Fundamentalist Lefties Scare Me!
February 22, 2007
When it comes to insane behavior, the radical left is just as bad as the radical right. Case in point: the unprovoked stalking, home-invasion and assault on a college Republican by a fundamentalist lefty who found the man via Facebook.
This kind of thing used to happen at Pomona, too. I knew a lot of people in college who weren’t comfortable discussing their less-than 100% liberal political beliefs openly for fear of persecution. Our senior year, my good friend Eric M. Fraser wrote a letter to the editor of our college pager explaining his conservatism and was roundly lambasted in the editorials section the following week.
Worse, a girl who shall remain nameless to protect her privacy wound up withdrawing from the college her sophomore year due to the irrational persecution heaped on her by the student body due to her political views. I also heard a rumor about a student with a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker finding his car window smashed with a brick in the student parking lot. This was never fully substantiated to my satisfaction, but the fact that it was plausible was enough to give me real pause.
It’s time for us all to face the fact that fundamentalist, self-reinforcing enclaves — whether left-leaning or right-leaning — are good for nobody. It’s one thing to criticize an opposing political party on the facts. It’s another to assault them bodily, make them fear for their safety, or mock them simply for being who they are. That’s just plain wrong. It was wrong when it happened at Pomona, it’s wrong now that it’s happening at University of Mary Washington. It’s wrong anywhere and everywhere.
Right-minded people from both parties need to come together to stop this kind of bullshit once and for all, before somebody gets killed.
Update: I’ve formed a group on Facebook to condemn politically motivated violence.
Groupthink is the term for the reinforcement of ideas within a group of like-minded people to the point where the original ideas become “sacred” and are no longer defended by logic and reason but rather by emotion, ridicule, and/or violence.
I think we could safely say that it’s the kind of thinking that caused a lot of the persecution of conservative students at Pomona. It’s also the kind of thinking that’s responsible for Iraq, as you so aptly just pointed out to me verbally. I love it when we have conversations back and forth and make them public on our blog.
When a radical righty such as Malkin points fingers at anyone I cease paying attention. I assume you have more than Malkin’s word on how this all went down?
Violent leftist student assaulted college Republic…
I think there’s a case to be made for banning partisan politics at universities if this is what leftists are going to do, and start ruining themselves over their political viewpoints. First, here’s a starting report from the Fredricksburg Free Lance-…
Daniel K: The bulk of Michelle Malkin’s post was police reports, witness statements, and the accused’s own statements. She did interject with her own conversative conscending tone between her references, but no more so than any other political commentator liberal or conservative or otherwise. The facts were there, and while it would be nice to avoid sifting through rhetoric to get to them, that is rarely the case. I trust Teresa that if she went through the effort to link to the article, it’s worth the read regardless of political affiliation.
Daniel: Jeff’s statement basically says what I was thinking. I would like to add that I know Malkin is trying to use this as a way to paint the entire anti-war movement with a broad brush. But I’m as outraged by this unprovoked attack on an innocent man as anyone on the left, and indeed we all should be.
We may disagree about many things, but we should all be able to agree on some basic rules for how to treat one another decently and respect one another’s opinions. Behavior like Stone’s only serves to divide the country further. By showing our outrage on the left, we prevent right-wing critics like Malkin from controlling the conversation and using this attack as a wedge to drive the nation further apart.
Stone’s behavior is representative of Stone. He doesn’t represent you or me. You fall into Malkin’s trap if you allow it to, which is her goal. She’s less interested in exposing this incident than she is in making an association that damns all that don’t agree with her own hateful agenda.
first i have to say that andy, you and dr. phil could be relatives. i
dunno why, i just see a physical resemblance.
so far as malkin is concerned, it looks like she did her homework. you
may disagree with her politics but she makes a good point, and it’s
hard to argue with the fact that stone is off his rocker.
aside from stone’s political rantings, he just seems down right scary
and unstable, as if his political views are an outlet for whatever
other real issues he has.
[...] very intelligent reader Daniel Kirkdorffer has pointed out that Michelle Malkin’s intent in reporting on last weekend’s politically motivated [...]
Daniel: Unfortunately, Stone’s behavior is representative of more than just Stone. There were at least three or four other incidents on my own college campus during my tenure there that were similar in intent if not in scale. That said, I’m well aware that Stone’s behavior doesn’t represent the left. It represents angry, irrational, divisive partisan fundamentalism. It represents feelings and behavior of those on the far left AND on the far right.
People like Stone in both parties must be stopped before we can actually figure out what we’re going to do about Iraq. This kind of fundamentalism is the biggest problem we face in our world today. It’s the same basic problem that motivates terrorists to fly planes into buildings.
I wonder if there was this kind of anti-war activism during World War II? I know the information age with TV and the Internet allows all kinds of view points to get immediate attention, so the times are different. But I wonder what it was like in 1942?
muckdog. WWII was met with a tremendous amount of anti-war activism before the war started. The country was not filled with cowards who waited to see how the war would go (see Vietnam, Iraq) and then protest afterwards. They fought going to war as hard as they could, and then once we went, we went all the way. Sacrifice and dedication, not “shop or the terrorists win”.
Andy: A-FUCKING-men!