"Treason" by Ann Coulter

As a non American the defintion of "right", "left" and "centre" in the US depresses me some what.

As has been mentioned the term "liberal" in the US is almost used as a dirty word by many (especially Fox News).

There is political disagreement in the UK. There is name calling. There is hostility between the wings of politics. But the term "liberal" isn't seen as extreme over here in Europe. IN the UK we even have a party called the Liberal Democrats - Britain's third largest political party. Using the US terms that makes a hell of alot of Brits as "extremists".

 

Michael Moore represents the extreme fringe of the left, yet that discussion has almost 1500 posts.

In my opinion - it's because conservatives attack Michael Moore at every chance they get, because he stands for everything that they disagree with and that's the reason their hatred runs so deep for him (which is reasonable). From what I have seen, liberals feel the same way about Ann Coulter - they just tend to shrug her off and block her out. That's how I see it, anyway. They're both outspoken extrmemists.

 

Coulter's lies aren't exactly lies. More outright distortions (quoting a quotation in an article rather than the article itself being a personal favourite of mine). They aren't exactly untrue, but they are incredibly misleading--in the same way saying "this year, the total number of Christians in the world continues to exceed 50" would be misleading.

The same applies to Michael Moore, for example the implication in Fahrenheit 9/11 that an exception to the no-flight rule was made in order that the Bin Laden family members could leave the country.


Well said, sir.

You are still a liar. No better or worse than them. And you lies can sway voters. Post enough lies on message boards or lie to others and you could sway votes.

Number one...we're not talking about me, here...and number two...the only thing my lies could convince people to do is laugh...or grumble...or both!

If Moore lies 80% of the time and Coulter lies 60% of the time.

Geez. Am I the only person on earth who can read the small words and details? IF! It was a hypothetical situation. Not facts. Quite obvious.

You're not making any sense.

I personally take her about as seriously as I do Michael Moore, which isn't a lot as most of you know.

Wow, Vez...just as I have you written off...you go and post something like that.

 

Wow, Vez...just as I have you written off...you go and post something like that.

*takes a bow*

Happy to see we aren't on totally polar opposites in opinion. Now if only you would admit the same thing about Moore...

 

To everyone who has been saying that Ann Coulter is a hermaphrodite:

PPOR.

 

To me, Coulter is nearly as insidious as Moore. She just seems to make a better effort at researching her opinions, imo. But she still has an underlying need to put everything in a biased light, ala Moore.

 

Moore, in Stupid White Men, mentioned that George Prescott Bush (W's grandfather) had financial connections with the Nazis, but never said that he was himself a Nazi, and never meant it as any more than a passing shot at Bush.

Let's be fair, though: Mentioning that was a low blow on Moore's part, since a person can't help who they're related to. Moore does sometimes set up those kinds of unfair and irrelevant attacks.

As has been mentioned the term "liberal" in the US is almost used as a dirty word by many (especially Fox News).

You're right, Asie, and it is a ridiculous thing. Impugning an entire ideology that way is pretty petty. I'm kind of curious how this trend of saying "liberal" in a disparaging way started. It sounds like something that would only be done by a person as extreme as Coulter.

Maybe liberals can fight back by turning "conservative" into a dirty word. Then everyone will be filthy.

She just seems to make a better effort at researching her opinions, imo.

I see her "research" as part of her system of propaganda, really. That's true for all political pundits with known stances. If you decide in advance what your opinions are and then go look for evidence to back yourself up, you're hardly using that research in an intellectually sensible way. The only purpose it serves is convincing others who are less informed about the topic that you must be right. After all, no one with 50 citations can be distorting the truth.

 

Tragiclad said...I'm sorry, but if Michael Moore is what passes for the 'extreme left' in America, then I guess Fox News must be what passes for 'center'.

You have finaly figured it out...that is how it is.

J-Rod, you don't seriously promote the wholesale slaughter of others and a forced conversion to Christianity do you?

Coulter sounds no better than the Isalmic extremists. Racist and intolerant.

True Jedi how can you love a person who promotes wholesale slaughter and then swing around call those who don't treasonous?

So basically if you're not a cold-blooded, faith-spweing, born-again chirstian who aspires to force everyone to convert you're a traitor?

True Jedi, you don't really beleive that do you?

There are plenty of perfectly good people on earth, Christian, Islamic and otherwise that have done no harm and have no intention of doing harm to others whatsoever.

Yet you propose to force them to convert?

So much for individual freedom in America.

Ann Coulter tramples on much of what this country was built on.

She'd probably find a good portion of the Declaration of Independence to be treasonous.

She's no better than Hitler. Luckily she deson't have any military power.

 

Number one...we're not talking about me, here...and number two...the only thing my lies could convince people to do is laugh...or grumble...or both!

I guess your lies aren't as persuasive as mine. Ah, can I create a great web of them.

You're not making any sense.

I know I can get ahead of myself but geez. If they lied 80% and 60% of the time each who would be more likely to tell the truth?

 

Coulter is a hack. Why is this even in dispute?




DLM! Good to see you around.

