However, by "slamming the entire right wing" you are slamming the individuals on the list who happen to identify more with the right wing position than the left wing one on many issues (whether they call themselves "right wing" or not). It can come across as a slam that is just as offensive as if the person were identified by name, perhaps more so, because it seems like a "passive-aggressive" attack or like talking about a person in front of him/her in the third person as though s/he cannot hear (read) what is being said about him/her. Please forgive me for getting personal to make a point, but if someone posted "All liberals are . . . " or "All Jews are . . . ," I expect that you would be personally offended, even though you were not specifically mentioned by name in the post.
The right wing runs this country. They control the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and a majority of the governors' offices. Although they pretend otherwise, they control most of the media. They can take a few hits on this list.
(There's a difference between making a blanket condemnation of all liberals (or all conservatives) vs. all Jews. One is political debate, even if maybe intemperate or even wrongheaded. The other is racism. Liberals and conservatives are not an ethnic group or an identifiable group that can be targeted for discrimination or bias or prejudice or attack in the same way as African-Americans or Hispanics or Asians or Jews.)
There's also a difference between my making a statement criticizing conservatives as a group and someone criticizing so-and-so on this list directly with a personal attack including unpleasant language. Even if the conservatives feel offended, it's still different than if I criticized them by name as opposed to something they said. The former is barely acceptable; the latter, which happens on this list far more frequently, is, in my mind, completely unacceptable.
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Tom Beck
my LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tomfodw/
"I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd see the last." - Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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