Rush Limbaugh on Family Guy

I am presently writing a rather lengthy piece on the recent revelations about the potential terrorist attacks on Great Britain and Continental Europe.  However, I wanted to give a quick shout out to the latest episode of Family Guy!

Despite its highly left-wing tendencies, I really enjoy an episode or two of Family Guy, and in the latest episode, they have one of my favourite conservative figures - Rush Limbaugh - as a guest!  Whatever you think about MacFarlane's political beliefs, fair play to him for having the guts to let Limbaugh on - and it seems like they have painted him in a positive light!  If you missed it, I'm sure it will be on Hulu in a day or two, but here is a preview for the episode.  Enjoy!

Terrorism and the Left

I always find it interesting how, whenever a conservative or libertarian group - like the Tea Party- gets angry and passionate about something, all of a sudden the left get "concerned" and "troubled."  They don't get troubled by the issues raised by that group, and don't deal with any of the complaints that those people may have.  Instead, their "concern" (at least, so they claim) is about the potential for "violence" or "disturbances" that they claim may be encouraged by such movements.  The claim is that if tea partiers or conservatives or whoever are allowed to get too passionate, or become too popular, then it will mean that some nutjob will shoot at the President, or blow up a building or go on a rampage with a gun, or whatever.

And yet time and time again, we never see any violence coming from these groups, and instead see political violence coming time and time again from the left not the right.  Time and time again there are outbreaks of violence, or bomb threats or whatever, instantly assumed to me "some right wing nut", and then they turn out to be a communist or green warrior.

Just a few weeks ago we had the Discovery channel eco-loon who (like the Unabomber) had been inspired by the fringe left-wing environmentalist movement.  Business Insider has some amazing statistics on this  And now in England, the Real IRA are threatening to kill bankers in financial institutions in London, all because such bankers dare to "serve in financing Britain's colonial and capitalist system."

This is the same IRA who, in one form of another, has committed countless acts of terrorism through Great Britain and Ireland.  It is rarely mentioned that their politics are radically left-wing, and they have a great many sympathisers from the international left-wing.  Yet sure enough, here they are, slagging off capitalism and those "evil bankers" who those on the left just love to hate.

Now, I am not trying to say that the anti-banker rhetoric that is constantly spewed from the pages of The Guardian et al has caused this.  Those who commit, or threaten to commit these acts have an agenda and political opinions of their own, and it is folly to believe that if there were a few less editorials on evil bankers then we wouldn't have these problems.

However, it is interesting to imagine if such a group had threatened public sector workers.  Surely this would be blamed immediately on "conservative" rhetoric about spending cuts and how the public sector is strangling Britain?  Just like President Clinton tried to blame Timothy McVeigh's actions on conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, an attack on a trade union or an NHS administrative building would instantly be blamed on "the right", the attackers would be labelled as "right-wing activists" and the narrative would go that they had woken up, read The Daily Mail or listened to a David Cameron speech, and then decided to go out and kill innocent people.

However, in a moment like this, it is worth reflecting on where the real hate speech and violence comes from. In a political climate where the left are trying to blame attacks on Muslims on those who dare to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque and grassroots conservative movements are being labelled "radical", "extreme" and "dangerous", it serves well to highlight stories like this, to show where the real dangerous extremists come from - and it isn't from the right-wing.

Who are the extreme ones?

I know I am posting a lot of videos at the moment, and I am doing this for two reasons.  First, there are a lot of absolutely brilliant videos doing the rounds at the moment which deserve a mention.  Second - I am travelling to New York in a few weeks and have my dissertation on Thomas Jefferson to complete and hand in before I travel, so these videos allow a short snappy post when I am too tired to blog about something in detail.

The big story at the moment is of course the Ground Zero Mosque, and it is interesting to watch the supporters of the mosque constantly dodge the one single question that sticks out like a sore thumb - "No one is questioning your right to build, but why do you want to build there?"  I have yet to see an answer to this.

Instead of dealing with this question, the left are just trying to smear opponents as Islamophobic or extreme or racist or whatever.  The main argument they seem to be using is "Oh well, if we don't allow this mosque, then we are smearing all Muslims as terrorists."  This is of course nonsense, we are just recognising that the extremist branch of Islam would see such a building as a victory (the symbolism would speak volumes), and that however "moderate" the backers might be (although this is yet to be established - a story broke today about how they might be taking money from the Iranian government) this thing would be a magnet for extremists who would see this as the "victory mosque" whether we like it or not.  It is for this reason why there are a lot of moderate Islamic voices saying that this mosque should be a no-no.  Yet this is ignored by the left, who instead prefer simply to smear opponents as racist, extremist Islamophobes.

This leads nicely into this new video, which deals with this accusation that Republicans/Conservatives/Libertarians etc are "extreme" etc.  You hear this a lot from the mainstream media - "Oh no, conservatives shouldn't listen to Limbaugh/Palin/Beck/De Mint etc - they are extreme!!"

Well the latest video asks, "Who exactly are the extreme ones?"  Take a look....