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Union thugs yesterday also destroyed the hot dog cart of an innocent vendor, calling him “N*gger” and “Uncle Tom” while they did it.

Leftwing civility: Union thugs yesterday also destroyed the hot dog cart of an innocent vendor, calling him “N*gger” and “Uncle Tom” while they did it.

And they call Tea Party people racists? What vicious bigots.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

15 comments

  • Paul Lake

    You are not being fair, Bob. “Left wing civility.” Assuming your characterization of what happened is true, calling it an example of left wing civility is ridiculous. Jerks know no ideology. Out of curiosity I went to a Tea Party event a couple of years ago. The vast majority of people were, in my opinion, misguided in their thinking, but they were nice folks and I had severally friendly conversations about politics. But there were several hot heads with racially insulting signs and chanted really stupid stuff (comparing Obama to Hitler, etc.) Guess who made the evening news? So this entire very civil group was stigmatized in the media by the uncivil few.

    So, basically, I’m accusing you of taking a cheap shot.

  • Bah. I have attended numerous Tea Party events, in several parts of the country, and have seen practically nothing impolite. Yes, there are always a few idiots, but most of those have appeared to be Lyndon LaRouche fans, who also happen to usually be Democrats, though of a strange kind.

    Regardless, these silly signs and insults have nothing to do with my post, or what happened yesterday in Michigan. The issue here isn’t a lack of civility, it is acts of violence. Since the advent of the Tea Party protests three years ago practically the only violence that has occurred at these protests has been committed by those on the left. Do a search for “Leftwing civility” on my website and you’ll find plenty of examples. I use that term because after the terrible shootings in Tucson in 2011 the left made a big deal about the need for civility. First, the left falsely libeled the right by blaming them for the shootings (which had no connection with anyone from either side of the political spectrum), then they demanded the right shut up so that such violence wouldn’t happen again.

    Meanwhile, the left seems to think this demand for civility doesn’t apply to them. A mob of union thugs destroys the private property of a group they disagree with, violently attack several individuals, including some innocent bystanders, and you want to look the other way. Moreover, you want to go out of your way to make excuses for that violence, including equating an insulting sign with a violent attack by union thugs. In this, you are sadly typical of too many people on the left.

    In fact, if you and most of today’s liberals lived in Germany in November 1938 you would have either looked the other way when Hitler’s storm troopers instigated Krystalnacht and attacked thousands of Jewish business, synagogues, and homes, burning them to the ground, or you would have blamed the Jews for being provocative.

    You should be ashamed. Violence is wrong, no matter who does it.

  • Rene Borbon

    I agree with Mr. Zimmerman’s rebuttal. We are living in dark days in this republic. We are hanging on by a thread and the administration does not care. Maybe they figure the big American multinationals should be squeezed some more? It’s hard to argue with this logic except Hitler argued for something similar. Is this the administration’s position on the current situation?

  • Pzatchok

    I have seen with my own eyes far far more democrats being racist than I have seen republicans being racist.

    Just look into the union shops of the 70’s and 80’s. The black union members only got the bad jobs. The filthy sweaty back breaking work. In the steel mills around here they shoveled coal and coke, working right next to the furnaces. Taking lunch in the filthy areas of the shop no place close to the white union members. Sometimes not even being able to use the same toilets, if there were enough.

    Only now that unions are under fire are blacks being treated equally. But they are not thought of equally. Behind their backs their white co workers still call them nigger.

    Never mind. Its no use. Leftists think conservatives are the only people in the universe who could possibly be racist. Facts be damned. Even with their own eyes seeing the evidence they still deny it.
    They scream about the one or two loons who hang around the conservative side and spout racist epithets. But they ignore or down play the very same thing coming from the left wing.

    They are just hypocrites. Ignorant, and short sighted.

  • wodun

    Having to explain what “new civility” is is like having to explain what the journolist is. These are things all adults should know, especially if they vote.

    Whenever I have had to do this, the response is usually, “What? That really happened? That can’t be true.” Then because it doesn’t fit their world view, it is ignored in favor of an alternate reality.

  • Paul Lake

    Hitler? Really? Anyone who resorts to Hitler has lost the argument.

  • Paul Lake

    Of course some union folks are bigots. But not all. And the level of bigotry in the United States has declined dramatically over the last few decades and that is a good thing.

