The bottom line

By now all of you have read or heard about the shootings of a Federal judge and U.S. Congresswoman in Arizona. Federal judge John Roll, who made rulings of law that infuriated right-wing zealots to the point that he had four death threats against him in the past year, is dead, and U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is likely to survive but probably is disabled for life due to a bullet that went through her brain.

It appears that this is an act of right-wing terrorism against America. As with most terrorist attacks, from what details have been released about a middle-aged man picking up Jared Lee Loughner at home and driving him to the meeting, it appears that the usual template of the suicide bomber was used here -- find a loser, fill his head up with nonsense about how all his problems are caused by the targets, then set him loose to kill. Given what has been said about Mr. Loughner, it seems unlikely that he himself chose the targets, even the U.S. Army didn't want Loughner due to his lack of intelligence and emotional instability. Somebody loaded him up as a weapon, then set him loose to kill.

One thing this should make clear is the fundamental difference in values between liberals and conservatives. Liberals believe in democracy -- that the people have a right to decide who shall lead them, even when the people choose unwisely. Thus why liberal opposition to the election of George W. Bush focused upon irregularities in Florida and Ohio and the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court and Electoral College, and why there were few threats of violence, explicit or not, against Bush, unlike regular threats of assassination against Obama that have popped up on bumper stickers everywhere in conservitard country. Indeed, Bush's main fear was that he might encounter protesters who were exercising free speech and thus might bespoil his perfectly empty mind with ideas that he didn't want, not fear of people exercising "2nd amendment solutions".

Conservatives, on the other hand, distrust democracy. By and large they do not believe that the people should choose their leaders. They believe that only the *right* people should choose who leads America -- generally white property owners, if you look at conservative "Tea Party" rhetoric surrounding "voter fraud" and their desire to repeal the 17th Amendment (which allowed direct election of Senators). Conservatives fundamentally believe that the majority of Americans are idiots and unqualified to choose who leads our nation, they regularly rant about the "tyranny of the majority" that they claim will destroy the nation. Liberals, on the other hand believe in free and open elections that respect the will of the majority, no matter how delusional or stupid the majority may be. That is because the only way for a minority to impose their rule upon the majority (as vs. persuade the majority to go along with it) is at gunpoint, and tyranny imposed at gunpoint is not a liberal value.

The other fundamental difference this points out between conservative values and liberal values is one of respect for human life. Even radical left-wing groups that advocate violence, such as some of the radical Earth First types and Black Bloc anarchists, advocate violence only against property, not against people. They smash in the windows of Starbucks stores and blow up SUV's, they don't assassinate people. As far as I know the last American left-wing act of political violence against human life was the assassination of President McKinley by an anarchist in 1901, and the revulsion against that led to basically the destruction of the mainstream anarchist movement in America.

Conservatives, however, make no bones about "Second Amendment solutions" when the majority elects politicians that conservatives don't like. They believe democracy is a "tyranny of the majority", i.e., "will of the majority" is "tyranny", and that killing people -- i.e., using their guns to restore themselves to power- - is a proper response to this. Some go further and argue that we in fact live in a tyranny imposed by a minority, utterly ignoring the fact that every single one of the sorry sons of bitches in Congress plus the President were elected by the majority of voters in their respective district, state, or country as a whole rather than imposed by some outside dictatorship, but it's unknown how many conservatives believe in such a thing, and it's irrelevant anyhow to the basic point that violence against human beings is an accepted conservative value. Thus abortion doctors killed, the Oklahoma City federal building bombed, and so forth, all by right-wing terrorists. Once you dispense with the notion of respect for human life, crossing the line and actually killing someone is much easier.

So that's the difference, folks: One side believes in democracy and life, the other believes in dictatorship and death. And on that note, I leave you, because my purring cat deserves my attention more than the despicable bunch of people who committed this act of right-wing terrorism against America.

-- Badtux the No-longer-conservative Penguin