Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [108]
“RELOAD!”
Fortunately, conservative leaders are aware of the problem of right-wing violence and have come out hard against it. For instance, after the bricks and the epithets and the spitting, House minority whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) excoriated Democratic leaders who made an issue of the threats for “dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon.”ct41 Sarah Palin tweeted, “Don’t Retreat, Instead—RELOAD!”42 In case the metaphor wasn’t clear enough, she then directed her Twitter followers to her Facebook page, which showed a map that marked the locations of vulnerable Democratic congresspeople with rifle crosshairs.43
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) “empathized” with IRS kamikaze Joseph Andrew Stack and said of the attack, “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.”44
After the Hutaree story broke, Glenn Beck’s radio stand-in, Chris Baker, called the arrests “nothing more than attack on faith and free speech.”45 And Fox News commentator Monica Crowley wrote in an opinion column:
If you go to church, believe in protecting innocent life, own a gun or defend your country, the Democrats consider you a potential enemy of the state.46
In other words, the FBI’s arrests of the members of a bizarre militia who plotted to murder a cop and bomb the funeral mourners was actually a Democratic assault on the free speech of churchgoers. But lest you think that Crowley was cynically manipulating public opinion by claiming Christian persecution, she assured readers that it was actually the other way round:
It’s mind-blowingly coincidental that these raids on a supposedly “Christian” militia group would come at the exact moment that Democrats were trying to change public opinion on Obamacare by claiming persecution by their opponents.
So Crowley was manipulating public opinion by claiming persecution of churchgoers at the hands of Democrats who she contends were manipulating public opinion by claiming persecution at the hands of churchgoers. How’s that for Freudian projection?
During an interview of Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), Sean Hannity continued the Fox News line that criticizing violent rhetoric was an attack on conservatives’ free speech. He stated, “There seems to be a coordinated effort to intimidate, silence and demonize any critic of this administration.” Bachmann felt the same way. She replied:
I think violence is when the Democrat-controlled base, whether it’s President Obama, Harry Reid or Speaker Pelosi—when they feel like their political position of power is being attacked, that’s what they equate violence with . . . They want to silence the voices that are opposing them.47
Bachmann, of course, is one of those voices that are opposing the Democrats. For instance, she opposed the Democrats’ environmental policy, saying:
I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people—we the people—are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.
Not that she condones violence.
The Bachmann-Fox News defense has a certain rhetorical beauty; it employs persecution politics to attack the critics of persecution politics. Any attempt to criticize the outrageous language that the right has been employing is an assault on the First Amendment rights of conservatives. It is a common refrain on Fox News. When Bill O’Reilly complained that critics who accused him of bigotry were libeling him and violating his First Amendment rights, a lawyer whom he had invited into the