    But let me ask you… why are so few people of color Republicans or Libertarians or a part of the Tea Party Movement? Why did Latinos so overwhelmingly vote for Obama in the last election?

    I’m NOT saying that conservatives are racists, but obviously right wing organizations and movements have a problem attracting significant numbers of people of color. Why?

    Unions have been great for the middle class. As unions weaken, working people will work for less. A higher and higher fraction of the wealth that workers create will go to others… managers, owners, stockholders. As working people become poorer, the economy will become less stable, democracy will be corrupted. Unions help working people get their fair share of the wealth they create.

    My Grandpa was a racist. He was also a union man. He was a wonderful, flawed, hard working human being and a man of his time. And the union helped him live a middle class life as a miner and a carpenter. He was able to buy land, build a home, send his daughter (my Mother) to college, and have a comfortable retirement. Without the union he would have been just another poor laborer. Union… yes.

  • wodun

    Why aren’t there more minority Republicans? The way Obama and the Democrats racially syereotype Republicans is a large reason why and so is the way the left treats conservative gays, women, and minorities. When a group is falsely syereotyped as racist, it is hard to get minorities to join up, even if they share the political philosophy. But unlike what the Democrats are pushing, values are not skin deep.

    There nastiest racist attacks don’t come from the KKK, they come from Democrats and are directed against women, gays, and minorities that are openly conservative.

    Like the guy in this link. He probably isn’t even conservative but is called racial slurs for associating with conservatives.

    Do a little research on how conservative minorities are treated by Democrats. A good place to start is the youtube video rebelution.

    From your comments, it sounds like you don’t know much about Democrats and the left in general.

  • Paul Lake

    I really do think that the Hitler Analogy should be used sparingly. You may not like Obama’s policies, but he hasn’t murdered 60 million people.

  • Paul Lake

    Wodun…. I think you’re wrong about why the majority of non-whites, women, and gays are avoiding conservative causes and groups. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, women, gays… are smart. They are voting in their own interests. Women, gays, people of color feel welcome in the Democratic Party because they now make up the Democratic Party. Republicans are reaping the whirlwind of retribution from nearly 40 years of the Southern Strategy.

    But things can change. Republicans can appeal to people of color, but for the time being, they don’t feel welcome or comfortable.

    Anyway…. I love space exploration, and I strongly advocate for space exploitation, and settlement. So I’m sure we at least have that in common.

  • You are amazing in your complete inability to see how blind you are. I very specifically chose Krystalnacht because it is a very apt historical comparison. Note also that my historical comparison was specifically not from when Hitler had murdered 60 million, but when he was just getting started and could have been stopped, if good people had simply stood up to him and recognized the evil for what it was. Sadly, ordinary German citizens did not. Instead, they looked the other way, they made excuses for the violence, and they ended up condoning it by their willingness to make believe it didn’t happen.

    Similarly, I was trying to get you to stand up and condemn the obvious violence in Michigan, done by union thugs to innocent individuals who were merely expressing a different point of view. And you, you behaved exactly like almost everyone on the left always does, proving my point perfectly, by doing exactly the same as the Germans in 1938. You continue to look the other way, to make excuses for that violence, and to condone it by your willingness to make believe it didn’t happen.

    Just once, just once, I’d like to see someone on the left immediately come out and condemn an act of violence and evil committed by someone on their side. Just once. Unfortunately, however, no one on the left, like you, seems capable of this simple act of good will. It never seems to happen.

    And because of this willingness to look the other way when evil is committed, I guarantee that your side, the left, is going to commit evils as horrible and as profound as anything done by Hitler, or by any tyrant who was allowed to run rampant and unchecked. And you will continue to make believe it isn’t happening, until the horror becomes so profound that it will come back to kick you in the face.

  • Rene Borbon

    I’ve read the first 500 pages or so of Kershaw’s (abridged) Hitler. Mr. Zimmerman has it correct to point out that the connection between the Democrats and organized labor and the recent violence in Michigan is grave cause for concern, given that The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) of 1930s Germany, led by Hitler, Röhm, and Goebbels did make use of violence in the context of obtaining their political objectives, when their ideas fell short of winning a majority in the Reichstag. This all took place in an atmosphere of economic turmoil and decline in Germany. The parallel today is that the lawful political process in Michigan yielded a new policy of allowing workers to voluntarily decide if they want to join a union and pay dues. Because the unions and its members resorted to violence given their (100 year old) political policies were rejected by the lawful process of Michigan, and the obvious well known connections with the Democratic Party, and the historical parallel of the NSDAP use of violence to achieve their political objectives, we have grave cause for concern. The trend with Wisconsin and Michigan is clearly not only an increasingly shrill union, but now violence.

