disturbing signs against free speech
I notice a pretty disturbing trend amongst Liberals, the latest example seen in a Matt Davis Portland Mercury piece about a conservative conference. It’s an ease with which the semi-innocuous is conflated with the disturbed.  The effect reminds me of the post 9/11 Ari Fleisher statement after a Bill Maher statement, “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.”
For most of it, everything is fine with this article. We note Lars Larson’s feeling of White Victimhood in the wake of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination. Grover Norquist’s concerns of the regulatory state are noted. The backers of the tea-parties are called “infamous” as opposed to what I’d figure — “silly” — Reagan is worshipped, Al Gore is denounced; global warming is denied. The teenage activist is carted out as a sign of the future.
And then the last two paragraphs.
Three days later, on June 1, Lindsey Roeder, the wife of a man suspected of fatally shooting an abortion doctor in Kansas over the weekend, told the Associated Press that his family life began unraveling when he got involved with anti-government groups.
“The anti-tax stuff came first,” she reportedly said. “And then it grew and grew.”
Huh. This point is left dangling there, and Matt Davis is left making the point more explicit on KPOJ this morning. Yes: off of the margins of this rhetoric, and coming out of the quarter billion population of America, we’ll get built your Tiller murderer.
But the chances that someone from this conservative flab is going to shoot someone in the coming years is… what exactly? Notable is that the topic of Abortion isn’t even mentioned as a focus at the convention itself — but then again, this anti-tax stuff is just a gateway drug for the Abortion Terrorism. (Which, given the tribal nature of politics where we kind of end up a bit more bifrocated with like-minded people than strictly desirable, Tax Revolts do end up cluttered with Abortion Restrictions.)
I can only assume there’s a cultural clash I have here: Matt Davis comes from the nation that will not allow Michael Savage an entry.