The Anti-Defamation League Defames Me
November 20, 2009
– Comments (15)
I suppose it's ok to say hurtful, slanderous, and disgusting things about another human being as long as you claim to be protecting me from those same things while you do it. In its recent report on anti-government activity, the socially conscious Anti-Defamation League slandered and denigrated every peace loving Libertarian I have ever known, displayed a complete lack of understanding of the new political dynamic occuring in America, and deeply offended any human being that believes in freedom, decency, honesty, peace, and respect for others.
What's even worse, the ADL and other socialist organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center are so afraid of the big bad capitalists they appear as conspiratorial and delusional as the people they profile. Truly the pot calling the kettle black.
A Rebuttal of the Anti-Defamation League's Special Report
Rage Grows in America: Anti-Government Conspiracies by the Anti Defamation League
[Interesting title choice. Are all conspiracies anti-government? Are all anti-government folks like David in Qatar crazy conspiracy theorists? Let's reserve judgment and see how this shakes out.]
Since the election of Barack Obama as president, a current of anti-government hostility has swept across the United States, creating a climate of fervor and activism with manifestations ranging from incivility in public forums to acts of intimidation and violence.
[Question for the audience: how many acts of intimidation and violence have actually occured since the anti-government forces began to stir the pot? For example, how many acts of violence have been attributed to the Campaign for Liberty - the largest PAC currently associated with the freedom movement? The answer to that is zero. On the other hand, how many government agents have acted out violently just in the last few weeks? Well, I know of one guy that was more dangerous than all your Tea Baggers put together. Guess who he worked for?]
What characterizes this anti-government hostility is a shared belief that Obama and his administration actually pose a threat to the future of the United States. Some accuse Obama of plotting to bring socialism to the United States, while others claim he will bring about Nazism or fascism. All believe that Obama and his administration will trample on individual freedoms and civil liberties, due to some sinister agenda, and they see his economic and social policies as manifestations of this agenda. In particular anti-government activists used the issue of health care reform as a rallying point, accusing Obama and his administration of dark designs ranging from “socialized medicine” to “death panels,” even when the Obama administration had not come out with a specific health care reform plan. Some even compared the Obama administration’s intentions to Nazi eugenics programs.
[It's not just Obama that poses a threat. I like how they paint Obama as the victim here. Oh poor Obama, the most powerful man in the world is so victimized by the meanie anti-government types! Why won't they just leave him alone? As for the trampling of freedoms, Obamacare was a good start, Bernanke's crushing of the dollar helped, Pelosi's ridiculous stimulus package kinda sucked, and I remember Bush, Obama, and McInsane all giving each other hugs and kissings and practically jerking each other off after the first bailout passed. Seems to me they are all about as worthless as a poop flavored lollipop. But hey, the ADL needs to make this about Obama to be at all relevant. I get it.
And how about this socialized medicine claim? Far be it for me to accuse a politician in a country that has MEDICARE of wanting to push Socialized medicine on us! How crazy and conspiratorial of me to think that Congressmen that tell us the VA is wonderful would also embrace Socialized medicine. I am in need of a psychological readjustment. What was I thinking?
If the ADL was engaging in sarcasm, this would be their best work. Unfortunately, they're not and it gets worse. You will want to pour battery acid on your eyelids by the time this is over.]
The Tea Parties
While most people attending Tea Party events claim they harbor no extreme views, many of the ideas they promote fall outside the mainstream, especially the more conspiratorial ones. Angry protesters have frequently made claims ranging from proclaiming Obama’s “socialist” intentions to making explicit Nazi comparisons to suggesting that the President is defying or even subverting the Constitution.
[You see, they only "claim" to harbor no extreme views. The ADL could have worded it simply, "most Tea Party attendees do not have extreme views." End of story. But that's not a story and that doesn't get the Left's panties all in a bunch.
Here we go again with poor Mr. President Obama, so hopelessly overmatched by this vicious assualts. I feel so much pity for the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD.
And there's that word "Nazi" again. It was actually the Nazi Socialist German Workers' Party. Get it right, ADL. It had the freaking word "socialist" right in the Party name! If a guy thinks Obama is a socialist, why in the world would it surprise you that he also thinks Obama's policies are going to be similiar to the Nazi SOCIALIST Party? It's a pretty simple jump. Probably not correct, but simple and unsurprising either way.]
The July Tea Parties appeared to attract fewer attendees and less media attention but they did gain the attention of white supremacists, a number of whom joined protests in different places around the country. White supremacists saw the Tea Parties as an opportunity to express their own opposition to Obama and to see how receptive other protesters might be to their message. Many later posted photographs of their participation to social networking sites. However, such extremists were a tiny minority of Tea Party protesters.
[White supramacists are a tiny minority. Thanks for pointing that out. It doesn't stop the ADL from painting any anti-government person like myself as a possible violent extremist racist, but hey, it's better than nothing.]
The Town Hall Meeting Disruptions
At a town hall meeting in Washington State, a member of the audience informed Representative Brian Beard that he was a Marine Corps veteran who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. He angrily accused Beard of trying to “indoctrinate” his children and shouted, “Stay away from my kids.” He then stated that the Nazis took over finance, the car industry and health care, in an apparent comparison to the actions of the Obama administration. The man then demanded of Beard, “I’ve kept my oath. Do you ever intend to keep yours?”
[Wait, this guy was a Marine? You mean he worked for the government? Can someone explain to me why the government hires so many extremists and violent people?]
