Michelle Malkin, Anne Coulter and Michael Savage each have much, much, much larger audiences than Ezra Klein, and have all repeatedly advocated violence against pretty much everyone on the planet at this point.

For every violent threat that a liberal has made in a comments forum, I’ll show you 10 that a conservative has made in a comments forum. For every 1 nasty below-the-belt statement a liberal makes in a blog with less than 10k hits per week, I will show you 2 mainstream media conservative or Congressperson sinking to that exact same level. Only in front of an audience of millions on the television or radio.

In fact, one of the things that drove me towards the ‘liberal’ side of things (despite the fact that I’m a straight white Southern upper-income male who puts a high premium on personal responsibility) was the violent and rude rhetoric of mainstream conservatives. Both sides engage in conspiracy theory mongering and childish name-calling. But one side clearly has a greater penchant for threatening people with physical violence. And that’s conservative. There’s just no arguing the fact.

Actually, it was attack on truth, it was attack on _lies_. If those righty bloggers were beholden to the same standards as Dan Rather, they would be long ago sacked. 90% of assumptions from that “citizen investigation” AKA googling turned out to be false. Publishing some anonymous freeper fantasies as facts has nothing to do with “looking for truth”. I wonder if you would be OK with Dan Rather using this line of defense, “I was just asking questions”.
Malkin was not _just asking questions_. She was publishing falsehoods without bothering to check the facts.
The things would be kind of different if your guys wouldn’t manage to get all your facts wrong.

Myself, I find both brands of frothing, foaming fanaticism to be obnoxious and off-putting — but the spewers of the frenzied filth aren’t who have me concerned. Rather, I’m far more worried about the people who hang on their every word…

The dispute between Congress and the President isn’t over getting rid of S-CHIP. It’s not even over whether to expand S-CHIP. It’s over how much to expand S-CHIP. I don’t know what this anecdote was supposed to contribute to that discussion. Truth be told, I know it wasn’t meant to contribute anything, it was meant to distort the issue and imply that President Bush was this close to stealing health insurance from poor families.

The right-bloggers are saying that to retain even a marginal middle class existence while receiving any public assistance is wrong, is theft from taxpayers and should be stopped.

The left is saying that people should not be driven into homelessness by a medical emergency and to demand that people divest themselves of all assets to receive any assistance is wrong.

They are incompatible worldviews and one will eventually end up prevailing. My personal view is that the right is being tone-deaf on this and like Terry Schiavo, this adamant resistance will backfire.

I stand by by term “aversion to the truth” as a tempered, reasonable statement especially when put beside Klein’s statements such as the right becoming “sick and twisted and tumorous and ugly” and “the shrieking,atavistic ritual of personal destruction the right roars into every few weeks”. His whole piece paints the conservative right as evil incarnate.

So, no, my words cannot be placed within the critique.

I would also put forth a challenge to fond anything as vile written by a conservative describing liberals. Maybe it is out there but I have yet to see any examples.

1- Michelle Malkin was the first blogger I read regularly. That influenced me to start blogging.

That said, Michelle is too conservative for my own tastes and while I visit her daily, I don’t pay all that much attention. Actully I come to Poliblog more often today.

None of this has anything to do with Michelle indirectly calling me a moonbat once. She’s linked to my blog 4 or 5 times too.

Note- I’ve been called a right wing nut job at Daily Kos too. Like if I was standing in the middle of intersection, I get hit from both sides.

2- Mark Steyn I could never stand. Hard right, tasteless at times(His assault on the manhood of the Virginia Tech victims is just one example) and just careless with the facts. As a Floridian I never knew before reading Steyn that my state was a part of the Carribbean. Give that man a map.

3- Rush I listened to about 10-15 years ago. I don’t listen to talk radio any more, except for the few times I’m out driving long distances and even then seldom.

4- The Weekly Standard. I had a beef with their blogger Michael Goldfarb two months ago. He criticized the New Republic(A magazine I subscribe to) for lousy fact checking over the Scott Thomas Beauchamp, but when I caught him in a mistake, Goldfarb wouldn’t make a correction.

Probably worse, a week before that mistake Goldfarb took full credit for a letter written by a GI. The GI is the son of another blogger that I know. On hearing this mother had a son at the same base as Beauchamp, I suggested her son write Goldfarb.

The Soldier did, he ccd copies to his mother and me in the process. Goldfarb despite promising to credit the mother for helping him get this info, never did.

I got the email exchanges for proof and ran it all on my blog last August.(Little good it did. My expose on Goldfarb got only a belated link from Capt Ed about 3 weeks after that fact but nary a comment from any readers) The right likes to throw stones when it comes to crappy journalism, except when they do it themselves. I can mention at least three recent stories where foreign born legal immigrants two with Spanish surnames, were immediately labelled as illegals by some. Even despite one case where it said the man in question had an American stepfather. That should have clued these bloggers in that the man in question was probably legal(which it turned out he was).

Reasoned non kneejerk partisan thinking in the blogosphere? It is hard to find. Someone as smart as Ed Morrissey, is going off on diatribes of late on certain subjects. Most people come down liberal or conservative, and the blogosphere seems to attract or feature the ones who come down the hardest on each side.

Steve, BTW you forgot the Nancy Pelosi head scarf flap when mentioning the flag lapel and Bertay Us brouhahas. Don’t forget Norman Hsu or the Iranian President’s visit to Colombia either.

One last thing thing about the Beauchamp/The New Republic blowup. This is a magazine with a 60-70,000 subscribers. What impact does TNR really have? As a subcriber, I rarely read the diarist section and I wonder how many do.

Cheers,

Bill

From my personal perspective, a lot of my problem is one of tone and that fact that outrage is substituted for a real debate.

And automatically asserting that someone has an “aversion to truth” as a rejoinder simply places into the critique, doesn’t it?

Patreaus should not have been attacked in such a way, equating wearing flag pins with false patriotism was off base, and trotting out a kid to try and disparage the President and his appropriate veto was cheap. In each case conservatives responded with truth. I see nothing wrong with that.

Nothing is wrong with the right unless people like John Cole have an aversion to the truth. How much of this nonsense must we endure before our indignation reaches a point of vitriolic responses?