listening to ex-npr dude michael goldfarb on the bbc radio show "the world" this morning: "the tea party movement is scary. it's extremely violent...at least rhetorically." you can't tell me that this ever-increasing conflation of yapping and killing isn't setting up for a major repression of speech. anyway, it's a bit hard to figure out where the rhetorical violence leaves off. perhaps goldfarb''s assertion is itself a monstrous act of mass murder. at least rhetorically.

it's amazing how much principle one displays in defending lively protest and free speech when the protest is against people you don't like; amazing how crazy and dangerous it all is when it's directed at your own position. i guess repression of those with whom we disagree is a kind of universal human impulse.