Think Progress

Re: Obama Michigan Graduation Speech: President’s Advice To Class Of 2010, Associated Press, Updated: 05- 1-10 11:48 PM

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — In a blunt caution to political friend and foe, President Barack Obama said Saturday that partisan rants and name-calling under the guise of legitimate discourse pose a serious danger to America’s democracy, and may incite “extreme elements” to violence.

The comments, in a graduation speech at the University of Michigan’s huge football stadium, were Obama’s most direct take about the angry politics that have engulfed his young presidency after long clashes over health care, taxes and the role of government.

Good for him. President Obama is doing his part to calm the vehement rhetoric thrown around lately by the right wing. He has a big pulpit at his disposal and he’s using it here for public safety.

In his 31-minute speech, Obama didn’t mention either Palin or the tea party movement that’s captured headlines with its fierce attacks on his policies. But he took direct aim at the anti-government language so prevalent today.

“What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad,” Obama said after receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree. “When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.”

Government, he said, is the roads we drive on and the speed limits that keep us safe. It’s the men and women in the military, the inspectors in our mines, the pioneering researchers in public universities.

The right wing is trying to turn “the government” into a bogeyman by using language that borders on inciting to violence. Cramming down the government is something the Republican Party has long held as a goal. “Smaller government” was the Ronald Reagan mantra and a thinly veiled acronym for “let’s gut Medicare and Social Security” (But let’s flood the military industry). Reagan communicated his view of a smaller government without violent rhetoric, though, and would have frowned on FOX News and Sarah Palin’s ranting.

President Clinton bravely stepped forward on April 19th giving a speech at The Center for American Progress to mark the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Think Progress reported that:

Clinton’s message was clear: Debate and free speech are essential, but leaders must be “responsible” with their words because they fall on the “serious and the delirious alike,” and it only takes one deranged person like Timothy McVeigh to cause massive harm.

It is very hard to disagree with this for most folks, but the right wingers reacted quickly and harshly to Clinton’s message, of course. Firing back at Clinton was the usual echo chamber. The New York Post criticized Clinton by downplaying the Tea Party’s calls for violence as “peaceful – if not rambunctious – political dissent” and along with The National Review and almost every FOX News host countering Clinton’s admonition of the hate mongering by the right. Sean Hannity questioned Clinton by trying to separate the incendiary talk of the right from domestic terrorism, and FOX News’ culpability.

From Think Progress:

Fox News host Sean Hannity: [N]ow, Bill Clinton advanced it, the latest one — that, you know, the Tea Party movement, the incendiary rhetoric by the right, et cetera, et cetera, and talk radio and hosts like myself, that somehow we are advocates of — of domestic terrorism like Tim McVeigh?”

Inflated numbers, along with an attempt to paint those propelling the hate as victims:

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg: “Now we have what increasingly appears to be an orchestrated media campaign, led by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s think tank, to demonize tens of millions of American taxpayers because they keep invoking the Constitution.”

For the right wing echo machine to do this kind of rapid response on Clinton’s speech, well, it must have hit a nerve.

This report on right wing violence is from The Washington Monthly, June 10, 2009:

[The DHS report warning of an increase of right wing extremism is] hardly an unreasonable point. Two months ago, Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent “Obama gun ban.” A few weeks ago, Scott Roeder, another right-wing extremist, allegedly assassinated Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. A few hours ago, Von Brunn, another right-wing extremist, allegedly opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

There are other recent examples that bear similar characteristics. This story out of Tennessee from last year continues to haunt.

“Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children’s musical. [...]

 Inside the house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his ‘hatred of the liberal movement,’ Owen said. ‘Liberals in general, as well as gays.’”

President Clinton was right. The angry, violent language falls on the ears of both the sane and insane alike. This violence in fueled by confrontational talk. This report from Media Matters for America, April 7th, 2010 concerning the threats to the Speaker of the House’s life  and the arrest of Gregory Giusti:

Following the arrest of Gregory Giusti for allegedly threatening Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s life over health care reform, Giusti’s mother stated that Fox News was a factor in her son’s alleged actions. In the wake of this incident, Media Matters for America takes a look back at Fox News’ recent history of violent rhetoric and the apocalyptic language the network’s employees used to describe the then-impending passage of health care reform.

His mother blames his friends and FOX News. From an April 7 broadcast by ABC’s San Francisco affiliate, KGO-TV:

ELEANOR GIUSTI: Greg has — frequently gets in with a group of people that have really radical ideas and that are not consistent with myself or the rest of the family and — which gets him into problems. And apparently I would say this must be another one that somehow he’s gotten onto either by — I’d say Fox News or all of those that are really radical, and he — that’s where he comes from.

In conclusion, this warning by the President of the United States from Obama Michigan Graduation Speech: President’s Advice To Class Of 2010:

The financial meltdown dramatically showed the dangers of too little government, he said, “when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly led to the collapse of our entire economy.”

But Obama was direct in urging both sides in the political debate to tone it down. “Throwing around phrases like ‘socialists’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover,’ ‘fascists’ and ‘right-wing nut’ – that may grab headlines,” he said. But it also “closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation,” he said.

“At its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”

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