Apropos targeting metaphorsand the like

[Mark Graber]

I suspect a good deal of this discussion takes place with the civil rights movement in the background.  I take it general agreement exists that white southerners were far more violent than the African-Americans seeking their constitutional rights.

I take it general agreement also exists on this list that no member, liberal or conservative, has any sympathy either for the methods or the beliefs of the white citizens council, circa 1950.

Nevertheless, for liberals such as myself, there are important connections between certain fringe rightwing movements and those responsible for violence against persons of color during the 1950s and 1960s (Reva Siegel and Bob Post document some of those connections in "Roe Rage").  For the more conservatives (or more accurately, libertarians) on the list, the connections are far more attenuated, if they exist at all.

This is why, I suspect, the conversation is so difficult.  We are not simply addressing an empirical matter (i.e., who throws the most bricks), but our ancestry.

MAG