“Tolerance” Strikes!

Ironically, not long after I posted my previous rant, “Holy Hysteria, Batman!” about how for the left everything is political, and the desperate attempts by folks in the liberal media to pin blame for acts of senseless violence on conservatives and Tea Party members, a shooting occurred in which the gunman himself actually did give political reasons for his attempted killing, telling his victim, “I don’t like your politics.”

Only, of course, the shooter wasn’t a crazed right-winger, or Tea Party activist, but instead a fellow active in the “gay rights” movement, who shot a security guard (but failed to kill him; the guard disarmed him) at the headquarters of the Christian lobbying group, the Family Research Council.  Apparently, one of the self-described advocates of “tolerance” could not tolerate other people having a different point of view on the issue of homosexual “marriage,” and sought to execute them for their horrific crime of having politics he didn’t like.

While this shooting/attempted murder got some cursory coverage from the mainstream media, you can be the bank that if some conservative activist had attempted to shoot up the headquarters of a gay rights group, or other liberal advocacy group, the media would never shut up about the shooting, and how the “climate of hate” fostered by conservatives and those who oppose homosexual “marriage” was to blame.

The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center had in fact labeled the FRC a “hate group” in 2010 for their stand opposing “gay marriage,” and some conservatives had made an issue of this regarding the shooting.  (Some years ago I once happened upon the SPLC’s magazines lying around, and it appears that this organization, which once fought against racist groups, has morphed into primarily a “gay rights” group.  I’m really not entirely sure what exactly homosexuality has to do with Southern poverty.)   Of course, you won’t see any liberals in the press blaming equating Christians opposed to state-recognized “gay marriage” with neo-Nazis; for those on the left, this will only yet again illustrate the urgent need for further restrictions on our second amendment rights.

While the SPLC’s statements regarding the FRC are utterly asinine, it’s their constitutional right to utter them, and the blame remains on the man who made the choice to pull the trigger.  (Charles C. Cooke here makes an argument essentially identical to what I said in my “Holy Hysteria” rant regarding responsibility for killings here:  “Words Don’t Pull Triggers.”)

Of course, the “mainstream” media continually tries to paint conservatives, and particularly Christian conservatives, as uniquely hateful and violent folks, but this caricature has nothing to do with reality.  (There’s few places I’d feel safer than among a gathering of conservative Christians.)  Over the past century, in fact, the majority of political violence in this country has been from the left, rather than from the right.

While I certainly don’t think most people in favor of “gay rights” are violent or advocates of violence, I think it telling that it is social liberals who regard it as a “hate crime” merely to have views different from their own, and a social liberal who was willing to kill simply because he “didn’t like” a group’s political views.

Among the largely socially-conservative crowds filling restaurants at the “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” events, there was nary a hateful face to be seen, while it was “liberal” mayors trying to bluster and bully the restaurant into submission, simply on account of the owner’s religious views that marriage is only between a man and woman.   For the self-appointed promoters of “Tolerance,” divergent viewpoints and ideas simply cannot be tolerated.

Eat Mor Chiken!

Wishing everybody a happy, blessed, and delicious Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day!

If you haven’t already, remember to heed the advice of those cows and “Eat Mor Chiken!”

 

Today, when I joined the crowd of hungry bigots and haters to grab a chicken sandwich and waffle fries, the local Chick-Fil-A restaurant had long lines flowing out the doors, and the drive-in line was backed up into the street.  From what I’ve heard, the situation is similar in other locations, so it looks like this ridiculous attempt by the “gay rights” crowd to bully Christians may well backfire in their face.  Let’s ensure record profits for Chick-Fil-A this year!

But despite this good news, the growing attempts to demonize, bully, and intimidate persons simply for holding to the “traditional” Christians belief that marriage can only exist between a man and a woman (or donating to charities which hold these views) are a troubling trend, as evidenced by  the statements by the mayors of major cities such as Boston and Chicago that they would attempt to block Chick-Fil-A from doing business in their city, or “make it very difficult to obtain a license.”  If similar attempts were made by mayors to block businesses because of the devout Muslim beliefs of the owners, would could only imagine the outrage and cries of “fascism!’ from the liberals.  But it appears the mayors have no legal teeth, as even the ACLU opposes these attempts on civil liberties grounds.

Anyway, here’s to Chick-Fil-A, and kudos to its owners for keeping up the good fight and not crumpling to politically-correct pressure.

Holy Hysteria, Batman!

