TheAgitator.com
To the Lefties Who Read This Site
Saturday, November 14th, 2009I appreciate intelligent dissent. I’ll never delete a comment or ban anyone for disagreeing with me. And I welcome people who came to this site because of their interest in civil liberties and criminal justice issues.
But I’ve about had it with the drive-by ad hominem attacks on my motivation, character, principles, etc. on posts related to the economy, Obama, health care, or other fiscal and big government issues. This is a libertarian blog. I’m pretty clear about that.
Disagree, argue, and discuss all you like. But before you throw out the usual Fox News, Bush apologist, libertarians-are-just-Republicans-who-smoke-pot tripe, browse my archives from the beginning of this blog until, say, the end of 2008. You’ll see I was plenty hard on the right, and got more critical of them as the Bush administration wore on. Browse the comments, and you’ll also see your trollish mirror images on the right, posting the same sorts of cheap attacks you’re posting now.
I banned the most abusive of them, and I’ll ban the most abusive of you.
Right on, Radley. One of the distinguishing features of this blog has been the quality, intelligence, and civility of commenters, even on topics where there is room for debate. Another is your willingness to address what’s wrong with all parties (even the Libertarians). Those are two big reasons I read every day.
Trolls: go to one of the zillions of partisan sites to spout off talking points and take your shots.
Good post and stop with obligatory disclaimers.
They are annoying, just ban the trolls.
Good onya, man. I’m a “Leftie” who reads your site because it’s my favorite place to find intelligent expressions of views with which I disagree. I say if commenters consistently go out of bounds, ban em. I don’t want to read that crap, either, even if they’re “on my side.”
Some people never learn to accept that there are other legitimate points of view and opinions on things. People on the left can be every bit as reactionary, intolerant and ignorant as people on the right.
Radley is a pitbull in poodle clothing.
I’ve never understood why people get on Radley for criticizing Obama. He has always struck me as pretty even handed. Besides it’s important to criticize Obama, not only on economic matters (for which I’m sure many on this site were skeptical of him to begin with), but in particular for criminal justice and terrorism issues for which I at least had hoped he would be an improvement on the Bush administration. Sadly that seems to not be the case so far.
Anyway keep up the intelligent site Radley. It’s nice to read a blog with a sophisticated point of view. All the readers with a grain of intelligence, even if they occasionally disagree with you, see the absurdity of the troll posters be they accusing you of being a leave-people-in-the-street-to-die right wing extremist for criticizing Obama or of being an Obama apologist for not getting on board with the whole “I watch Glenn Beck and I learned a new word” form of liburtearyanism.
I’ll own up and apologize. I could say things differently.
I don’t chime in on most of what you write because I agree with it, the 90% is what keeps me coming back.
we’re not supposed to be pot smokers? :O)
JS is right. ignorance is a bipartisan activity.
This is one of the most important blogs on the web, and Radley is doing a public service to the nation. However, it is possible for even the best of the bloggers to “troll from the top.” Trolling is not just something that happens on the comments thread.
When Radley says that “lefties” who oppose tax cuts should voluntarily play more to the government, he is abandoning the cool logic of libertarianism and ratifying one of the worst counter-logical tropes of the mouth-breathing Right. He should expect some rough pushback. And, even though I am a pro-choice liberal, I would be no more forgiving if Radley adopted the illogical “don’t-like-abortion-then-don’t-have-one” idiocy of the knee-jerk Left, which mirrors exactly the voluntary-taxes trope.
One key test of our “seriousness” is whether we can avoid the cheap shots even when we are sorely provoked to indignation.
it all comes around to who is drunk with power. the democrats have it now. the republicans had it for the last several years. they’re all the same. once they receive power and their agenda is fulfilled, criticism is not welcome whether right or wrong.
I think it’s human nature to condense any issue down to two sides. Cable news and talk radio make that fact painfully clear. To the left, if you aren’t left, you can only be right. And to the right, if you aren’t right, you can only be left.
It’s basically like the government vilifying every adversary as being “linked to al qaeda” or Christians defining anyone who doesn’t believe in Christ as an agent of the devil.
While this is plain to everyone else, the parties involved are oblivious to it. In fact, those who specifically identify with the left and right are probably reading these words with the same look your dog has when you try and explain why he shouldn’t chew on the legs of the dining room table.
Dave Krueger “I think it’s human nature to condense any issue down to two sides. Cable news and talk radio make that fact painfully clear. To the left, if you aren’t left, you can only be right. And to the right, if you aren’t right, you can only be left.”
