That "extremists on both sides" refrain is way over-done. As I commented on another link, when progressive take things to a ridiculous extreme, they tend to dress in black, engage in multiple body piercings, and hand out leaflets on a corner. Occasionally they chain themselves to a tree to prevent logging or vandalize an SUV dealership. But they don't generally shoot people, nor do they advocate that others do. That's not really their (our) style. It would sort of defeat the whole point of the idea of giving peace a chance if you kill anyone who disagrees.
My dad taught me there was no difference between brandishing a weapon and using it, and that if you flash a weapon, you should be morally and psychologically prepared to use it. (On principle, he was not a gun-owner after WWII.) When I saw these Tea Partiers showing up at townhall meetings to discuss healthcare (not national security or thinning the deer population, but insuring our children for god's sake) with automatic weapons, I was sickened. I still think Angle should be interviewed by the FBI to clarify exactly what she meant by "second amendment remedies" for political outcomes she might not like. How exactly is this not a terroristic threat? What was that whole "don't retreat - reload" refrain, Ms. Palin?
There is a world of difference between saying something that makes other people feel uncomfortable but that happens to be true (such as pointing out Palin lied about death panels, for example) and putting rifle scope cross hairs over the names of your political opponents.
Paul Krugman has a good editorial in the NYT along these lines. The idea is not that we should all link arms and sing kum ba yah. We don't even have to be nice to each other. But the right has to stop lying and has to stop acting shocked! shocked! that an apparently disturbed individual did in practice what they claim they only intended be done metaphorically.
There was a little gem of a book or an extended essay called Illness as a Metaphor which I read a number of years ago, and I remember the author making the point that we have paid a price for militarizing our medical metaphors. We lose all the collaborative and nurturing and "softer" aspects critical to healing if we simply view our immune system's attempt to regain equilibrium as a series of exhausting battles. I think the same is true of how we view politics and life. The right loves the idea of shock and awe but empirically there aren't that many problems in the real world that can be solved with violence or the threat of violence. There are plenty that can be made worse though, as Iraq and Afghanistan are illustrating.
I never heard anyone question Bush's citizenship or call him a Muslim (as though that is a bad thing or a disqualification for high office). Everything so many of us found offensive was behavior he actually engaged in - deception at a massive scale about WMD, torture, pre-emptive war, illegal spying on American citizens, outing of a CIA covert agent for political retribution - but no one at any rally I attended ever threatened violence against him or any of his staff. Yes, I had fantasies of Karl Rove being frog-marched from the White House in an orange jump suit, but within the framework of the rule of law. I certainly would never want either him or Cheney or Bush to be treated the way they treated detainees at GTMO or in Iraq.
So there is no equality. One side has been behaving very badly. They need to knock it off, but first we all have to stop playing nice-nice and confusing demands for accountability within the rule of law with demands for vigilante justice. Calling a bully a bully does not make you a bully even if the bully tries to convince you of that.
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