Oh boy, conservatives will do anything to get people to side with them. They'll steal campaign signs, push old ladies down in the street, and commit other violent acts just to get their way. Why, when Stacey Silveira told her boyfriend, Steve Soper, she was voting for Kerry he nearly killed her! I can hardly believe this. What kind of democracy are we living in when one political party is using the oppression and violence of a dictatorship against well-meaning citizens who have a different opinion?
I hear this kind of complaint all the time, although the political parties or ideologies discussed varies. That only proves that this kind of argument doesn't work, and it's better off not used at all. There's plenty of violent liberals and conservatives all over the US. That's just a fact. But these people are just foolish and dangerous regardless of their political leanings. Calling everybody in another group violent or crazy is just a diversion from focusing on policy and an admission to lacking knowledgeable about real issues.
It's best to not label these isolated incidents as characterizing an entire group, but some writers/bloggers/commentators just refuse to do that. Many of us would like to pummel people with pies or worse, but few of us are actually going to do that. Nobody can get away with saying all Asians are smart and all blacks are thieves, so why are they still allowed to label all people with certain political beliefs in this country like that? First it's the labels, then it's boycotting, next it's just a slippery slope down the path of hate without a clue how one got there. I guess we're still in the Dark Ages of democracy in some ways.
