, bombed shot every day….
if you are a decent person yes this should over-ride your other concerns, be they health care, the knitting club or even civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that.
The selling out on the war by the administration and the progressive base has been a great moral crime, and overall supporters of mainstream progressivism and the Obama administration such as MSNBC pro-Obama pundit Harris-Lacewell has indeed coimplicated them in these great crimes to some degree.
The overall lack of hysteria and appropriate importance to the millions of innocents who have died and will continue to die from the hyper-violent US empire is the great moral failing of the establishment “pragmatic” progressive sphere
-http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq
James L said
Of course, to you people, a couple million dead is just a “hobby horse”; just “one issue among many”
Charles II said
James, let me make this very clear:
1. Your post has nothing to do with the topic of whether the characterization of Melissa Harris-Lacewell was fair or not.
2. It is a rotten lie that this blog has not opposed the wrongs done by both Bush and Obama or that we take lightly the deaths of even a single person.
3. Posting repeatedly constitutes a nuisance
4. I am sick of people abusing our forum to spew off-topic, hateful lies of the kind that you posted.
Do it again, and it will be the last time you post here.
James L said
I just think you all, the Princeton Professor and MSNBC television personality and the Obamatons more generally should follow MLK’s lead here and (1) *first* speak **clearly** to the **greatest** purveyor of violence….
That might be all good and true, but what Harris-Lacewll left out — and what my critic and other liberals might wish to consider — is that King later rejected that strategy of compromise when he began speaking publicly and without reservation in opposition to the mass murder the American state was carrying out against the people of Vietnam; a war, one should remember, that was fully embraced by the liberal establishment of that time and tacitly accepted by many others in exchange for the promises of a Great Society at home. But as King said then, “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”
James L said
The entire tenor, emphasis and political prescriptions of the “pragmatic mature” progressive reaction to this (and the unspoken left sell-out on the war controversy for which it serves as a stand in and microcosm) militates against the strong, uncompromising moral stand the Riverside Church speech models.
how can you speak out against the largely hypothetical violence of the tea parties without first speaking out clearly against the much much greater violence of the US government against whom the tea parties propose to rebel in your reading….
Charles II said
Just to be thorough: you have posted hateful lies against the blog hosts. Do not do it again. It will not be tolerated.
Phoenix Woman said
You haven’t read this blog much, have you, James? Either that, or you’re a really bad liar.
For starters, Charles has spent most of the past year following the US’ de facto assistance of the golpistas in Honduras. Here’s his latest post on the subject.
Go read all the posts with “Honduras” as a tag. Then come back and apologize to Charles.
Phoenix Woman said
Charles said: “I don’t want to get into a debate, because I really have other things to do, but I will point out that this is a vague statement that means nothing to me. How do 1,000 (or 21,000) people push any country of 300 million anywhere? No, our media are much more dangerous than Blackwater, at least at present. And so are the militias.”
Exactly. And a chief danger is that the left’s rush to treat Tea Party followers as the right treats people designated as terrorists — “terrorist” for all practical purposes meaning “someone whose motives and grievances I can ignore, belittle and otherwise refrain from trying to understand” — it is hurting itself with the very people to whom it has to provide reasons to steer away from violent reaction. Chip Berlet, writing for The Progressive, explains this in a very well-written article.