"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." So said Karl Rove, George W. Bush's puppet master.
Rove might be the most divisive man in America, but he has a point: Conservatives are inherently more violent than liberals.
I'm not speaking of the Average Conservative Joe who just wants safe schools, clean TV, the Pledge of Allegiance and the right to burn trash. I'm referring to the radical right that has moved the country so far to the right that a moderate is now considered to the left of Karl Marx.
Liberals believed that we should try to exercise just a teensy bit of judgment before marching headlong into a costly and dangerous war. Conservatives prefer to kick ass first and figure out the reasons why later.
If liberals disagree with you, they roll their eyes and call you stupid. If conservatives disagree, they call you stupid and then try to take you out into the parking lot.
Trust me -- the only people who wait for me after performances are fans wanting an autograph or ... Well, once, after I made a tame joke about Newt Gingrich, a redneck accosted me while screaming, "You were good until you put in that liberal shit at the end. Somebody's gonna kick your ass, boy."
Columnist Ann Coulter wrote, "We need to execute people like (American Taliban) John Walker Lindh in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too."
At a gathering of conservatives titled "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny," lawyer-author Edwin Vieira said that the "bottom line" for dealing with Supreme Court justices like Anthony Kennedy comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,'" Vieira said. (The full Stalin quote is, "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.")
The most violent people in the world, terrorists, are religious conservatives. Some of the most violent people in America are religious conservatives.
There's nothing wrong with a strong belief in a god, but when you start to believe God is telling you to pull the trigger, you're officially mental. Eric Rudolph bombed abortion clinics and gay bars but refuses to apologize, stating his "Biblical justification against a government that supports abortion and homosexuals."
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore took a time out from hugging the Ten Commandments to call for the execution of gay people. The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart opined, "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry, and ... if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."
A moot point, since any self-respecting gay man would, upon looking at Swaggart "like that," realize the error of his ways and preemptively kill himself.
The fanaticism has gone global: In Iran, gay people are stoned to death. In Jamaica, they are dragged through the streets, At the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, unable to stop the event, stabbed and wounded marchers.
Religious conservatives seem to enjoy violence. "The Passion of the Christ" was most notable not for its storytelling, acting or directing, but for the extreme violence that rivaled "Death Wish." And the "Left Behind" books describe how the Lord will destroy the flesh of unbelievers in pornographic detail -- a religious substitute for actual masturbation.
Every time an anti-bullying measure comes up in a public school, designed to simply prevent kids from getting beaten up, conservatives try to stop it, accusing the measure of being a covert way of promoting homosexuality. Better to let the kids fend for themselves, like a good conservative.
When was the last time a liberal burned a cross on someone's lawn, lynched a black person, or blew up a gay bar? Why are conservatives more violent? Some suggest that the conservative mindset is more resistant to change, is less tolerant of differences, and wants to preserve the status quo at all costs.
Or perhaps it's that conservatives are more prone to living in fear. Some say they simply don't like anyone but people like themselves and see everyone else as a threat. All evidence suggests that conservatives desperately need enemies in order to bolster their own viewpoints.