George Rebane
Russ Steele and I are a constant thorn in the side of local liberals. Yesterday Russ addressed the ad hominem vitriol that comes from our neighbors on the left (here and here), and again raised some excellent points on the reception of our writings and ruminations. As Russ points out, the overwhelming feedback from that quarter simply demonstrates the lack of reading and/or critical thinking skills of the respondents. To that extent they provide a certain humor content to the rest of our readers.
And to be fair, there is the occasional serious comment where the liberal and collectivist views are presented to counter the point(s) made in the post. These are appreciated in the extreme and their writers are encouraged to continue contending in the arena of ideas.
But unfortunately when a progressive knows he will be bringing a knife to a gunfight (apologies to Indiana Jones), he resorts to personal attacks on the conservative writers and worse. The worst part is the compelling nature of the leftwinger to argue and militate for the censoring and expulsion of conservative and libertarian contributors to the public debate.
These self-aggrandized champions of personal freedoms immediately go for the First Amendment throat of their opposite numbers. They use bizarre logic that argues for the prohibition of conservative ideas broadcast into a population that they contend is mostly liberal. An example is the aggravation they show to my monthly column in The Union.
That newspaper publishes about 130 op-ed pieces a month of various flavors. Most of us on the right see a bit of tilt to the left, and I’m sure that the left is convinced of the opposite. But my little monthly screed is 1/130th of the newspaper’s commentary, yet the progressives howl at the publisher to have my column expunged with the regularity of wolves under a full moon.
This phenomenon is not peculiar only to this remote mountain county, it is a nationwide, and more accurately, an international affliction unique to the left. How often have you read or seen a conservative columnist call for the censoring, restriction, or removal of a leftwing commentator no matter how egregious his copy? The left responds to their lack of audience by such nostrums as the Fairness Doctrine that seeks to impose state monitored censorship on dissemination of political speech.
The right would like nothing more than the side-by-side presentation of such opposing views for better to highlight the sinister silliness of socialist solutions. And the left knows it, hence their tack for advocating simply the removal of conservative voices from the public forum.
This behavior reaches heights of high comedy in Nevada County. Here leftwing bloggers and commenters decry the right’s paucity of ideas and their negligible audiences. Yet it is they who constantly editorialize against our ideas, revelations, and arguments. And it is they who constantly present themselves at their ad hominem best in our comment threads. There must be something that we are saying to enough people out there that is scaring the living bejeezus, … er, make that Gaia, out of them.
rebanesruminations.com 
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