I also find it puzzling that 'liberal' is such a dirty word. People on the left are so scared of the label!

And in Europe, it's a slur for those on the right! Madness!

Economist:

There's a word for that - And we want it back


ALL through this election campaign, George Bush has flung the vilest term of abuse he knows at John Kerry. You name the policy ? Mr Kerry's support for punitive taxes and reckless public spending, as Mr Bush put it; his preference for stifling government and overweening bureaucracy; his failure to stand up for, oh, expensive new weapons systems, microscopic embryos and the sanctity of marriage ? and the president's verdict in each case was the same. ?There's a word for that,? he said, again and again. ?It's called liberalism.?

What more need one say? And Mr Kerry was not just any sort of liberal: he had actually been the most liberal member of the Senate. When told this, appalled Republicans jeered more loudly than if Mr Bush had accused his challenger of eating babies. (That man dared to run for president! Did he think he would not be found out?) Understandably, Mr Kerry was sometimes wrong-footed by this egregious defamation. Occasionally, smiling nervously, he said he was not ashamed to be liberal. (Audacious, but perhaps unwise.) At other times he tried to deny it. (You see, he protests too much.) In America, that kind of accusation cannot easily be shrugged off.

?Liberal? is a term of contempt in much of Europe as well?even though, strangely enough, it usually denotes the opposite tendency. Rather than being keen on taxes and public spending, European liberals are often derided (notably in France) for seeking minimal government ? in fact, for denying that government has any useful role at all, aside from pruning vital regulation and subverting the norms of decency that impede the poor from being ground down. Thus, in continental Europe, as in the United States, liberalism is also regarded as a perversion, a pathology: there is consistency in that respect, even though the sickness takes such different forms. And again, in its most extreme expression, it tests the boundaries of tolerance. Worse than ordinary liberals are Europe's neoliberals: market-worshipping, nihilistic sociopaths to a man. Many are said to believe that ?there is no such thing as society.?

Yet there ought to be a word ? not to mention, here and there, a political party ? to stand for what liberalism used to mean. The idea, with its roots in English and Scottish political philosophy of the 18th century, speaks up for individual rights and freedoms, and challenges over-mighty government and other forms of power. In that sense, traditional English liberalism favoured small government ? but, crucially, it viewed a government's efforts to legislate religion and personal morality as sceptically as it regarded the attempt to regulate trade (the favoured economic intervention of the age). This, in our view, remains a very appealing, as well as internally consistent, kind of scepticism.


Sadly, modern politics has divorced the two strands, with the left emphasising individual rights in social and civil matters but not in economic life, and the right saying the converse. That separation explains how it can be that the same term is now used in different places to say opposite things. What is harder to explain is why ?liberal? has become such a term of abuse. When you understand that the tradition it springs from has changed the world so much for the better in the past two and a half centuries, you might have expected all sides to be claiming the label for their own exclusive use.

However, we are certainly not encouraging that. We do not want Republicans and Democrats, socialists and conservatives all demanding to be recognised as liberals (even though they should want to be). That would be too confusing. Better to hand ?liberal? back to its original owner. For the use of the

 

Mara said...Maybe liberals can fight back by turning "conservative" into a dirty word. Then everyone will be filthy.

You must not have been paying attention in the 80's and 90's. It was a very dirty word.

Fan X said...J-Rod, you don't seriously promote the wholesale slaughter of others and a forced conversion to Christianity do you?

No I don't, and unless Ann said it in her last book, as I have yet to read it, niether does she.

 

J-Rod
Here, this is from an article of hers.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

J-rod, you don't agree with this do you? Please tell me you don't. The deliberate destruction of civilian life is well-nigh inexcusable except when one has absolutely no choice whatsoever and even then, its the most regrettable side-effect there is.

But this loon is adovocating their wholesale slaughter in favor of the spread of Christianity

(and doesn't killing enemy leaders or anyone at all for that matter go against one of the 10 commandments?)

Some Christian.

J-rod, you don't advocate this right? I mean, I can understand that in war there can be casualties but she sounds no different than the zealots who want to kill the president and forcibly convert others to Islam.

 

Some Christian.

I agree. She says a lot of things that seem to be in direct conflict with the message of Jesus, actually.

 

A lot of those who "preach in the marketplace" are guilty of this; we have an epidemic of politicians who suffer from this problem, as well.

Peace,

V-03

 

Thus religion should have no place in politics I think. On some level its always deliberately intolerant of those of other religions.

Why put someone in office who by definition of his religion is bound to be intolerant of others?

BTW - Anyone here believe that for all the Republicans "supposed goodness" that they had a hand in assasinating the two Kennedy's and Martin Luther King Jr?
For all the preaching that liberals are treasonous, the right didn't seem so willing to embrace the individual rights of a big demographic for an awful long time.

If Coulter had lived during those days, does anyone here think she would have condoned the assasinations?

This would be a silly question about someone else, but Coulter is pretty "out there".

 

Dark Lady Mara:
Let's be fair, though: Mentioning that was a low blow on Moore's part, since a person can't help who they're related to. Moore does sometimes set up those kinds of unfair and irrelevant attacks.

I agree it was a cheap shot, and were I in any position to advise Moore on his writing I would have told him to cut it out. But Icehawk somehow cast it as a reflection of the (far) left, and the logic of that, just like the logic of many conservatives on the SF, escapes me.

Star Wars Fan X:
BTW - Anyone here believe that for all the Republicans "supposed goodness" that they had a hand in assasinating the two Kennedy's and Martin Luther King Jr?

I won't make any actual accusations because they would be indefensible, but I would bet that President Nixon had a hand in any one of those three assassinations. Nixon was a no-holds-barred political warrior and I wouldn't put it past him to use the ultimate weapon to destroy an opponent's career.

Going by what we do know, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray weren't exactly leftists either.

 

There's not much any of us liberals CAN do about Coulter, besides just shrug her off. She's such a wackjob, she's not worth paying any serious attention to. It's more fun to just poke fun at her and then move on.

 

well, with a head shot of her, a man's nude body, and photoshop, it could be fun. LOL just kidding righties

 

Ann Coulter...We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

Fan X asked...J-rod, you don't agree with this do you? Please tell me you don't. The deliberate destruction of civilian life is well-nigh inexcusable except when one has absolutely no choice whatsoever and even then, its the most regrettable side-effect there is.

I absolutely don't agree with that! Was that from one of her colums, 'cause I've not read that. I'd like to read the whole thing as she does like to place tounge- in-cheek and ramble.

Like Micheal Moore she likes to say things for reaction, yet doesn't take herself as seriously. And though I love her work, anyone who doesn't think she is the Moore of the right is a little scewed in where center is. I just take her with a grain of salt as she is for entertainment.

 

Nixon was a no-holds-barred political warrior and I wouldn't put it past him to use the ultimate weapon to destroy an opponent's career.

I do believe there must have been an ongoing conspiracy against the Kennedy's and maybe even MLK, but I think you are taking it too far here, Liberalmav.

If ANYTHING, at MOST, I would say Nixon's involvement was how it was portrayed in Oliver Stone's NIXON. What a great movie, (even though Stone clearly made up a lot of stuff out of the blue regarding Nixon's role in Kennedy's assasination.)

Essentially, in the movie NIXON, after he lost the 1960 election he knew that there was a Texas Oil/Other Evil Rich guys headed by J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) who had this plot against Castro, and somehow it got around and bungled up and ended up leading to Kennedy's death. Nixon knew about the Castro thing, but had nothign to do with Kennedy's death, didn't even know it was going to happen, but the people who watned Kennedy dead also wanted Nixon elected. In the movie, Nixon makes a reference to this and that is what was cut in the infamous missing 17 minutes of tape.

BUt to me, there is no freakin way Oswald, if he was even involved (see another movie where Stone makes up some fun facts in JFK) acted comletely alone, someone helped him in either the planning or execution.

ANd then I don't believe for a second RFK was just killed by some muslim fanatic. No way. That's just nonesense. RFK was going to win the 1968 election, two Kennedy brothers and the Presidency at stake, I just don't believe lightining strikes the same place twice unless someone's holding a lightning rod, you dig?

 

Was that from one of her colums, 'cause I've not read that.

There's a link to it on the first page of this thread.

 

Oh for cryin' out loud...

That article was written 2 days after the attacks. I was that angry then too. I bet many of us were.

 

McCarthy was correct about a great many things, including accusations about spies within the state department, the KGB and GRU involvement in the Communist Party USA, and various people being communist agents.

He accused people of being communists with little to no evidence. Including his infamous, fictitious "list of communists." He had no such thing. He was an ambitious opportunist who would demonize the innocent for his own advancement. He was an embryonic version of Karl Rove.
McCarthy was correct about a great many things, including accusations about spies within the state department, the KGB and GRU involvement in the Communist Party USA, and various people being communist agents.

The reason he is demonized is simple.
Liberals believed that Americans had a right to be part of a political movement that supported and championed a govenment that was actively attempting to undermine the United States in any way possible.
Liberals believed only that people have the right of free political association and peacable assembly. If I'm not mistaken, that's spelled out in the First Amendment.

 

If Coulter genuinely believes what she writes, then she is a sociopath. If she doesn't, then she's willfully adding to the partisan divide in the nation.
And why shouldn't she? After all, as Grover Norquist says, bipartisanship is just a euphemism for date rape. Why should the parties cooperate?

Maybe liberals can fight back by turning "conservative" into a dirty word. Then everyone will be filthy.
Well, Dan Savage has made a good start with Santorum.

 

That article was written 2 days after the attacks. I was that angry then too. I bet many of us were.

That doesn't make doing what she suggests any better.

There's also no indication that she's changed her mind.

Some people stay angry forever. That's sad but it does happen. If she still supports those philosophies in her article then whether she wrote it before or after the attacks doesn't matter. All that matters is whether or not she still holds the philosophy.

A very real possibility.

Anyone know of any retractions she printed?