What about all the right that show up armed at businesses and start shooting like PizzaGate. Or take over government properties out West because the federal government doesn't have the "right" to control federal lands.

fyi: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/12/31/report-scalises-pitch-20-years-ago-im-david-duke-without-the-baggage/

Scalise 20 years ago: I'm David Duke without the baggage.

CAPT Brad = cognitive dissonance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jo_Cox

@Hauta: Are you really trying to justify a shooting and an attempted mass murderer? Wtf is wrong with you?

@ND, Nope. I condemn the attack. (Your response made it seem like you're against David Duke.)

I despise David Duke and this isn't about David Duke. It is about a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter and campaign volunteer who listened to too much fake news (Rachel Maddow) and went out and tried to kill Republicans. This has absolutely zero to do with David Duke.

ND, are you alleging that Bernie Sanders and Rachel Maddow are guilty of incitement?

You have to look at the shooter and who he listened too and supported. If this was a Trump supporter who listened to Rush Limbaugh who went out and tried to assassinate Democrats you bet your bottom dollar that everyone would be blaming Trump and Limbaugh.

I am not blaming them per-say, but I am stating that these people who inspire attempted mass murderers like Hodgkinson need to stop with the fake news, Republican hate, and misinformation. This has to stop Hauta.

ND, your fake news is my real news and my fake news is your real news. Therefore, it's unproductive for us to engage on the issue. After all, Alex Jones propagates the myth that Sandy Hook didn't happen so apparently, violence is committed only from the left.

Well Hauta, it probably is pointless. I do hope that you and people like you will look inward. Folks left on center do need to look inward and reject the violent leftists that is overtaking your side of the political spectrum. I will pray for all of you tonight.

Yes, and from the left, the sentiment is the same about your violent side of the spectrum. No surprise given our divergent sources of information. One thing in common, I will pray for all of you tonight.

Sandy hook has nothing to do with the left-right issues. Shame on you Hauta for bringing the deaths of children by a mentally deranged individual into this

The only major Sandy Hook deniers are right wing psychopaths. It is political.

both parties have their extremes, and by that definition they have radicals in their party.

we can go down issue by issue which party has extremes on which issue, but at the end of the day we are not even arguing the overall prevalence of fringe elements on each side of the aisle, we are arguing the extent to which these elements are accepted. a problem arises when we attribute radicals to a party, when the party has been rejecting the platform of the radicals.

take Sandy Hook, this has gotten brought up by Alex Jones, who is nominally right in many areas, but when he brought the idea of Sandy Hook as a conspiracy to Megyn Kelly's show, he gets ridiculed by her, and the reaction by the mainstream right agrees.

the mainstream left has been more and more willing to accept and platform the radical far left, most notably with Bernie Sanders and the rise of socialism.


as far as the extent of the radical left and right in size and number, i do not have any statistics in front of me to say one way or another which is bigger. i think each have grown in recent years though, although that's a purely visceral belief and i could very well be wrong.

what we need to assess is the extent that radical ideology is accepted by political parties as mainstream.


and before you go bashing Trump on being radical, he's not very right wing in that he is not for free markets, he wants trade restrictions, he is willing to spend big, he seems to enjoy centralized power, he is far more socially liberal in some issues for LGBT than most Republicans.

he's a volatile person for sure, but politically he's somewhere between a centrist democrat and a neocon while governing so far.

Trump said violence was OK. Admit that and you're forgiven.

He is nowhere close to a centrist Democrat, and you seem to be mistaking libertarian values for Republican values. Republicans like the centralization of power, as do Democrats. It's libertarians who are the chief ones that are against it, and they are *not* mainstream Republicans

I'll become a communist before I accept that any tea party or libertarian platform represents true Republican platforms

As far as centrist Democrats go, Obama was actually remarkably close to that mark. You won't find many Democrat Senators or Governors to the right of him.

And I think the radical left will always be more accepted by the mainstream than the radical right. And that is simply because history for the past 300 years has been a slow and steady march to the left. What was once a radical position becomes mainstream, then centrist.

Except that since the 70's there's been a radical lurch to the economic right. I really wouldn't call the neoliberal experiment a slow and steady march to the left.

@JK

yeah he's an idiot. have i not already said that A THOUSAND TIMES??? i mean really this is just background radiation at this point. he openly condoned violence, and even in a joking manner, although less nefarious, is still something no president should do.

did you forget i voted for Clinton?

@goldfinger

1. yeah Republicans are shit, but the ideas of small government conservatism are much more popular among the republican electorate.

2. Obama was not a centrist democrat, he's still more firmly left. Clinton was more of a centrist democrat.

also an interesting point on the nature of radicals in each parties... although i'd argue we say socialism in the 1700s, and it's still been labeled radical ever since, so that's one example of radical positions not becoming centrist. otherwise i agree, that's the basis of the first echelons of progressivism, fixing social issues.

but as far as Trump *NOT* being a centrist democrat, i said he was a combination of neocon and centrist democrat.

he's got the pro-military and anti immigration of a neocon, but he's much friendlier on other social issues, which is not a position of the big government christian republican elite. for healthcare he's not up for a free market, and he's not up for single payer, this si the grey territory where big government conservatives have only technical differences with centrist democrats, but it's still the same ball field. perhaps i'm being too generous to the Democrats... they have been swinging hard left in recent years, perhaps the old center has moved far out of sight for them.

Proof that the problem is leftists, not guns:

Jesse Benn (Huffington Post writer): "For violent resistance to work it'd need to be organized. Individual acts can be understandable, but likely counterproductive/ineffective." --June 14, 2017 after the shooting

https://twitter.com/JesseBenn/status/875049629167079425

An article last week by the same author: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-benn/sorry-liberals-a-violent-_b_10316186.html

Those are some good posts @Leon but the MAINSTREAM-left condemns violence of any sort. Benn's TOLERANCE of the violence against Scalise is reprehensible and Benn is too radical-left for HuffPo and should be fired. Note: Benn did not ADVOCATE for murder or incite against Scalise. Note: It is my understanding that Benn advocates for "mere" rioting (which I take to mean property damage and melees), not murder. I think that Benn fancies himself as a Marxist/anarchist, raging against the machine, not people.

Hauta, Benn advocates a revolution, not rioting. He clearly said in his article that he prefers uprisings to protests. I don't see how such people can be justified in any way without lapsing into fascism. I like to believe that guys like Benn are a relic of 20th century ideologies that is dying out.

Huff Post is just as much cancer as Breitbart

On the other hand, leon's statement "the problem is leftists, not guns" is simply untrue. The shooting was universally condemned. People like Benn are extremists who aren't taken seriously by the majority. Saying that Sanders is somehow responsible for this lunatic would be like saying that Marx is responsible for Stalin.

And @Leon - I still say we've moved left since the 70s. Don't forget, there were also lurches to the right in the early 1800s and 1930s. I very much think the slow and steady narrative still fits.

Hardly. The difference between HuffPo and breitbart is that HuffPo is at least still grounded in reality and they don't peddle in a ton of racists conspiracy theories. This "both sides do it" is both patently false and give aid and comfort to racists and white supremacists.

While I don't think anyone condones this kind of violence, there is a certain level of feeling like the chickens are coming home to roost and there is something to be said foor sauce for goose is sauce for the gander. If scalise were a black kid the press would be combing for any suggestion he ever smoked pot to justify the shooting and the right would be saying he is a thug and deserved it. as it is, it is very hard to have a lot of sympathy for these guy, since this is the kind of thing they've been happy to inflict on others.