Brilliant post as usual Dave! I think people still don’t realize how outdated the left/right dichotomy is becoming. That and a lot of people are not so much true conservatives as they are anti-liberals. As on the other a lot of people are not true liberals as much as anti-conservatives. Its not as black and white as the liberal/conservative dichotomy paints it to be and a lot of people still don’t get that.
Of course what really kicked off all the fuss from some on the left this week on this blog was when Radley touched their idol by attacking communist human rights abuses.
I think one thing that would really help is an actual threaded comment system, so that if someone responds to something I write, it appears indented just below my comment.
Then we could effectively police our own.
When Radley says that “lefties” who oppose tax cuts should voluntarily play more to the government, he is abandoning the cool logic of libertarianism and ratifying one of the worst counter-logical tropes of the mouth-breathing Right. He should expect some rough pushback.
How do you figure?
Bottom line: I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend TO THE DEATH your right to say it.
And IMO I agree w. you 90% of the time. Which is more often than I agree with my domestic partner/sig other. : P
I used to be a liberal. It took the death of my parents to change my thinking. It will take a similar sea change to cause the most hardcore Obama supporters to realize, “Hey, you know? In many ways, he’s no different than the last guy who was POTUS.”
#9 Spot on, Dave. I get that a lot. Telling someone that I don’t like Obama often leads to them telling me how bad Bush was. It clearly baffles them when I agree with them about Bush. I get a similar response when I tell a Rep. friend that I wouldn’t mind drinking a beer with Obama. That can spark a tirade. There are a lot of people down at the pub that I like to drink with but I wouldn’t want them in the white house.
#9 #9 #9 #9
I’M LOUDER THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ERGO, I AM MORE RIGHTER THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ; )
OK, I’ll take the bait. WHy do you insist on prefacing your posts when talking about democrats with the term lefty, like in the pejorative sense? But when you talk about Republicans you don’t use the term wingnuts.
I am a left leaning democrat, who has read a lot of libertarian writings, i even bought the Cato course on libertarianism to get a better understanding of the ideology. I have not fully rejected the concept, but my dabbling is over, libertarianism is not for me (I just cound not cozy up to being labeled a glibertarian). This said, i read this blog daily, and appreciate the perspective from Radley and from comments, but the use of ad hominem attacks start from the top.
Weathering attacks from both sides is not an easy task. I think Radley does a great job.
I havent’ always agreed with you Radley, but I generally find your opinions spot on. The left can’t take the heat often. They dished out hate against Bush for 8 years and when thoughful attacks come against their ideas they again resort to the name calling, etc.
No, how dare you, sir, attack Our Lord and Savior, Barry Obama.
Don’t you know that he is THE ONE!
Christ, at least Republicans never pretended that Bush was anything but an oaf from Texas.
@Bill are you serious? the media worship and deification of Commander Codpiece was rampant. Dissent was not tolerated, and “town halls” were purged of people wearing dissenting t-shirts and sporting anti-Bush bumper stickers on their cars. Were you asleep for that eight-year stretch of time?
While mouth-breathing seems to bring up images of Deliverance for some, you do realize that it may be no more than a deviated septum?
As for the trolls, I consider personal attacks on the Blogger to be, uhm, less than gracious. Especially where the commenter completely misrepresents the Blogger’s actual position and beliefs. Oops, sorry that last has nothing to do with being gracious and so much to do with ignorance, even willful ignorance.
Ban the buggers.
When the smearing starts, the thinking stops. So does any obligation for civil discourse.
It’s tough dealing with idiots. I’m glad you have the endurance to keep doing it. The fact that people try to smear you is evidence you’re accomplishing something.
Last year when some libertarians were falling all over themselves to praise Rachel Mad Dog and Keith Olbermann because they supposedly were anti-war, some of us figured that their peace-loving ways would stop as soon as Obama was at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Guess what? The Daily Kos crowd really does like war! Hey, even Code Pink supports the carnage in Afghanistan because, after all, the Taliban treat women badly.
More important is that I have yet to meet a leftist who really does care about justice. The Rachel Mad Dog crowd was interested in power, not justice, and now that they are in charge, it is government as usual.
Great comments, Radley, and I agree 100 percent.
I’m glad you posted this, it is always a good thing to point out. I won’t claim all liberals are good people just because I identify as one; there’s a mess of asshats on the left as well, as on the right.
I strive to be better than that. And I know we don’t agree much at all politically, so I refrain from posting in order to just pointlessly butt heads. I’m here to read about the social justice issues and often skip the rest.
But if I ever do pull an ad hom in some discussion down the road I decide to jump into, please just say “attack the argument, not me” and I will graciously apologize for any such asshattery on my part (I’m hot-headed and sometimes blinded to the dismissiveness or rudeness of certain phrasings by passion, even knowing I am).
