The Right’s Trouble With Violence

With angry white men bringing their guns too close to the president, Josh Marshall writes: “Let’s be honest with ourselves: the American right has a deep-seated problem with political violence. It’s deep-seated; it’s recurrent and it’s real.”

For all the hatred of President Bush, Marshall explains, the last administration saw nothing like the Oklahoma City bombing or attempt on President Clinton’s life in terms of domestic political violence.

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo via Daily Kos:

It’s true that there are some regional divergences at work here. Weapons just don’t get carried around in public in say New Jersey or Connecticut the way they do in the South or especially the west.

But let’s be honest about what this is about. The right — the modern American right — has a very troubled history with political violence. The ideological pattern is clear going back at least thirty years and arguably far longer. A simple review of the 1990s, particularly 1993, 1994, culminating in many respects in the tragic 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal building in April 1995 tells the tale. Mix in the militias, the thankfully inept attempt on President Clinton’s life a few months before Oklahoma City (see Francisco Duran) and it’s all really not a pretty picture.

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