So we just had Ted Cruz, Republican senator from Texas, praised an activist who called for the execution of abortion providers. That was eight days before a white man with a gun took him up on it, muttering about “baby parts” as he set to work murdering people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.
Rachel Maddow called Cruz out for this act. Not a single Democratic leader called for the death of anybody.
Which means, of course, that Ben Carson says both sides are guilty of extremist abortion rhetoric. Yes, the good old “both sides do it” meme.
Carson told Martha Raddatz that “there’s a lot of extremism coming from all areas” and divisive rhetoric “comes from both sides.” “There is no saint here in this equation.”
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Ben Carson on Planned Parenthood Shooting… by tommyxtopher
Because, you know, Planned Parenthood, he claims, was created “to eliminate black people.” And conservatives need “to help women understand that they are being manipulated” by Planned Parenthood.
Because why do women need cancer screenings or reproductive healthcare? That’s right: it’s not only white men who mansplain to women.
And of course, abortion providers are like slave owners:
“I was thinking about slavery and I was thinking about the abolitionists, and I said, what if the abolitionists had said, ‘I don’t believe in slavery but anybody else can do whatever they want’?” Carson declared. “Where would we be today?”
“Slavery is a moral issue and so is abortion,” he insisted. “It’s a moral issue that we’re dealing with.”
Right. Except that he’s wrong. Abortion is nothing like owning slaves. And the extremism is coming from his side of the aisle, as Bernie Sanders has pointed out. From Carson himself.
What resulted from this extremism was yet another episode of right wing domestic terrorism that resulted in the deaths of innocent people. To claim that any liberals or progressives are responsible for this is an obscenity.
But then, Ben Carson’s entire campaign is an obscenity, as is Carson himself.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