I assume that this is in part directed at me- here you claimed I misrepresented your position on health care reform and said I “almost completely whiffed” and that nothing that I posted counted as the “critical problems” facing healthcare, and accused me of copying talking points from a conservative website and attributing them to you. I responded with a link to your Fox news column (from 2002) where you specifically stated that there was an impending crisis due to doctor shortages and the lack of malpractice reform, and also included a point-by-point breakdown of why I attributed those views to you gleaned from past posts here and at Reason. If you feel that I was cherrypicking minor issues while missing more thorough posts you’ve made on the subject or attributing to you views that you don’t actually hold, I’d like to hear what your views actually are. But I do read the Agitator on a regular basis and felt that that was an honest summary of your views, even if they were expressed in a way that you would not use.
Ultimately it’s your website and you’re free to do with it as you wish and ban whomever you want. But I think that most of the “lefties” that come here don’t do so to battle over healthcare or post hit-and-runs “defending” communism; they’re here for your posts on civil liberties and the encroaching police state, and on those topics you do great work and I think you’re spot on a majority of the time. But to whine about “leftys” making “drive bys” when you post something as glib as “VENEZUELA = PROGRESSIVE PARADISE!” (c’mon, has anyone said that, even Sean Penn?) makes your complaints seem hollow. YMMV.
Radley not only criticizes the moonbat left and the warmongering right, he also goes after those who espouse a libertarian philosophy not often seen in Washington (Ron Paul). Basically, he dislikes everyone and everything.
But he’s never shot and killed a dog, invaded a country under false pretenses, or threatened to imprison people who refuse to pay for a service they do not want, so he could be worse.
If you have the urge to perform drive-by blog attacks, try this douche instead: http://patterico.com/
Thanks for this Radley. I’m a Liberal and an occasional reader of this blog, mostly for the criminal justice and individual liberty issues. As I have posted elsewhere, I find some Libertarian views enlightening and a few compelling.
I want to voice my agreement for some of the sentiments above: the left-right spectrum is basically useless, and ‘drive-by’ trolling comes from all angles. I welcome vigorous debate, but I tune out when ad-hominem attacks and other examples of faulty logic are employed. Of course, these mistakes are common to all humans — so I try not to take it personally (I’m not always successful). I hope other readers and posters here do the same.
So to boil it all down: let’s all be civil and see if we can’t learn something from one another. Believe it or not, Libertarians and Libertarians do have some important common goals even if we differ in specific implementations.
Primer for Lefties to improve arguin’ skills:
1. Criticism of Obama doesn’t mean you MUST be a Republican or Bush apologist.
2. There is no number 2. Prove you can abide by #1 and we’ll talk.
My Pa taught me to ALWAYS question authority. Without exception or affiliation. This may come as a shocker to some: those in power don’t have YOUR best interests at heart. Live in DC for 20 years and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
“Believe it or not, Libertarians and Libertarians do have some important common goals even if we differ in specific implementations.”
Whoops! Missed that one: obviously I meant Libertarians and *Liberals*.
Oh, and any Liberal who isn’t disappointed in Obama’s performance thus far isn’t really a Liberal. Which brings ups a corollary to Boyd Durkin #27: Being a Liberal doesn’t mean you support everything the Democrats do.
glarbl_glarbl “Oh, and any Liberal who isn’t disappointed in Obama’s performance thus far isn’t really a Liberal. Which brings ups a corollary to Boyd Durkin #27: Being a Liberal doesn’t mean you support everything the Democrats do.”
Good point! This article is kind of saying something similar: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/11/12/the-winds-of-change-die-down/
Banning? You authoritarian!!!
Following up on a few points recently made, “lefties” aren’t the ones doing the drive-bys here, but rather “partisan Democrats”. There is a erroneous conflation of liberals and Democrats that seems to pervade this discussion. Obama’s a centrist, and a pragmatist, not a liberal. Anyone who thinks he’s on the left side of the spectrum is so far to the right that they can’t see past Evan Bayh. And anyone who defends things like the war in Afghanistan and continued warrantless wiretapping is not a liberal.
Thanks for the artcle JS! Raimondo has it exactly right: “We can have an empire, or we can have our old republic back. We cannot have both. ”
I was afraid of this when the FISA amendment came up last year, but I was more afraid of McCain/Palin… I came very close to voting for McKinney, but decided to give the Dems one more shot since it looked like they’d have the majority locked up.
Unfortunately, it seems like the corporatist blue-dogs wield disproportionate power in the party. My federal reps are pretty liberal (except Cantwell for the most part), but still to the right of me on a lot of stuff. I worry that the left-right scale in government has a right-handed thumb on it.
