Matt Barber wrote a new column. Let’s do this:
“Progressives” are like pig farmers. In an effort to bury opposing viewpoints they sling pejorative slop, labeling as “bigot,” “hater,” “wingnut” or “racist” those with whom they disagree. It’ the height of intellectual sloth.
Except for when they’re, you know hateful racists, or bigoted wingnuts. It’s actually okay to point out that some people are not motivated by facts or evidence, but by bigotry, racism, hatred or some other form of wingnuttery. See: Entire Religious Right. Also? Pigs need slop to live, so in this utterly failed analogy, we are the farmers, they are the pigs, and we are FEEDING THEM.
Real America for the win!
The ad hominem approach — chief among logical fallacies — undergirds an effort to both marginalize conservative viewpoints and avoid arguing on the merits the controversies of the day. For liberals, to set sail in fair debate is to navigate treacherous waters.
I guess we can discount all of the ad hominem attacks levied by Matt Barber throughout his career, then. Wait, then he would have no career.
We’ve seen this tired tactic abused ad nauseum in recent days by the mainstream media and Democrats.
Bam Bam, lay off the Latin expressions until you learn how to spell them.
Aided by hard-left outfits such as the Southern Poverty Law Center — all too eager to provide “expert analysis” tailor-made for jaundiced journalism — liberal elites have been desperate to throw poison on bourgeoning grassroots opposition to Obama’ careening Marxist agenda.
“Burgeoning.” It’s “burgeoning.” And Marxism has an entire definition and a history that is easily accessible to people with internetz. You can’t just use loaded phrases that your readers are too stoopid to understand in order to scare them. (Oh wait, I forgot this was posted at TownHall. My bad. Spelling errors and specious scare terms are a GO!)
It’ straight out of the “progressive” playbook: Saul Alinsky’ “Rules for Radicals.”
The one all the teabaggers have been reading?
Hence, in the face of zero supporting evidence, “Tea Party” conservatives, Constitutionalists, pro-life and pro-family Americans, and generally any patriot who disagrees with the Obama administration are smeared with “hate'” broad brush.
Grandma and Grandpa; your fireman neighbor; school teachers; pastors; butchers; bakers; and candlestick makers are now “potentially violent right-wing extremists.”
Interesting that he goes straight to a nursery rhyme about naked dudes just cold tubbin’ it up together. Now we know where they strategize.
They are, as Mark Potok, Huffington Post columnist and SPLC director puts it, “…shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism,” and are widely linked to “hate” and “vigilante groups.” (Knock it off, Mark. With the exception of your fellow moveon.org-types, the vast majority of Americans aren’t biting.)
Ooh, Mark, Bam Bam told you to “knock it off,” and if you haven’t heard, he has a totally macho “right hook.”
Nonetheless, every once in a while, as it goes, “even a blind squirrel finds a nut.”
What the hell are you doing with a blind squirrel in the bathtub? Rub-a-dub-dub, indeed.
While I rarely agree with the Mark Potoks of the world, today, on at least one issue, I find myself doing so. Cult leader Fred Phelps and his Westboro brood of “God hates F-gs” fame are infused to the marrow with pure, unadulterated hate.
Agree. Wait, let me guess, he’s about to say he and his boyfriend Peter LaBarbera are different from Phelps somehow. Watch this, this is the “right hook” I was talking about:
I pray that Phelps and Co. will both repent and seek Christ’ redemption for the harm they’ve caused people like the Snyders. I also pray that liberals will repent. By lumping together with Phelps those who recognize traditional, biblical sexual morality, homosexual activists and the left-wing media trivialize true hate.
See, instead of lumping people who hate gay people together in the same boat (spare us the B.S. about “loving the sinner and hating the sin,” because it’s unscientific, dishonest, and utterly in denial of reality), we should lump the anti-gay haters who are most honest about their bigotry in with…liberals! Surprise right hook land on liberals!
Indeed, many Americans — perhaps most — adhere to the biblical notion that all sexual conduct outside the bonds of marriage between one man and one woman is sexually immoral.
Oh, really, Bam Bam? How do you then explain the fact that 95% of Americans have had premarital sex? Are they all acting outside their belief systems, or is it that most people really don’t buy into that Religious Right asshattery anymore?
(Sorry liberals, that’ just the way it is; nothing personal. Despite disingenuous bleatings to the contrary, such beliefs are typically as far removed from hate as Phelps is from cuddly. Every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology hold this to be true. And as with all absolute truth, it just is.)
Nope, I just proved you wrong. Also? “Thousands of years of history” actually don’t show that people don’t have sex out of wedlock, and human biology doesn’t say a word about “premarital sex,” so really, what the hell is Bam Bam talking about? “Absolute Truth”? Ha. Prove it.
Oops, forgot what kind of audience he’s writing for again. Made-up crap pulled out of one’s abundant nether regions that serves to regurgitate wingnut food back into wingnut mouths is a GO!
So, Fred Phelps aside, every time you hear some lefty like Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann despicably refer to Bible-believing Christians as “homophobes,” or who call grandma a “teabagger” (slang for a vile homosexual act), consider who the real haters are.
Um, the ones who write columns full of ad hominem, fact-free, link-free nonsense that target all LGBT people as immoral god-haters, maybe? Also, I had no idea that “teabagger” (a name they gave themselves, remember…that’s how old these people are, that none of them had any idea what it actually meant) was a gay term. Does it have something to do with the fact that ladies are discouraged from using their mouths for any reason in Fundamentalist circles?
Whenever Mark Potok, Rachel Maddow or some liberal politico in Congress attempts to equate conservative Joe to a “right wing extremists” or a “domestic terrorist,” contemplate who the true bigots are.
Usually we reserve those terms for the people throwing bricks through the windows of Congressional offices, the ones who phone in death threats to liberal congressmen, and, you know, Christian militias who want to kill police officers. The fact that mediocre wingnuts like Barber are so upset about the usage of the words is more revelatory about them than it is about us.
The palpable irony is that leftists — with their slanderous name-calling, harsh judgments and ad hominem attacks — are, in truth, more like Phelps than those they falsely accuse.
Oh, something is palpable, but I don’t think it’s irony.
Anyway, Bam Bam, sorry your bestest fwiend is still on the hate group list, quite deservedly, and that the SPLC is sticking by it. Wingnuts tend to think that if they bellyache enough that people will roll over to serve the psychological needs of their parallel reality, and sometimes it works, but the American people are starting to wake up to the harsh reality that fundamentalist Christians are actually not very nice people, in the way they meddle and want to take away rights and liberties from people they’ve never met, and who never want to meet them, but who they live amongst as a consequence of living in a secular, open society.
It must suck having every pretense of your worldview summarily disproven, but them’s the breaks. Get a new worldview that’s supported by reality, and maybe we liberals won’t be so goshdarn mean anymore.
Progress demands a vigorous, open and honest debate. “Progressives” should quit the empty name calling and stop running-scared from true progress.
True progress, in this instance, is best defined as “a return to the Christian Dark Ages,” before thinking people started discovering things and learning, etc. And I’m not sure how to end this, because that’s how Matt ends his column, abruptly and without any resolution or proven thesis whatsoever, so, um…
Here’s a really good song by Jill Sobule about people like Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera. I have it on good authority that she really, really loves that sissy picture of Bam Bam at the top of this post.
