Dangerous pro-choice extremists?

In message #240 is the "Only if Mom says so" thread, NemJuggs claims:

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But we shouldn't forget the fact that both sides have their whacko's and that both sides of the extremist forms have potentially dangerous people within their ranks.

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My reply, in Message #278 of that thread (with some slight editing) is below: I hear this claim from conservatives a lot; that when it is pointed out to them how many violent, hate-mongering, radical, and obviously irrational people there seem to be withing the conservative community, they say "Oh well, there's just as many wacko people on the liberal side."I don't think that's true. At all.This thread is intended to let conservatives document the liberal equivalents of conservatives who, say, threaten or murder abortion doctors, or picket women's health clinics, or beat up or kill gay people, or break bottles over their heads and send themselves death threats to make it look like they were attacked and threatened and then blame it on liberals, etc.

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Earth Liberation Front. That's a liberal terrorist group.

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Never heard of them.Are they a large group?

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Everything in moderation; no extreme is safe.

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Er, right.Um, did you read the OP?

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Do nazis count?

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Do nazis count as what?

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OK, from what I am reading I understand that the discussion should be related solely to the violence or threat of violence relative to each side of the issue concerning abortion and/or sexual orientation. Am I correct in this assumption?

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It doesn't have to be that narrow. I picked the reproductive rights/gay bashing issues becasue they have such a long history of violence, and because the former was the impetus for the "each side has its wackos" comment by juggs.I also wanted to discuss the internal group reaction to these people.It seems to me that when progressives "turn the corner" into lala land (which seems to be rare), they generally get kicked to the curb and denounced by "their own". By contrast, it seems as though you can be the craziest, hatefull nutcase you want to be in the conservative world. When people do or say crazy-ass, violent or hateful things that support conservative ideals, they are not at all roundly denounced by conservatives. They are given all sorts of understanding and justification and not rejected at all, even though they would say that same attitudes and acts, if done by a progressive, would be worthy of severe punishment and censure.It seems to me that conservatism both breeds and nurtures violent extremism.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Please provide examples of hateful nutcases that are embraced by the conservatives. I think it would be helpful to get a handle of what you think constitutes hateful behavior in this context.

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There is a range. Some are actually violent, some are simply nutcases, others espouse or excuse violence and extremism:Randall Terry
Ann Coulter
David Duke
Bill O'Reilly
Glen Beck
Pat Robertson
Fred Phelps (conservatives oppose him now, but their outrage at his "God Hate's Fags" demonstrations only emerged after he started targetting the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.)Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure others can add to the list.

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I still have a problem with using rather loose and ill-defined terms such as liberal and conservative in a manner that indicates all people in the US can be divided into one or the other. One problem I feel is the implication that each of the two and only two groups holds exactly the same mutually exclusive position on all issues.

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The term conservative may be subdivided into three general groups, social, religious, and fiscal as per Conservatism - Wikipedia.

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The problem I have is implying, however indirectly or unintentionally, fiscal conservatives such as JFK or Clinton are supporters of David Duke or Ann Coulter. I think the paintbrush is too wide. Just because certain simple-minded over-generalizers such as Limbaugh or O'Reilly have demonized the word liberal, playing their game by doing the exact same thing with the term conservative, IMO, is playing into their hands.

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The point is, though, that the crazy nutjobs like Ann Coulter and David Duke aren't ostracized by the more moderate segments of the overall conservative movement. They are generally tolerated by conservatives, given tacit approval from the Republican party by an absence of censure or criticism.

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Also, I'm not so sure that most self-described conservatives are actually supporters of David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK.

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Dude, don't you remember that he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives? He actually won elections on his white seperatist platform, and came very close to winning the US Senatorial race in Lousiana in 1990. his wiki pageThere are at least tens of thousands of conservatives, at least in the South, who support him, but those are only the voters. I'd wager that there are hundreds of thousands who do if you include the people who don't vote.

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I'm also not so sure that the majority of the residents of Utah, the most 'conservative' state in the union are all supporters of Pat Robertson, who most likely damns them to hell as Mormons.

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Again, when have you ever heard the conservatives in Utah coming out against Pat Robertson?They give their tacit approval through their failure to say he's a hateful, lying bigot.

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If the term social or religious conservative was used instead of the IMO over general term 'conservative' I would feel more comfortable as I don't believe it is your intention to state there is a significant positive correlation between support for racists or religious bigots, such as David Duke, and people who desire a balanced budget.

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You can narrow this down to "social conservative" if you like, but my point remains.All of those "fiscal conservatives" sure are quiet about the social conservative extremeists like Randal Terry and Ann Coulter as long as they bring in the votes. Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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But what you seem to ignore or completely unwilling to admit is that liberals have no problem using terrorism.

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Are you going to address the OP re: pro-choice extremists?

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Like I said, both sides have nutjobs. That is an indisputable FACT. To even suggest that there isn't is dishonest in an unfathomable way.

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Originally, you claimed that both sides of the abortion debate had dangerous nutjobs.I'm still waiting for you to provide the list of dangerous pro-choice nutjobs.

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Neither self-described conservative nor self-described liberal camps in the U.S. body politic embrace violence.

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I disagree.I think that many conservatives, while not publically embracing or endorsing violence, don't say too much against or get outraged enough to completely disown themselves from the violent radical extremists at the fringes of their movement.I mean, look at the completely outrageous, violence-mongering stuff people like Fred Phelps and Ann Coulter spewed for years.Ann's books still sold like hotcakes and she kept appearing on national mainstream news programs as though she wasn't a crackpot. Apparently, her comment that we should invade all the Arab countries, kill their leaders, and convert them all to Christianity wasn't offensive, but calling John Edwards a fag crossed some kind of line.Phelps contined to do his homo-hate thing pretty much unimpeded by the Right for many years until he started targetting the funerals of Iraq war soldiers.

So dude, are you going to list all of those dangerous nutjobs in the pro-legalized abortion camp, that are roughly equivalent to the dangerous nutjobs in the anti-legalized abortion camp that you said existed?

So dude, are you going to list all of those dangerous nutjobs in the pro-legalized abortion camp, that are roughly equivalent to the dangerous nutjobs in the anti-legalized abortion camp that you said existed?