Reaction was even more extreme at a town hall meeting held by Senator Ben Cardin in Hagerstown, Maryland. A man, later turned over to the Secret Service, held up a sign that read “Death to Obama”and “Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids.”
[$20 says he used to work for the government too.]
In Phoenix, a number of people wearing guns (it is legal to openly display firearms in Arizona) showed up at a demonstration at a site where Obama had given a speech to veterans.
[Oh no! People doing legal things! People doing legal things! Someone make it illegal already!]
At a town hall meeting attended by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that same month on a visit to Denver, Colorado, a young man wore a T-shirt depicting President Obama and the words, “Hitler gave great speeches, too.” A young child in a stroller was given a sign to hold that read, “No to fascism,” and contained a swastika image in a circle with a line through it.
["Hilter gave great speeches too!" ROFL! That's funny and apropos. Well, I guess the ADL just doesn't have a sense of humor. Too bad, but they're all pedophiles so what can you expect?]
The widespread use of Holocaust and Nazi analogies and comparisons, which still continues, goes well beyond legitimate or even exaggerated criticism of the Obama administration and its policies. By comparing Obama to Hitler, a man widely perceived as the epitome of evil in the modern world, people who use such comparisons demonize Obama and make even the most extreme conspiracy theories about his ultimate intentions more plausible.
[While I don't think it's fair to compare Obama to Hitler - he's really more like Mussolini - it is a subjective evaluation to consider some speech legitimate and others not. It's personal preference and most people I associate with don't talk like that. In fact, I tend to stay away from those people. According to the ADL, since there are people who compare Obama to Hitler among the anit-government types, I should be watched very carefully. Stereotyping when practiced by the ADL is apparently not hate speech. No double standard there!]
Conspiracy Theories Prompting Action: Richard Poplawski
Anti-government conspiracy theories seem clearly to have played a role in April 2009, in Pittsburgh, when a young man named Richard Poplawski allegedly gunned down three Pittsburgh Police Bureau officers responding to a 911 domestic disturbance call at his residence.
Poplawski was a budding white supremacist who became angry after the election of Obama. Like Nancy Genovese, a New York woman whose conspiratorial beliefs led to her arrest for trespassing on an Air National Guard base, Poplawski paid attention to Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists. He, like Genovese, became concerned about issues like gun confiscation, the military being used against citizens, and FEMA concentration camps. And, like her, he also purchased an assault rifle.
[Does anyone remember who Poplawski worked for before he gunned down those policemen? If you said, the government go to the front of the class.
Again, I am confused. Why is the topic of the ADL's paper about anti-government rage and violence, while the violent people are clearly the ones working for the government?]
The Oath Keepers
One manifestation of the ideology of resistance was the creation in March 2009 of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group that tries to recruit police and military personnel and veterans. Members refuse to obey hypothetical “orders” from the government, “orders” that speak more to their own paranoid and conspiratorial beliefs than to any realistic government action.
[More government employees acting crazy. Yet another sign that a person like David in Qatar, that crazy anarchist, is someone to watch! The icing on the cake here is that the Oath Keepers take an oath to abstain from violence against Americans as part of their Oath, yet that part is actually a problem for the ADL. No wonder government employees are so confused!]
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There's a lot more drivel in this report if you wish to read on, but at this point I have done enough damage to my brain cells. The only thing wacko conspiracy theorists I can see are the nut cases at the ADL (and the SPLC for that matter) who think I'm a threat to the government and that poor, little Mr. President of the Free World is somehow in danger because I feel that government is outdated and barbaric.
For those curious, I don't have many guiding principles in my life, but as I've mentioned on this site before, The Non-Aggression Principle is a pretty good one:
Anarcho-capitalism, as formulated by Rothbard and others, holds strongly to the central libertarian nonaggression axiom:
[...] The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a self owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever previously unowned resources he appropriates or "mixes his labor with". From these twin axioms – self-ownership and "homesteading" – stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free-market society. This system establishes the right of every man to his own person, the right of donation, of bequest (and, concomitantly, the right to receive the bequest or inheritance), and the right of contractual exchange of property titles.
Rothbard's defense of the self-ownership principle stems from what he believed to be his falsification of all other alternatives, namely that either a group of people can own another group of people, or the other alternative, that no single person has full ownership over one's self. Rothbard dismisses these two cases on the basis that they cannot result in a universal ethic, i.e., a just natural law that can govern all people, independent of place and time. The only alternative that remains to Rothbard is self-ownership, which he believes is both axiomatic and universal.
In general, the nonaggression axiom can be said to be a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons (i.e., direct violence, assault, murder) or property (i.e., fraud, burglary, theft, taxation). The initiation of force is usually referred to as aggression or coercion. The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of the degree to which they take this axiom. Minarchist libertarians, such as most people involved in libertarian political parties, would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public police, courts and military; others, however, might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, anarcho-capitalists reject any level of state intervention, defining the state as a coercive monopoly and, as the only entity in human society that derives its income from legal aggression, an entity that inherently violates the central axiom of libertarianism.
Some anarcho-capitalists, such as Rothbard, accept the nonaggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined anarchism; he defined "anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']" and said that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion." In an interview with New Banner, Rothbard said that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism."
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I think it's obvious that the Anti-Defamation League has no idea what I believe, and their ignorance leads them to engage in the exact same behavior they swear to fight. They have become another outdated, culturally irrelevant mouthpiece of ignorance. I'd be happy if they wanted to get to know me, but that probably will never happen. Instead, I'll try to ignore them and hope they do the same.
David in Qatar
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