"It's the difference between Left and Right. Conservatives think that liberals are mistaken. LIberals believe conservatives are evil and haters."

Have a few recently published book titles:

Deliver Us from Evil : Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism by Sean Hannity

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg

The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on our Schools, Faith, and Military by Michael Savage

That took about 5 minutes to hunt up.

I'll spare you the results of a quote search. There are too many of them.

[Glenn, from the post]: As I made explicitly clear, I never suggested anything of the sort. Rather, my post illustrated how the right-wing noise machine functions -- by promoting and courting the most extremist and hateful elements for political gain while trying to keep a safe distance so as to evade responsibility...

Which is what Hannity did in having Hal Turner on as a "regular caller" on his radio show too.....

Cheers,

When Wright/Obama/Faraquan do it, then it's honest airing of views about the role of race in America. When Instapun* do it, then it's repulsive racist screed.

Glenn,

You are confusing "America Haters" with "sin haters." Parsley, Robertson, Hagee, Falwell, and others, have never been considered haters of "America" by even their harshest critics. In fact there is plenty of evidence they went to great lengths to demonstrate their patriotism. They have been accused of hate "speech" because of their beliefs that certain sins (homosexuality, abortion etc.)

condoned by the American government and courts would bring God's wrath to America. This is different from the hatred expressed by Wright toward America and the accusation for example that the US government was instrumental in infecting African Americans with HIV.

RC

I agree that Salon believes that not allowing links will reduce spam. It is the same reason they close the threads after a few days. There are, unfortunately, certain technical people that believe that spam is the worst evil that ever has been or ever will be inflicted upon the human race.

Mostly they are the tech equivalent of the plumber who is either too stupid or too lazy to fix your toilet and will tell you with a straight face that learning to crap in the woods is an acceptable solution.

Luckily, these people will die out as technology permeates society and the phrase "but I am the magic wizard with tech skillz +7" will finally be grounds for termination and a chorus of derisive laughter.

... lies in bypassing it. The problem is caused by Salon refusing to allow the <a> tag to create links. The way to go around this is not to use tinyurl (for all the reasons given previously), but to simply turn a valid URL in the text to a clickable link.

The way to do this is:

Get Firefox and an add on that makes any URL in text into a clickable link. I use Linkification (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/190), but there are others available also. Copy and paste no more. And don't let tinyurl take you somewhere you don't want to go.

For those who don't use Firefox and don't want to give up their present browser, you can go to the tinyurl site and let them install a cookie that will let you preview tinyurls so that you at least know where you are going when you copy and paste the tinyurl into your browsers address line.

It's the difference between Left and Right.

The modern "Right" isn't conservative in the traditional sense, but has become the refuge of a collection of cultural reactionaries that by historical chance converged in the Republican Party. Hence the prevalence and prestige of the likes of Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reily, Hannity, De Lay, Vitter, Cheney, and so on. Any functioning political party with a clear-minded and pragmatic agenda would have excised these idiots and their fellows some time back.

Worse, the political operations of the "Right" depends in large measure upon a disparate gaggle of sectarian groups, both for funding and grassroots work. Moon, Dobson, Robertson, Hagee, and the rest push agendas that have no realistic hope of being accepted in mainstream America, but have the funds and footsoldiers to ensure compliance among whatever officeholder they choose to favor. Its a cynical calculation on the politico's part, but one that's worked semi-well up to now.

In contrast, the "Left" is a diverse collection of interests (both progressive and in some ways conservative), but who lack a singular 'identity' - which is largely what drives the "Right" these days - and no overriding goal that might otherwise minimize friction between those interests. It also lacks a ready source of funds and grassroots organization like the "Right" does, although this appears to be changing.

The only saving virtue of this is that it also lacks a class of punditry and talking heads with the kind of national stature and prevalence enjoyed by the "Right". This means the Democrat's brand isn't as tainted as the Republicans now by the overheated rhetoric Limbaugh, Coulter and the rest trade in.

And given the complete decimation of the Republican party, both in candidates and fundraising, the "Right" may soon be left with nothing but talk radio and the old guard Religious Right. Hence the tendency (somewhat unfair) of associating the "Right" with blind hatred and reactionary policies as those are the trade of both.

The "Left" meanwhile has been building itself from the ground-up and offers a more moderate and responsive agenda. Getting it widely-disseminated is a critical challenge, albeit one that has been helped by the weblog community and tech-savviness.

In short, both sides have their extremists. But those on the "Right" have had the louder voice and less restraint, finally over-reaching themselves in the last 15-20 years (I mark it peaking in the early-90s and beginning a slow but steady decline since the OK City Bombing). Those on the "Left" are so marginal one would be hard-pressed to name a one.

Whether these trends continue or not is beyond any predictative ability. We'll see what the future brings.