as seen in two very different ways. For one, the Obama campaign has officially gotten away with fraud, which isn’t surprising. What’s rather more surprising is that they’re still getting away with it. Check out Gateway Pundit for the thorough rundown of how the Obama organization has been enabling—and is continuing to enable—significant credit-card fraud in order to fill their coffers. They will, of course, not be audited or investigated—that sort of thing is only for Republicans.For another, my prayers go out to the folks at Mount Hope Church in Lansing, MI who were assaulted—there is no other word for it—by a radical gay group this past Sunday. I know that church, slightly; I’ve never attended there (though I’ve driven by it many times), but we’ve known people who attended there, and know it by reputation. It’s a good church, and didn’t deserve this attack. Don’t expect the MSM to decry the intolerance of their attackers, though—again, that sort of thing is only for Republicans.
Whoa. That’s some craziness for that poor church. They’ll be traumatized for a long time. I’m picturing this at our church, with elderly folks having heart attacks, children crying…. and me losing it and winging a candlestick at one of them!
Then again, maybe I would happen to remember to pray for my enemies and not curse them.
I certainly hope I would. I’m not sure I think I would, though.
Um…this is sort of an intervention. As far as I can tell, Gateway Pundit is unable to make any distinction between radical and liberal, and seems to welcome people who say things like this as commenters:
“That’s right…the faggoty scum would have been pummeled. It is only going to get worse folks. Lock and load, lock and load.”
That’s just one example of the disgusting hate-fiesta going on over there that sort of stood out. Is this the kind of thing you read for information?
Honestly, Rob, this blog is beneath you. Its very sad that 30 people did something despicable, and its unfortunate that people read their blog. But I think expanding this incident to infer some kind of vast leftist conspiracy to destroy everything is not only really, really tired, but also pretty tenuous from where I’m sitting. Not only that, but referring to this kind of garbage just helps guarantee that those you might want to hear you, “the left”, are pretty unlikely to be listening. Its punditry – correctly identified on the site’s title – and that, to me, means it’s total garbage, and I didn’t read anything to dissuade me.
I mean, should I trot out the Fred Phelps quotes and say that this means that all right-wingers are hypocrites? Or would you say that they are a fringe group that doesn’t reflect what the right, in general, believes and does? Should I talk about the Bush administration’s un-punished frauds, or might you say that those actions don’t reflect what the right really stands for?
Isn’t it kind of hypocritical to trot out these pink-shrouded crazies, as if they were a representative sample or something?
I also think its absurd to put forward that only the left has a double standard where behavior is concerned. That’s just an untenable position to defend, I’m sorry. Only Republicans are punitively audited? Only Democrats protect their own when they have the power to do so? Are you serious?
The commenters are beneath me, yes. The commenters at the NYT’s blog “The Caucus” are beneath me, too, in the other direction, as I was reminded just this morning. The commenters on Hugh Hewitt’s blog can be just as bad, at least in the liberal direction. One thing I’ve learned by now is that with a high-traffic blog, just leave the comments alone–I’ve long since stopped looking.
Also, do I imagine that there’s no double standard on the Right? Do I imagine that being conservative means that one is immune to certain sins? No, certainly not; I call out my own side, too (particularly in talking to the church). However, I will note that in areas in which the Right tends to get publicly sanctimonious, it usually follows through against its own, even if only because the media won’t let it do otherwise. Where is Mark Foley? Where is Larry Craig? Where is Ted Haggard? The list is not without exception (David Vitter comes to mind; the only explanation I have for his survival is that Louisiana is a different world politically), but neither is it short.
You mention Fred Phelps–the first I ever heard of him was a denunciation in an evangelical publication; in my experience, folks on the Right are harder on him than those on the Left. (I don’t know if you know Amy Miracle at Westminster in Des Moines–she’s a former colleague of mine in Denver; she preached a sermon which CovNet distributed in which she actually offered a certain degree of grace to Phelps. I would have had a very hard time saying the same. Maybe it’s because to her, he’s only someone whose beliefs and behavior she finds repugnant; to me, he’s all that and also someone who makes me look bad.) The question is, are there liberals who will call a spade a spade here, the way evangelicals (and even some fundamentalists) routinely do every time Phelps opens his yap? If not, then the comparison doesn’t stand the test.
The point is not, is there a vast left-wing conspiracy–we got enough of that kind of talk in the other direction from the Clintons. The point is, when the Left talks about tolerance, and political ethics, and the corrupting influence of money in politics, and all those things, are those just clubs to use to beat up Republicans? Or are folks on the Left willing to call out their own side on these issues?
Certainly, Republicans aren’t perfect in this respect, but there are always GOP pundits (and a pundit is only someone who expresses and argues for an opinion; you and me, as much as anyone, if on a far smaller scale) who are willing to take up that role, and always politicians willing to follow suit. The question is, are there leaders and media figures on the Left who will do the same? Or do they only care when it’s Republicans who are guilty?
In any case, so as not to expand the platform of hideously morally ugly people on the Right any more than I can help, I’ve changed the second link to the story in the Lansing State Journal, which is a more useful story anyway (and one which, had I not been so tired, I would have thought to look up for more information).