One more thought on the so-called spectrum: If “far-right” Libertarians and “far-left” Liberals agree that Prohibition is stupid, shouldn’t it average out to a centrist view?
Thank you. I’m going to borrow this when I get in another libertarian debate with my (mostly) left wing buddies. It invariably disintegrates into name-calling, placing me in one box or another and flat out insults. Tiresome.
My Pa taught me to ALWAYS question authority.
And you should always do what your Pa tells you!
I’m not sure the people that demand lack of criticism from Obama are liberals…They’re more like political jingoists. My party right or wrong-ers.
I and virtually all of the liberals I know are just as angry at Obama as we ever were at Bush, and for exactly the same reasons. Which are pretty much the exact same reasons Radley is angry at them.
At some point the actual liberals and libertarians are going to have join together to run everyone else out of office just to get our civil liberties back. After that’s accomplished, we can commence bickering over our differences. (Which are mostly over fiscal policy and market regulation.)
There is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.
They’re both as stupid, evil, greedy, and corrupt as the Republicans.
Ah, the irony of banning free speech (repugnant as it may be) on a Libertarian site.
FWIW, the Repub and Dems are in agreement on 95% of issues, especially any that relate to laws that might diminish their duopoly on power. Quit playing the R vs D, or Right vs Left, and realize we won’t get rid of political corruption until anyone can run for office and have a fair chance of succeeding.
Casting all of your trolls as “lefties” is pretty simplistic. You can do better.
Casting all of your trolls as “lefties” is pretty simplistic. You can do better.
It’s a good thing, then, that he didn’t. He said:
Browse the comments, and you’ll also see your trollish mirror images on the right, posting the same sorts of cheap attacks you’re posting now.
Man never let them know they are annoying. Always let a fool be a fool.
I used to be a liberal until I was arrested on a BS misdemeanor charge. Now I realize that the left and the right support the police state mentality when it’s THEIR side in power. Both sides love their authoritarians, and neither side will ever get my vote.
Radley, you are doing great work here. I applaud you.
It’s offensive to see this post dedicated to “The Lefties” who read your site. It implies that you anger is directed toward all lefties instead of just the ones who are spamming. you.
It’s offensive to see this post dedicated to “The Lefties” who read your site.
Then you’re way to damned sensitive.
I can give you a long list of people on the left, including members of Congress, who have defended Chavez and Venezuela.
That’s because, unlike your eloquent summaries of recent events on the civil liberties front, your attacks on Chavez were not accompanied by evidence to back them up. I didn’t defend Chavez. I asked about the details of what you were referring to when you referenced him.
If I didn’t place value on your analysis I wouldn’t have wasted time asking. It’s unfortunate that this would align someone with the most “trollish” and “abusive” lefty commentators.
“can give you a long list of people on the left, including members of Congress, who have defended Chavez and Venezuela.”
Forget Chavez … there are self-professed Mao-lovers in Obama’s White House.
I used to be a “Leftie” but then I changed tailors!
WHy do you insist on prefacing your posts when talking about democrats with the term lefty, like in the pejorative sense? But when you talk about Republicans you don’t use the term wingnuts.
Since when is “lefty” a pejorative? To me it’s a useful word when you want to describe both liberals and leftists, not to mention the people on the blurry boundary in-between. I don’t see anything insulting in it. The equivalent of “wingnuts” would be “moonbats.”
Dave K: “I think it’s human nature to condense any issue down to two sides.”
This is true: Democrat vs. Republican, Mac vs. PC, VHS vs. Beta, CD vs. vinyl, paper vs. plastic, the list goes on.
Jesse Walker, you mean you use “lefty” to mean something different than “leftist”? And there are people who fit in the “lefty” category but are not “leftists”? I think that would lead to more confusion than clarity.
@ 55,
What, are you some kind of Beta apologist?
#56:
Lefty as in a south-paw, maybe?
#50 | Radley Balko | November 15th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I can give you a long list of people on the left, including members of Congress, who have defended Chavez and Venezuela.
And I can give you a number of right-wingers, including members of Congress and the previous “administration” who actually tried to have Chavez killed by orchestrating the failed coup. What’s your point? We’re a country that supports and props up Hamid Karzai after all so I’m not sure we’re the greatest arbiter of foreign political leaders.
“Forget Chavez … there are self-professed Mao-lovers in Obama’s White House.”
And in fact, the Bushies were chock full of Nixon aides, convicted felons (Eliot Abrams), etc. Not to mention Alan Greenspan’s life long love affair with Ayn Rand. Not that that got us in any trouble or anything.