(Note:  This rant was originally scheduled to appear a week, ago, but there were delays in finishing it.  I apologize to my gentle readers for the untimeliness of this entry.)

Last weekend, like millions of other bat-geeks, I went to see the much-anticipated finale to Christopher Nolan’s often-brilliant bat-trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.  While the movie brought the series to a generally satisfying conclusion (though, in my opinion, it failed to match its predecessor, 2008’s great The Dark Knight), it – and the horrific and senseless slaughter which occurred at a showing of the film in Aurora, Colorado – also managed somehow to spark an exceptional amount of leftist idiocy, proving that for the left today, everything is political, and to used as opportunity to spew propaganda, no matter how blatantly absurd.

Before the movie aired, liberal Democrats were already making an absurdly strained attempt to use it to promote their politics, based entirely on the similarity of the name of the film’s villain, Bane, to that of Bain Capital.  The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedford explained thus:“Whether it is spelled Bain and being put out by the Obama campaign or Bane and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society.”

See, Bane’s just like Romney!   Holy too-good-to-be-a-coincidence, Batman, that’s it!  Never mind the inconvenient facts that this summary does not accurately describe the villain, who, rather than “having offshore interests” is an entirely foreign criminal, and the identity of whose father remains unknown in the film.  As plenty of conservative commentators have pointed out, if Romney resembles any character in the movie, it’s the wealthy capitalist businessman hero Bruce Wayne, rather than revolutionary class-warfare rhetoric-spewing terrorist Bane, who more closely resembles an Occupy Wall Street radical.  In the movie, mobs are incited to violently toss the rich from their homes, and for their crime of privilege, are put in French Revolution-style mock trials and sentenced to death.  (Nolan has cited Charles Dickens’ classic epic of the Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, as an influence.)

(And never mind the fact that the character Bane was introduced in the comics back in 1993, long before Romney was governor of Massachusetts, and that the film script was written well before Bain Capital became a campaign issue, or Romney was even the clear GOP presidential front-runner.)

Unfortunately, rather than waiting to actually see the movie before opening his mouth, Rush Limbaugh apparently took the leftist “Bane=Bain” nonsense at face value, and went off on some incoherent babbling of his own, seeming to insinuate that the movie was some kind of sinister liberal Democrat plot to sabotage the Romney campaign.  (He quickly changed his tune after the ensuing backlash, praising TDKR for its conservative message, but by then the damage had already been done.  When James Holmes shot up the Aurora, Colorado movie theater where The Dark Knight Rises was playing, liberals were already, in typical fashion, blaming Rush for the slaughter. )

Predictably, the movie-house massacre has sent “liberals” into the usual histrionic pleas for the restriction of second amendment rights, blaming gun ownership, and “America’s gun culture” for the massacre.  (Never mind the inconvenient facts that countries with some of the world’s highest levels of gun ownership such as Switzerland have among the world’s lowest murder rates, and that countries with stricter gun laws such as Mexico and Russia have high murder rates.  But that’s a topic for a whole other rant.)

Besides liberals blaming Rush (a tradition dating back to the Oklahoma City bombings), ABC News’ Brian Ross immediately began speculation that the shooting was related to the Tea Party, finding a local Jim Holmes who may have had Tea Party involvement, who was in reality unrelated to the shooter James Holmes.  Though Ross and ABC later apologized for the gaffe, this follows the pattern of the media immediately looking to blame conservatives whenever there is a horrific high-profile murder, as when similar baseless speculation was immediately made following last year’s Arizona shootings which critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

While those in the liberal media try to lay blame on the second amendment or conservatives for every senseless murder, there are also a few on the right who are blaming the violence allegedly “glorified” in the Nolan Batman films for the murders.  (Holmes did tell police he was the Joker.)   While I don’t think conservative criticisms of our often sick culture are necessarily off-base, I personally don’t see the Nolan films as part of this problem.   The movies portrayed the villains such as the Joker as being blatantly evil and unsympathetic.  That people choose to identify with such evil says more about them than about the movies.

There seems to be a troubling trend across the ideological spectrum that whenever a horrific murder is committed, people tend to blame whatever happens to piss them off (whether gun ownership rights, conservatives, right-wing talk radio, violent movies, video games, “society” etc., etc.), rather than holding the murderers themselves as primarily responsible for their actions.   But only in a society and culture in which universal moral norms of right and wrong are acknowledged, and individual moral culpability for one’s actions is taught and upheld, can we have any hope of improving the situation.