  • wodun

    They dont feel comfortable because of the way Democrats treat the ones that are conservatives and all of the Democrats efforts to put wedges between genders, classes, and races is really disgusting.

    Women and minorities are valued, active, and important members of the conservative community. Look at all all the women and minority governors that are Republican, even in the south, which apparently you harbor some ethnicentric views of. Clearly women and minorities actually do feel comfortable in the conservative community, despite all the people from the left telling them they shouldn’t.

    Don’t rely on the stereotypes from the left, go listen to or read the stories of conservative minorities like Susana Martinez.

    The racial stereotyping from.the left really needs to end. I encourage you to apply the principles of deconstruction to your own political party. Democrats frame everything as us vs them. They can’t handle that everyone loves women and minorities and wants them to do well so they stereotype the otherside as being against women and minorities. The us vs them always needs a them to demonize.

    Democrats frame every single issue as either total agreement with a Democrat position or being bigoted against some group, wanting some group to die, or wanting some apocalyptic outcome. Seriously, pay attention to Democrat attacks, it doesn’t matter what subject that formula is always followed.

    You really need to watch the youtube video rebelution. It is about the way conservative minorities are treated by Democrats and how some former Democrat activists realized the propaganda the party is pushing about race needs to stop.

    I mean here you are saying Republicans are racist on a post about Democrats using violence to intimidate their political opponents and this is not an isolated incident. Violence from the left for political gain has been common place over the last twelve years. And in this specific case in the post, the Democrats attacked a minority shouting racist slurs and destroying his business.

    The Tea Party never did anything like this, yet people like you stereotype them as being racist and prone to violence and then are totally quiet when actual racism and violence takes place when Democrats are protesting.

  • Pzatchok

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/335623/espn-analyst-calls-rgiii-cornball-brother-because-he-may-be-republican-andrew-johnson

    http://www.examiner.com/article/liberals-on-twitter-issue-racist-hate-filled-death-wishes-to-stacey-dash

    Every conservative minority is attacked by the left. Not just attacked but assaulted, crushed, bashed on all fronts, threatened with any number of barely imaginable atrocities and the left still calls itself the inclusive, loving and understanding group.

    Bull crap. Half of the left spouts hate and the other half defends them. MSM reporters cover it up as best as they can and when it does get out they just pass it off as a onetime thing. Or pull out the old stand-by ,”but the other side has done worse.” Even when they can not produce evidence of it.

    I have personally witnessed reporters covering up cameras when union violence breaks out. And when quietly called out on it at least one looked right at me and said ” I have to live in this town. My kids go to school with their kids. If I put this on tv I would have to move and even then I might not get far enough away.” The camera man just looked at me and said “hey I don’t want any trouble.”

  • Paul Lake

    To the extent there was violence, vandalism, or even just plain rudeness… I condemn it.

    But working people are getting screwed in this country. The owners, the managers, the stockholders, the private equity firms, the hedge fund managers….etc…. are taking a greater and greater share of the pie. Those who work… those who create the wealth… are seeing their standards of living erode away even as their productivity improves.

    Many on the right blame government policies, but let’s get real. The “right to work (for less)” laws being passed in Republican controlled states are about reducing wages and benefits for working class people and about squashing what little political power they have left. And they aren’t blind to what’s happening. They have every right to protest and to be angry. Yeah… union people are tough. They aren’t going down without a fight. And if that brings to mind historical tragedies like the Krystalnacht, perhaps we should learn the correct lessons from history. We should organize our democracy and our markets so that they benefit the great majority in the working class. That would lead to a better life, to greater liberty, and to more opportunity to pursue happiness for the common people.

    BTW… I know I’m a liberal venturing into a conservative bubble. But I happen to be passionate about space exploration and I listen to Bob on the Space Show and really enjoy his opinions. I finally took the time to read “Behind the Black” and I enjoy his coverage of space issues.

    But geez… I express a contrary point of view and all of a sudden I’m a Brown Shirt. Guess I’ll start working on my goose step.

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