Are we cowards or bullshit artists?

Glenn Reynolds
Instapundit

Dear Mr. Reynolds,

I understand why you would want to distance conservative rhetoric from violent acts like those committed by the cop-killing gun rights activist over the weekend--nobody wants to think that the spittle they fling in the pursuit of readers and ratings might actually harbor rabies. But I think you're making the wrong argument.

It's just not credible say that there is absolutely no connection. Anyone can turn on Glenn Beck and see him accuse the government of instituting fascism, or hear the troika that leads the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich, call Obama a socialist or a Marxist--and that's not even getting at Michele Bachmann's re-education camps and Fox news' insinuations that Obama may be a Muslim terrorist or even the Antichrist.

Eventually, someone is going to act on that. After all, it's really the patriotic thing to do, isn't it? I mean if our leaders really are islamunistofascistoantichrists, you're not going to stop them at the ballot box.

I think it might be better to admit that although conservative eliminationist rhetoric might prompt a few acts of violence, most conservatives are far too cowardly to actually try to save the country from the imminent destruction they so terribly fear.

It's like back in the early days of the war, when a group called the Protest Warriors, spurred by rhetoric that the US was in a death struggle with Iraq, organized anti-anti-war protests. I joined them and suggested that we finish an anti-anti-war protest by marching to a recruiting center and signing up to serve. They kicked me out of the group for that. You see, actually doing something real to win the "life and death struggle with terrorism" was considered too dangerous, so they settled for screaming the word "traitor" at their fellow Americans.

I had a similar experience on the usenet group, misc.activism.militia, in the nineties. One of the colonels (they were all colonels, there) reported that Russian troops were gathering in the woods in Tennessee in preparation for a Klinton/United Nations takeover. I asked him why he wasn't doing anything to personally stop them--why wasn't his militia attacking them? He responded by promising to hunt me down and execute me for treachery. I laughed, because I knew he was also too cowardly to do that.

I can go on offering example after example of cowardice in the face of the impending destruction of all in which we believe, but I'll end with just one more. How many times have we heard people say that abortion is murder? Yet most of these people do nothing more than talk about it. They know that what they consider to be a murder will take place at a certain location between certain hours, yet they stand by idly as it happens.

So that's your argument. It's OK to incite conservatives to violence because most are too cowardly to actually defend their most basic beliefs.

Hmmmm. Or maybe it's that you know it's simply bullshit, but still, it's all you've got, so you run with it.

Gotta be the first one for me, because I'm certain Obama is the anti-christ.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot