Sarah Palin, 12 January [my emphasis]:
Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.
Video here, at 3:30m.
This has been added to the pile of Ms Palin’s semi-comic gaffes; and the blogosphere seems to be following President Obama’s magisterial call to cool it.
Sorry to break ranks, but I’m not American anyway, and I don’t think enough thought has been given to the full iniquity of Palin’s accusation.
The blood libel was, as everybody knows, the lie spread at intervals from the twelfth century (with Hellenistic forerunners) to Tsarist Russia a century ago, that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children for the purpose of sacrilegious anti-Christian rites often involving the desecration of communion hosts.
(Paolo Uccello, The Miracle of the Desecrated Host, 1465-69, panel 2. A Jewish pawnbroker has bought a consecrated host from a venal priest and is frying (i.e. torturing) it in a pan. Transubstantiated blood from the host is dripping from the pan and seeping under the door. Not, strictly speaking, the complete blood libel, but a closely related one. Art historians don’t seem to understand quite what nasty stuff they are looking at. (Footnote))
But let’s put aside our disgust a moment to note some other things.
The blood libel was unusual in the litany of anti-Semitic charges in being a total fabrication - not a distortion, however great and unfair, of some nugget of observed fact as with the modest numbers of Jewish bankers and Bolsheviks. Granting, for the sake of argument, the occasional existence in history of psychopathic Jewish child murderers at the same very low rate as in the general population, we can be sure that the one thing these monsters would not have done is mix up their acted-out fantasies with mumbo-jumbo about pieces of bread that would be completely meaningless to anybody not steeped in Christianity. As well make pornographic movies starring the Buddha.
Now since the blood libel has always been a total fabrication, we cannot suppose that it arose from diffuse social processes amplifying a seed fact, as with rumours and panics. Fabrications have specific authors and disseminators. For the blood libel, who were these? Agitators planning pogroms, such as the Franciscan Alonso de Espina in 15th-century Spain. Here is Wikipedia’s account of the genesis of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903:
The riot started after an incident on April 6 when a Christian Russian boy, Mikhail Rybachenko, was found murdered in the town of Dubossary, about 25 miles north of Kishinev. Although it was clear that the boy had been murdered by a relative (who was later found), the Russian-language anti-Semitic newspaper Bessarabetz … insinuated that he was murdered by the Jews. Another newspaper, Svet … used the ages-old blood libel against the Jews (alleging that the boy had been killed to use his blood in preparation of matzo).
The Kishinev pogrom spanned three days of rioting against the Jews. Forty-seven (some put the figure at 49) Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded, 500 slightly wounded and over 700 houses and many businesses looted and destroyed.
The blood libel is hate speech in the fullest and vilest sense, incitement to murder.
So Sarah Palin accused progressive pundits (no mentioning but plainly including Paul Krugman) and bloggers (not mentioning but plainly including Markos Moulitsas and Mark Kleiman) - and by implication Representative Giffords herself - of actions equivalent to the total fabrication of inflammatory anti-Semitic charges designed to incite murder.
This is much more than just false. What some of us lefty bloggers did (I joined in a comment) was to charge some named conservative politicians (including Palin, Angle, and Bachmann) of making specific inflammatory statements, directly or indirectly referring to weapons and insurrection in the context of political opposition to Obama’s policies, that could have pushed Jared Loughner over the edge. Now this may have been unfair and premature, but it was based on incontrovertible evidence about the statements of the politicians in question, though only plausible guesswork about the gunman (footnote). Even more clearly, these charges were simply not incitements to violence themselves. Where’s the beef?
Palin’s charge is then demonstrably false. It is worse than deeply insulting: the accusation amounts to demonisation of her opponents. Pogromschiks can after all be lawfully killed in self-defence. It is therefore a perfect confirmation of the truth of our charges of recklessness against her.
It’s entirely possible that Palin simply doesn’t know what the words blood libel really mean. That changes her fault from viciousness to reckless negligence. I suppose there’s a moral and legal difference between shouting “Fire!†falsely in a crowded theatre in New York, because you want to cause a panic, and shouting “Pozhar!†in a Moscow theatre because you just like the sound of the word. But that’s not to excuse the second.
Either way, does a person who can say such things, not off-the cuff but in a prepared speech delivered in front of the American flag, have any further place in American public life?
Footnote 1
The jury hasn’t even been been convened on Loughner’s state of mind. Palin’s (defensible) “random nutter†theory is also premature. It faces the problem: why Congresswoman Giffords? Why go for a Democratic politician associated with the Affordable Care Act, and not any other authority figure? Finland and Switzerland provide useful benchmarks on shooting sprees as they combine ready access to guns with soporific electoral politics. And like everybody else, they have nutters. Recent attacks in Finland have been on schools (two) and a shopping mall. In Switzerland, it looks a bit more political. The latest (November 2007) was an attack on a mosque. In 2001 a man assaulted the cantonal parliament in Zug - but the occasion was a long-running legal dispute after an argument with a bus driver, nothing personal about the councillors. In the absence of inflammatory speech by and against named elected politicians, it looks as if men who were looking for targets did not choose named elected politicians. Not I admit a knockdown data point, but suggestive.
Footnote 2
What, you may wonder, happened to the Jewish pawnbroker and his wife in Uccello’s horrid strip cartoon?
Burnt alive, screaming their innocence as the flames seared their flesh, with their two children. That is, of course, the point. That’s what the blood libel did.
speaking of reckless, vicious, insulting statements, blah blah blah….let's talk about Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen's recent equating of Republican information on healthcare to Nazi propaganda. He clearly got Obama's message about toning down the rhetoric didn't he.
But hey, thanks for the boring history lesson James Wimberley.
While we looked away from our political responsibilities as handed down by Dr. King, we did not realize so many extremists would cloak themselves in the Republican tent, and bring their emotive crazy back to our political landscape! But here we are in the midst of the crazy brought to us by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and the FOX and FIENDS who appear daily on their cable network!
Rupert Murdock is a bane to a truly free and liberty-minded society because he is doing nothing to cultivate a collective wisdom necessary to see our way of life into the future for our grandchildren's grandchildren! -Kevo
IOZ says that's not the "blood libel", it's the claim that they're responsible for killing Christ. I always thought it was your version (with blood being an important element), but what do I know?
I have no problem with Palin's use of the term, it has evolved to have general usage in the English language. I do have a problem with Palin occupying so much of our mindshare these days. Did Dan Quayle do that?
Bux, it might be interesting if you actually cared about the history of genocide.
Do consider that the Nazi's learned it from somewhere.
"I have no problem with Palin’s use of the term, it has evolved to have general usage in the English language". Really quite astounding; maybe that it is generally used in some circles says nothing more that to equate it with making acceptable blatant racist or sexist language which definitely can agree has been generally used in some circles: but none I want to be around.
Even the more conservative bloggers who have givenexample of its "now commonusage' come up with maybe 10 examples over a number of years and most of them are attacks about the 'danger' of that other racial or national group- if now Jews it is Moslems or Gypsies. Even Dershowitz's example regarding the Goldstone Report speaks to the underlying sense "they" are accusing Israel as "Jews' of bloodlust. So Wonks Anonymous please spare us this watering down of distinctions of language, which are rooted in historical consequence.
You are kidding, aren't you? This is a gigantic joke, right?
Let me get this right-Palin used a term that has a long historical meaning in a new, but not unprecedented, sense, and yet she must be held to the historical sense you prefer. She was accused, falsely, of making statements that did-did in fact, not could have-cause Loughner to murder six people and attempt to murder Giffords. "Palin Target Shot" was the reference here. Now you run from the charges you purport to defend, while at the same time adding yourself to the discredited chorus of liars.
And of course the charges were false, and still haven't been retracted. Not here, nor anywhere else. On the left, there's the truth, and then there are the truthers, and you all have thrown your lot in with the second.
All that's fine, but the really embarrassing part-assuming counterfactually that you were capable of embarrassment-is the double standard built right into the heart of the comment. When Palin does it, it's wrong, but when you do it, it's right. Accusing Palin falsely of responsibility for the murders in Tucson is by your lights fine, but her response is a demonisation.
Finally, if you want to describe Giffords accuratately, why not say that she's someone who opposed the impeachment of President Bush? Or that she was someone who favored continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or that she was someone who did not find the 9/11 Truth conspiracy theory to be interesting? Or that she was someone who favored extending the Bush tax cuts? If you want to understand the rhetoric driving this man, look in the mirror.
The Big Lie is just not a charge we are allowed to make.
See digby, at Hullabaloo.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/big-lie-li…
Republicans lie, people die, and it's the fault of liberals for making a fuss.
What did you do, deliberately wait until the "Blood libel only means a specific libel of the Jews." meme had been thoroughly discredited, before signing onto it?
So Brett is lecturing us that words and phrases change meaning - does that mean we can apply this to the Constitution now?
Let us agree that the original intent of 'Blood Libel' was used to describe lies intended to foment religiously inspired murder.
People — stop paying attention to her. She's an entertainer now. You don't read People magazine, do you? So why are you even spending this much time on her? Why am I?
(NGC): "…why are you even spending this much time on her?
Because she's the most prominent threat to the current President of the US, and far more qualified, in terme of management experience and understanding of economics, than the current President, and because the Reality based Journalist hounds are loyal foot-soldiers.
"So Brett is lecturing us that words and phrases change meaning – does that mean we can apply this to the Constitution now?"
No. Because there's a rather huge gulf between using a new meaning of a word to understand a modern use of that word, and using a new meaning of a word to pretend that something written over two hundred years ago means something different from what the people who wrote it would have understood it to mean.
You read something, with the intent of understanding it, you use the meanings words had when it was written. The only reason you don't do that is if you mean to attribute a meaning to it that the author didn't intend.
The Constitution has a procedure for changing it's meaning, use it if you don't like what it means, and let the rest of us have the chance we're entitled to, to say NO to the changes.
@Wonks Anonymous-IOZ is mistaken. If you look halfway down the comments to that post, he sorta kinda takes it back by posting a link to the Wikipedia entry for "blood libel," which says it refers to Jews murdering Christian children to use their blood to make Passover matzah. In a long article, the notion that it refers to Jewish guilt for Christ's death isn't even mentioned in passing.
We could have an interesting conversation about the costs and benefits of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, if people stopped trying to score low-level political points.
Some feminists argue that porn creates a moral environment in which some men arrive at the belief that degradation of women is okay. Seems to me this argument makes sense, and it's not a yes/no issue but whether the benefit of free speech (or even of porn-obviously some people like it) is worth the cost in terms of rape and other abuse. It's not just unstable gun-toting free-marketeers who learn from Republican rhetoric that the enemy merit violent treatment, unstable socialists (e.g., Bill Ayers) who learn from socialist academics that their enemies merit violent treatment, Unstab;e environmentalists (Kaczynski) who learn from Green rhetoric that industrialists merit ill treatment, or unstable anti-abortion activists who learn from religious rhetoric that abortion doctors merit violent treatment. Any rhetoric which suggests that violence is acceptable against some specific target sanctions violence against all potential targets, in some unstable minds. Any rhetoric which suggests that opponents merit ill treatment in one arena lowers the threshold against violence everywhere, for some people. If you call advocates for lower taxes and federalism "teabaggers", you are just as complicit in the Gifford assault as any Republican who calls Congressional Democrats "…." (whatever. Insert insult here).
We could all be more civil, but we won't, because the public space is a commons. Self-restraint is for losers. So it seems.
bux,
speaking of reckless, vicious, insulting statements, blah blah blah….let’s talk about Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen’s recent equating of Republican information on healthcare to Nazi propaganda.
Maybe you could direct your outrage over Nazi references elsewhere.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201101200037
Brett, I tweak you somewhat.
When I read the Constitution, I bear in mind the intentions of those who wrote it. But that is not the only thing to consider.
For example, E=mc^2. The fact that humans have learned to convert matter to energy, and the effect it has on modern warfare matters.
Facts of our current world must be considered. Our knowledge of genetics, mankind, and genocide informs our views on racial matters. The world "cruelty" is inherently subjective, and based in current notions of justice.
All these words _demand_ us to evaluate intentions of the founders, and facts discovered past their days. It is impossible to set this in stone.
But Blood Libel? It's awfully presumptuous for Gov. Palin to equate her suffering with that of millions of murdered Jews.
Excellent post, James. "Blood libel" means something very historically specific and almost unimaginably evil. Its meaning has never been in doubt, and you are right to note that the ten or so instances in the last decade in which people have demonstrated themselves to be just as ignorant on this subject as Palin is on this and all other subjects prove nothing at all.
I actually think that Palin's willingness to stick by her phrase is much *worse* than anything she said about Gifford (the case for cause and effect regarding the latter being, it seems to me, pretty slight).
"Blood libel only means a specific libel of the Jews.” meme had been thoroughly discredited"
A dozen times over the last decade = thoroughly discredited? I guess trolling is a art.
http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/bdaba1ef_660…
Thanks for trolling!
"No. Because there’s a rather huge gulf between using a new meaning of a word to understand a modern use of that word, and using a new meaning of a word to pretend that something written over two hundred years ago means something different from what the people who wrote it would have understood it to mean."
So you mean words change over time except when it makes you mad? But of course!
Which is more important:…
1. Sarah Palin used a term outside its emotionally heavily freighted historical context, or…
2. Sarah Palin's political opponents accused her of promoting violence through rhetoric that those opponents routinely accept from their political allies?
Around here, the answer is "#1". No surprise there.
"Any rhetoric which suggests that violence is acceptable against some specific target sanctions violence against all potential targets, in some unstable minds."
The problem with that reasoning, is that any rhetoric AT ALL suggests that violence is acceptable against all potential targets, in some unstable minds. Fluffy white clouds and teddy bears suggest that violence is acceptable against all potential targets, in some unstable minds. Unstable minds have conversations with fluffy white clouds and teddy bears. They're unstable minds!
And in practice, liberals don't really mean this. You're not going to stop criticizing people on the right for not being liberals, while phrasing it like you had some other complaint. And thus providing target lists for the nutcases in our midst. You're just trying to bully people who disagree with you into shutting up, or agreeing to unilateral rhetorical disarmament.
The true problem of unstable minds in our midst is that they're unstable minds, not what they might happen to hear, and take as instructions to kill somebody. People KNEW this dude was nuts. It wasn't any secret. And yet, nothing got done about it.
Unstable minds in our midst bother you? Maybe that's what we should do something about.
"All these words _demand_ us to evaluate intentions of the founders, and facts discovered past their days. It is impossible to set this in stone."
An excellent argument for formally drafting constitutional amendments, and submitting them to the states for ratification or rejection. A lousy argument for pretending that a Constitution whose words haven't been changed suddenly means something different. We don't do that latter because it's the only way to avoid a Constitution set in stone. We do it, because it's a handy way of avoiding the states having the option of not ratifying.
You've got a constitution set in stone? Waving your hands a lot, and talking fast, is no substitute for hauling out a chisel and mallet, and getting to work.
"Pogrom"? James Wimberly is a foreigner. Speak American in America! The proper term is "Second Amendment remedies."
Brett, I have a thought experiment for you. What if people thought that a Constitutional phrase had a particular meaning for about 100 years, and then some historians muck around and find that the drafters probably had something else in mind. Do we tear up 100 years of settled meaning for some historical research that might be revised later? I'm thinking specifically of the 11th Amendment, which right-wingers think is a pretty strong expression of state sovereignty. Modern historians think it was designed to reverse one specific Supreme Court case. Where do you stand?
(Malcolm): "Any rhetoric which suggests that violence is acceptable against some specific target sanctions violence against all potential targets, in some unstable minds.”
(Brett): "The problem with that reasoning, is that any rhetoric AT ALL suggests that violence is acceptable against all potential targets, in some unstable minds. Fluffy white clouds and teddy bears suggest that violence is acceptable against all potential targets, in some unstable minds. Unstable minds have conversations with fluffy white clouds and teddy bears. They’re unstable minds!"
No argument. It's a matter of degree. How many unstable minds will you shift, in which direction? I imagine a multi-dimensional normal distribution. Strange beings inhabit the fringe. Calculating tigers and schizophrenic chimpanzees in human form walk among us. The human and canine IQ curves overlap. Individually and, through policy, we can shift the mass incrementally. Most of us make our most significant contribution at the retail level, one-on-one with the people we meet as we pass through the day. Perhaps tigers cannot be tamed, but some of them can sometimes be calmed. Mass communicators, like (in descending order) President Obama, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rep. Steve Cohen, and Mark Klieman, move the mass wholesale.
(Brett): "And in practice, liberals don’t really mean this. You’re not going to stop criticizing people on the right for not being liberals, while phrasing it like you had some other complaint."
No argument, except with "you".
Okay, I was being snide when I included Jackson, Sharpton, and Cohen in the list, followed by Kleiman. The general point remains: mass communicators move masses, and every individual in that mass will respond idiosyncratically. We can predict the response of the mass better than we can predict the response of any individual.
I will believe that Kleiman, O'Hare, and Zasloff really want a civil conversation when they quit "teabagging" and disavow their Journalist collaborators who advocated sliming ideological opponents as racist. And, btw, note the violence fantasy. How many loons did "raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger's and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
" inspire?
Am I the only person in this thread who feels pity for Bux? I can't bring myself to anger with him. Just pity.
Thanks to James Wimberly for another learned and interesting post. But I followed his lead and looked into the history of the actual episodes of blood libels. The Wikipedia article on this topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
says that the first incident of this in the Middle Ages was the 'martyrdom' of William of Norwich in 1144. See the linked article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Norwich
That article seems to me to cast doubt on James' claim that episodes of blood libels were always deliberate fabrications. It seems that the suspicions cast on Jews in William's case were indeed popular distortions of a 'seed of fact', namely, William's associations with Jews. See also the short section of the 'blood libel' article on the theory of Professor Jacob Yuval about the 'seeds' of the libel in medieval Europe.
I do not dispute the claim that later episodes of blood libel (for example in Tsarist Russia) were complete fabrications.
I don't agree with the condemnation of Cohen over his comparison of the huge, repetitious falsehoods about health care reform to the Big Lie. He didn't call them Nazis. He didn't refer to people. He cited the best known example of the propaganda technique. I don't know of any other comparison that would have been meaningful to anyone. Though Republicans especially have been using this technique for some time, Goebels is the only person I know that actually elucidated the concept. It is not inflammatory. It is correct and informative.
Brett, even if words don't change, the facts of the world do.
But here is my proof that we can not simply rely on the intentions of the founders, and original intent, nor upon literal wording.
1) Repeal the first amendment.
2) Pass new amendment with exactly the same words.
Do we now get to rely on modern meanings of various words? Do we now listen to Bill Clinton's notion of free speech rather than Thomas Jefferson's?
No: I submit that nothing would change, since we already use a combination of intent, tradition, and interpretation to enact the Constitution in our governance.
—
regarding amendments - those of us living in California are not going to be convinced that continual amendment of the constitution is good. We're sick of it here. Constitutions are best as KISS - keep it simple, stupid.
—
We are so inured to Palin's hyperbole that it escape's our notice sometimes, but when the shoe was on the other foot, Palin, characteristically, without a shred of evidence, as the Pentagon and State department later confirmed, falsely charged that Julian Assange was "an anti-American operative with "blood on his hands"and that his "past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
steve:
Steve: "It seems that the suspicions cast on Jews in William’s case were indeed popular distortions of a ‘seed of fact’, namely, William’s associations with Jews." In the same sense that the murder of Mikhail Rybachenko by a Christian relative was the "seed" of the blood libel in the Kishinev pogrem of 1903, right?
The fabrication is not of the occasion, which almost always exists, even for UFO sightings, but the central assertion. This wasn't just homicide, a remote but real-world possibility, but murder for anti-Christian sacrilege, which makes no sense at all.
It's good to learn that the Norwich court in 1144 refused to convict the Jews accused of the murder of the disappeared boy William of Norwich. There were level-headed people then just as there are credulous fools now.
The charge of Jewish deicide - common if not dogmatic Catholic teaching until Vatican II - is quite distinct from the blood libel, never SFIK endorsed at the highest levels of the Church. The sad waste of Uccello's talents does show that some rich Catholic patrons did believe it in 1450; and since Uccello was 70 and had made his reputation, it's hard to believe that he didn't have a choice.
Steve: "It seems that the suspicions cast on Jews in William’s case were indeed popular distortions of a ‘seed of fact’, namely, William’s associations with Jews."
Given the difficulty of "knowing" anything about events in 1144, why suppose that William's associations are a "seed of fact" of greater import than, say, his corpse, or the motives of William's murderer, or, say, the motives of people, who owed money to Jews.
Why, in considering say the "death panels" lie, about health care reform, why do we suppose that the "seed of fact" would be an actual provision, prescribing reimbursement of doctors for talking to patients about end-of-life care, etc.? Why don't we see the "seed of fact" in the motives of Sarah Palin, or the absence of ethical restraint in her character?
Thomas: The attempt to establish moral equivalence does not work for one simple reaso. Jared Loughner actually did shoot Gabrielle Giffords, John Roll, Christina Green, and 16 others on January 8 in Tucson. This is a fact that calls for explanation. Conservative rhetoric may have played a part, or it may not. Where are the similar recent armed attacks on conservative politicians? Progressive rhetoric has nothing to account for.
And BTW, what I'm accusing Sarah Palin of being is a reckless fool. She accused me of being a racist maniac. Some equivalence.
(James): "This is a fact that calls for explanation."
Good luck with that. Causal explanation inevitably relies on statistics. Unless we can rewind Loughner's life 1000 times, with variations in his genetics and exposure to cartoons, TV, porn, comic books, schoolyard bullying, etc., we can only infer cause in any particular case from statistical generalizations from measures on other violent loons.
(James): "Where are the similar recent armed attacks on conservative politicians?"
That's taking a rather narrow view, don't you think? "Progressive" demons are businessmen as well as politicians, and we can then count Ted Kaczynski to the "progressive" tally. Further, if we go back far enough, we can count the communist loser L. H. Oswald, the Bader-Meinhoff gang, and the Italian Red Brigades.
"Progressive rhetoric has nothing to account for."
How would you know this? People learn by example. That is the premise behind instructional TV like "The New Yankee Workshop" and cooking shows as well as the premise behind criticism of television violence. People debate the role of children's cartoons and Hollywood movies in creating a climate of violence. Does James Wimberley take the position that this criticism has no merit (i.e., that instructional TV has no value)?
If we suppose that rhetoric filled with violent images (e.g., Palin's, allegedly, Spencer Ackerman's fantasy, above, explicitly) inspires violence, people who are so disposed may take verbal assaults on their (self-identified) tribe as license to retaliate against the other tribe with physical assaults.
As well make pornographic movies starring the Buddha.
Rule 43! But it's gone.
"But here is my proof that we can not simply rely on the intentions of the founders, and original intent, nor upon literal wording.
1) Repeal the first amendment.
2) Pass new amendment with exactly the same words.
Do we now get to rely on modern meanings of various words? Do we now listen to Bill Clinton’s notion of free speech rather than Thomas Jefferson’s?"
