‘The reckless right courts violence’

August 13th, 2009 1:00 pm · 0 comments

And David Frum is even a conservative. Though I suppose he’s out of the club these days, for daring to say things like this:

Hyperbolic accusation and fantasy murder may well serve a talk-radio industry facing a collapse in advertising revenues—down 30–40 percent over the past two years, reports NewMajority.com’s Tim Mak.

As revenues dwindle, hosts feel compelled to intensify the talk-radio experience, hoping to win larger audience share with more extreme talk. It’s like the early days of the pornography industry: At first a naked woman is thrilling enough, but soon a jaded audience is demanding more and more, wilder and wilder.

For the radio hosts, it’s all mostly a cynical marketing exercise. But the audience? Not all of them know better.

I hadn’t known talk radio revenues were plummeting. Good.

It’s not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric. If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic—if he were those things, somebody should shoot him.

But he is not. He is an ambitious, liberal president who is spending too much money and emitting too much debt. His health-care ideas are too ambitious and his climate plans are too interventionist. The president can be met and bested on the field of reason—but only by people who are themselves reasonable.

Good argument. It will fall on entirely deaf ears.

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  0 comments  Tags: Health care · Wingers

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