When Sarah Palin's church was torched by an arsonist, with people in the building and with reports that the arsonist had placed accelerants at the exits of the church, there was no hand-wringing and worry, much less excessively so, over whether or not the arsonist was somehow provoked or pushed further over the line by all the BDS, PDS, etc. promulgated by Matthews and others in the MSM and among the fever swamps among the left/Dems, Kos, MoveOn, etc. There was no worry whatsoever, much less 24/7 news-cycle excessive worry and commentary in this manner. None.

Likewise with the Pvt. Long murder in Arkansas.

Indeed, the most noteworthy factor in both cases, from thy pov of social/political commentary, was the nearly total absence of such commentary.

Perspective.

Charles Johnson and LGF included, btw.

Since we were attacked on 9/11, many people have not been acting or sounding sane.

This is just my theory but I think 9/11 caused us to lose our balance. I don't know why but people seem to have become really nutty, and spend a lot of time on conspiracy theories and spreading viciousness on the internet.

I don't think this is limited to any one branch of our political family.

When President Bush was in office, the far left was meshuggah. Now Barack Obama is the President and the far right also sounds meshuggah.

As far as this particular person who murdered Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust museum is concerned, though, hating "neocons" is consistent with an old school hard right winger.

For example, Pat Buchanan also hates neocons, and he is not exactly a leftist.

Regardless, extremism isn't helping our country or our planet, and it's increasingly worrisome especially considering all the big problems we have to solve.

It doesn't really matter where they comes from politically - especially since people seem to overlap at the fringes. For example anti-Israel people on the far Left have been known to link to KKK-type websites and vice-versa.

Isn't our common enemy - right, left and center - irrational, hateful, extremist people, especially those who spread hate and fear and who are willing to hurt the rest of us?

You're spreading around the meme that he isn't a right-wing extremist? Dude, the guy attended meetings of the AFBNP:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/11/holocaust-museum-shooting-bnp-von-brunn

He's a classic paleoconservative right-winger--isolationist, anti-immigrant, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, Nazi-sympathizing, white power, and a gun nut. An extreme version of what you get when you start with Pat Buchanan and go nuts. This is what the far-right Posse Comitatus militia movement looks like.

Next thing you're going to tell me that the Nazis weren't far right either, because Nazi is short for National *Socialism.*

Please. Have you heard of the No True Scott fallacy? Look it up. The left has its radical extremists, and so does the right. Deal with it.

You have reading comprehension difficulties.

"He's certainly what's traditionally referred to as "far right,""

Yeah, but then you say that "it doesn't really have a lot of meaning" and then you actually suggest that he'd be at home at a Commie multicultural Cynthia McKinney rally (you know that she's black by the way, right?) and has as much in common with Chris Matthews as with anyone on the right. Your right hand doesn't seem to know what your left hand is doing.

This guy fits into an extreme form of the Birch Society/Pat Buchanan wing of the right wing, which used to be much more mainstream back when this guy was younger. (These are the kinds of people Buckley warned the GOP about.) He was a Ron Paul supporter, and declared himself a "sovereign citizen." And these Timothy-McVeigh militia-types do have a way of rearing their heads whenever a Democrat is in the White House.

I'm just saying that you ought to be honest. When you go on and on about how many Muslims refuse to confront their extremists honestly, and then you mimic their behavior in this case and in your attack on that DHS memo, it demonstrates a certain hypocritical lack of self-awareness.

You ought to say that this guy is a right-wing extremist and that conservatives need to work to marginalize these fanatics.

The main problem is that thinking political ideologies are lineal when they are really circular. There isn't an eyelash difference between the nutty "right" and the "loony" left.

One just has to read the diverse Internet Forums to grasp that concept.
A pox on both their houses

A good place to start that might be relevant to these kinds of nuts (that cop-killing Poplawski guy being another example)? Stop crying "Communism" and "Fascism" every five minutes like the boy who cried wolf, and stop spreading the rumor that "the gov'mint is coming to take 'er guns."

Indeed. [edit: That's directed to GabbysPoppy]

Matt still displays reading comprehension issues. I actually said "much of the reaction to DHS's recent report about "Right Wing extremism" was overblown." That means I think the reaction to the report -- on the right -- was overblown. There was reason for that report and incidents like this show why.

Good. To his credit, Buckley had the courage and integrity to declare to his fellow conservatives that these nutjob segments of the right wing were, in fact, their problem. Everyone should be so honest.

Matt's identity politics, redux: 1) we good, 2) they bad, 3) hooray, ha ha and boo hoo on you! Profound stuff, Matt.

Von Brunn didn't like Jews (e.g., the Khazar line, the holocaust "hoax"), Christians, Marxists, Neo-Cons, George Bush, the Federal Reserve, the Illuminati, etc. So yea, Matt, he's right in there with center-right types. Ergo: Matt good, not-Matt bad.

And what? No probative commentary concerning Pvt. Long or the motives behind Palin's church being torched by an ansonist? No hand-wringing concern from that angle?

And, here's a line you won't see elaborated upon much, if at all:

Von Brunn was in fact a big time anti-Christian and eugenicist, essentially in a Hitlerian mode. For example, we won't see this commented upon at Charles' LGF with any probative depth whatsoever, to the contrary as it doesn't fit the script, likely doesn't fit Matt's identity politics and script either. Primarily, perhaps, because an exploration of this subject would also serve to further expose just how anti-Christian Hitler and his henchmen were in the first place. Secondarily, because it would also risk delving into the ideological lineage of Nazism:

Marxism/Leninism -> Mussolini's Fascism -> Hitler's Nazism

Ergo: the Matt's of the world prefer a simplistic, highly confused and reductionist identity politics over probative depth.