Well, I can't see Bill Clinton having much input into the process, which kind of rules out his idiosyncratic understanding of "is" being the relevant one. And the only reason I can see for a repealed amendment being reenacted with the precise same words is to explicitly restore the status quo ante, which would mean that in such cases it WAS intended that the words be taken to have the same meaning they had the first time around.
But, generally speaking, in new amendments words will have their meanings at the time the amendment was adopted, not the meaning they had at the time some other part of the Constitution was adopted.
Thomas: where exactly have I (not anyone else, and it's me you are accusing) said that Sarah Palin "is responsible for the deaths of six"? Put up, shut up or apologise.
To be helpful, the sum total of my contributions post-Tucson consists of a short comment on this post of Mark's on January 8, and the post and comments above.
You keep illustrating the point about how reckless conservative speech has become. I don't suggest however that you incite violence.
Allen K: I'm in your debt about Buddha porn.
To James and Bruce Wilder,
You may be right that all the accusations about Jewish ritual sacrifices were deliberate fabrications. But as one philosopher said, "believing is seeing", so I think it's possible that in a superstitious age when Jews were already suspect on theological grounds some people might have believed they saw or had good evidence for horrific crimes by Jews. Once the accusation was 'in the air' others might have found it the best explanation for something otherwise inexplicable. We don't think all the accusations against witches, fantastic though they were, were deliberate fabrications.
MobiusKlein,
For example, E=mc^2. The fact that humans have learned to convert matter to energy, and the effect it has on modern warfare matters.
Facts of our current world must be considered. Our knowledge of genetics, mankind, and genocide informs our views on racial matters. The world “cruelty” is inherently subjective, and based in current notions of justice.
All these words _demand_ us to evaluate intentions of the founders, and facts discovered past their days. It is impossible to set this in stone.
Yes. To argue otherwise is to claim that things we learn over time are not to taken into account. For example, cases involving criminal procedure often reflect the fact that certain Constitutional protections are effective only if some specific rules are in place. Maybe the founders didn't know that, or didn't think about it, or did not wish to write a 100-page document full of specifics, or trusted to future generations to understand the relevant principles and apply them as appropriate.
Brett,
You want to handle my 11th Amendment problem upthread? I'll take silence as conceding the point,
"I’m thinking specifically of the 11th Amendment, which right-wingers think is a pretty strong expression of state sovereignty. Modern historians think it was designed to reverse one specific Supreme Court case. Where do you stand?"
I think it's pretty clear that it means citizens of state "A" can't sue the government of state "B" in federal court, and says nothing about citizens of state "A" suing the government of state "A". 'Right wingers' aren't right about a lot of things, you know.
@Steve: "We don’t think all the accusations against witches, fantastic though they were, were deliberate fabrications."
Speaking for myself, I don't think there ever were any "witches". ymmv
@ TQ White II:
Using the term “big lie” to refer to a propaganda technique is proper, even if it was a Nazi who coined the term. Making a brief reference to the Nazi’s to remind people of what the term “big lie” means may make sense because people are most likely to have learned the phrase while studying the Nazi’s. But Cohen invoked the Nazi’s repeatedly, which indicates (to me, at least) that in addition to describing the Republican propaganda techniques, he was also trying to create an association between Republicans and Nazi’s.
If I heard him correctly, Cohen later said, “I was right, but I shouldn’t have said it.” I’m hoping that what he meant was that he shouldn’t have said it that way. Pointing out that the Republican case against health care reform is largely based on lies is not only acceptable discourse; it’s the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, there is no equivalence between Cohen and Palin because Palin and her supporters still won’t admit that Palin shouldn’t have used the “blood libel” reference.
From a British point of view (see here for why this might matter), this is ridiculous - I’ve seen the phrase “blood libel” used all the damn time to mean 1) what James says and 2) anti-semitic insults generally.
Don't Feed The Trolls
(James): "Where are the similar recent armed attacks on conservative politicians?”
It's not the target but the assailant that matters, when rhetoric inspires violence. <a / rel="nofollow">Ignored, if the Revolution eats its children.