As to von Brunn's anti-Christian interests, e.g., he posted at:

http://www.antichrist.net/

This is the link he previously posted at that site. As can be seen it has since been taken down.

Two can play identity politics, though I'm doing so here more for reductio ad absurdum purposes, not because I think it carries much weight.

I don't think Matt identified himself as a member of the left or the right. His critique was pretty specific. So saying that he's engaging in "identity politics" is a bit weird.

Nonetheless, you all have to admit that it must drive the Von Brunn's of the world crazy when they realize that the executive branch of the United States is literally being run today by "the blacks and the Jews"--the other members (excepting Joe Biden) being either women, Asian-Americans, or former Republicans.

For all of its claims of modernity and its holier-than-thou attitude, I don't see Europe getting anywhere close to such an achievement any time soon. Where else but the United States would this even be possible? God bless America! :)

Just for the record, although Nazism came to include many neo-Pagan elements, Hitler did talk at great length in Mein Kampf about how he derived his mission against the inferior races and the Jews "in the name of Christ." Hitler's relationship to religion and Christianity is indeed complicated.

I must also admit that it's kind of funny when somebody accuses someone else of "reductionism" and then proceeds to write down a linear master formula linking together all of the 20th century's major totalitarian movements. :)

Nazism was far-right totalitarianism, Stalinism was far-left totalitarianism. The point is that ideological extremism is dangerous, whichever way you slice it.

People in the center-right need to be outspoken critics of their fringe elements, just as members of the center-left need to be vigorous opponents of theirs, and just as mainstream members of major religions like Judaism and Islam need to stand up against their violent, bigoted extremists.

Rather than verbally attacking those who point out extremism---rather than people on the center-right attacking DHS memos, or Muslims claiming homophobia whenever anyone criticizes Al Qaeda, or Jews attacking claiming anti-Semitism whenever anyone gets upset at supporters of violent fundamentalist West Bank settler groups---members of various religious or ideological groups would do better to devote their energies to expunging those extremist elements.

No, Joe, I wasn't being linear, I was drawing out a notable historical, ideological and social/political lineage:

Marxism/Leninism -> Mussolini's Fascism -> Hitler's Nazism

... within which - you might notice - I don't indicate "left" or "right." I was more simply being broadly descriptive. Mussolini was a dedicated Marxist for well over a decade prior to branching off and becoming the primary intellectual and political impetus for fascism, c. 1913, in the process grafting much of what he learned during his Marxist period, both in terms of totalitarian ideology and in terms of praxis, onto his fascism.

In the same vein, merely repeating the standard assignation ("Nazism was far-right totalitarianism, Stalinism was far-left totalitarianism"), only serves to further rely upon and reinforce that mantra and forego acknowledging the implications of the historical and ideological lineage in question, i.e. it serves to avoid and mask any probative depth, rather than explore it.

As to Matt's "specifics," we disagree. He's seeking categorical associations for, essentially, demonizing effect, and that's what I was describing. That's also why I took note of what he elides, what he omits (commentary on Pvt. Long's murderer or hand-wringing worry concerning the arsonist's potential motives). Nor did I state Matt was necessarily of the left. Reading comprehension and better attentiveness, Joe.

In general: thought - premise-to-conclusion based thought, not oft-repeated mantras as if learned, Pavlovian style, by rote.

Can anyone understand what the heck this good fellow Michael is saying? Is he a real person, or one of those sentence-generating grammar bots?

If so, my compliments to the engineer---you've nearly passed the Turing test; you almost had me fooled into thinking I was reading the words of a human being!

Michael B is a valued contributor here.

Sol, you are kind.

Matt,

So, in your own humble and unassuming way, you're asking for elucidation, for clarity, for elaboration. I'm happy to oblige. Let's try an analogy this time.

You seem to approach the subject matter much as Dan Brown approaches certain topics: confusedly, ahistorically, anti-factually, using obfuscations, self-blinkered and incurious to anything that fails to fit your prepossessed sense of things, etc. Dan Brown, likewise, if rather more imaginatively. For example, Brown portrays the physicist, astronomer, cosmologist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre as a "monk" who proposed the big bang theory because he was motivated to reconcile faith with reason and science.

However, and as this very brief YouTube only touches upon, Lemaitre was more simply scientifically motivated in his fields of astronomy and physics, he did not propose the big bang theory (his work did help in leading to it) - and he wasn't even a monk.

Get it? You need to be willing to eschew your prepossessed sense of things, your own categorical and reductionist pseudo-thinking and dogmas, and you need to be willing to eschew your intellectual incuriosity in general. Important and critical distinctions are precisely that: critical distinctions.

Thanks for your interest.

(If you're only going to vacuously sniff and sneer about seeming digressions, you're going to get more of the same. And they are seeming digressions only.)

Clarification: Lemaitre did propose a conception that later became known as the big bang theory, but did not do so in his originating studies nor as a result of any theistic motivations. His originating studies were devoted to bringing together Einstein's general theory with other astronomical and cosmological work and his "big bang" findings came about as a result of those preceding scientific endeavors, not as a result of a priori theistic motivations. There's a bit of a storied history to this very issue with Einstein and others, but that summarizes it well enough.

OT and I don't generally bother with corrections, but it was bothering me.