Moonbat Defined...

[revefsreleets]

Since I've seen some lefties bandying about the term and trying to misapply it to moderates and conservatives, I thought a definition and some brief etymology might be in order.

First off, Moonbats is a derogatory term for far-left liberals. It was derived from the name of liberal author George Monbiot.

It's counter is "wing-nut" for the far right wing crazies.

Not the first time people here used terms they didn't understand, nor will it be the last, I'm sure...

[HometownGal]

Originally Posted by revefsreleets

Since I've seen some lefties bandying about the term and trying to misapply it to moderates and conservatives, I thought a definition and some brief etymology might be in order.

First off, Moonbats is a derogatory term for far-left liberals. It was derived from the name of liberal author George Monbiot.

It's counter is "wing-nut" for the far right wing crazies.

Not the first time people here used terms they didn't understand, nor will it be the last, I'm sure...

Irony anyone?

[revefsreleets]

I have maps of Vice Presidential bunkers along the PA/MD border to "prove it".

[SteelTalons]

I thought you guys already had "Kool-Aid Drinker" and we were using "Wing-nut"...

Now "Moonbats"? Guess we'll have to cook up a new one then!

[revefsreleets]

Moonbat is old-school...

[Vincent]

The one I get a kick out of is leftoids calling anything to the right of center, actually anyone that disagrees with them, "nazis". The nazis were among history's highest distillation of socialism, leftoids through and through. Now, I grant you that the sovs and the chicomms have murdered numerically more of their citizens, but those nazis sure gave a strong show of themselves.

[tony hipchest]

WHOOOSH!!!!

the complete irony of a person with a rather liberal sexual orientation, bragging on her very liberal pastor and wife, in an anti-liberal thread that said liberals were against democracy, was obviously miles above your head.

this thread REEKS of a desperate attention whrng attempt to score a point.

the term "moonbat" is as old as the proverbial phrase "dust in grandmas panties."

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=moonbat

1. moonbat
An unthinking or insane leftist -- in other words, most modern leftists.

Moonbat can also be used as an adjective, e.g. a moonbat professor. According to the Wikipedia entry for moonbat, the word was coined in 2002 by the Editor of Samizdata, Perry de Havilland, and was a variation on the name of radical British activist and columnist George Monbiot.

Originally, the term "moonbat" was intended to be more politically neutral, and described wackos on the left and the right, but it quickly acquired its current usage of being applied almost exclusively to those on the left.

The term also references the moon much in the same way that "lunatic" refers to the insanity-causing powers of the full moon (luna = moon). Bloggers occasionally analyze the behavior patterns of various moonbat "species" as if they were actual animals, and even give them satirical Linnaean taxonomical names, such as "moonbattus berkeleyensis".

The entry in the Samizdata glossary indicates that Perry originally coined the full phrase "barking moonbat"; apparently "moonbat" is just a subsequent shortened version of "barking moonbat," rather than being a pre-existing term that was lengthened to barking moonbat.

you really think moonbat was first used in 2002? oh ye gullible one.... ive heard that since being a kid.

its a play on words such as dingbat, or batty. it describes a shady, fly by night character, who is blind, and cant see things right infront of their face. those who are always out in the dark. kinda like a bat. and those who are looney... as in lunar... as in the moon.

i guess you dont have bats in ohio. i particularly dont care about what the lingo is up there but once again your world is proven to NOT be the center of the universe. nice attempt to play phrase, word, and grammar cop though.

oh, and the term "wingnut" also refers to a GI, (specifically air force), long before you even got hooked on this internet mb, political phraseology.

since you actually played this weak hand, i suspect youve never been in the military, lived on a military institution, or even knew that.

and since when is 2002 "old school"? (silly kids these days say the darnedest things). since the will farell movie came out?

[revefsreleets]

Desperate attempt to backpeddle...typical third string stuff but not really even worth addressing...(although where did 2002 come in?)

Nice piece by Gerson today though about the abuse of the term "Nazi" though...

http://www.ohio.com/editorial/commentary/53017087.html

Hitler and the health-care debate

By Michael Gerson
Washington Post Writers Group

Published on Wednesday, Aug 12, 2009

WASHINGTON: During live television coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, novelist Gore Vidal famously called William F. Buckley a ''crypto-Nazi.'' To which Buckley famously replied (in addition to other choice words), ''Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.''

Buckley later apologized. He also explained: ''Can such men understand the causes of anger in others? Understand the special reverence we need to feel for that which is hateful? I do not believe that anyone thought me a Nazi because Vidal called me one, but I do believe that everyone who heard him call me one without a sense of shock, without experiencing anger, thinks more tolerantly about Nazism than once he did, than even now he should.''

In recent weeks, left and right have employed the Vidal tactic. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused town-hall protesters of ''carrying swastikas,'' leaving the impression they were proud Nazis — when, in fact, a few protesters carried signs accusing Barack Obama of having Nazi aims (bad enough). Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., declared the protesters guilty of ''Brown Shirt tactics.'' Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., compared America under Obama to Germany in the 1930s. Rush Limbaugh talked of ''similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany.''

The accusation is a staple of American T-shirt and bumper-sticker political culture, found too often at liberal anti-war protests and conservative tea parties. Anyone with a black felt pen, and the ability to draw a Hitler moustache on a poster, can make this witty, trenchant political statement. Michael Moore compared the Patriot Act to MeinKampf. Al Gore warned of ''digital Brown Shirts.''

This rhetorical strategy is intended to convey intensity of conviction, as in, ''I am very, very, very serious, you Nazi jerk.'' Actually, it is a lazy shortcut to secure an emotional response. Worse than that, it is an argument that puts an end to all argument. What discourse is possible with the spawn of Hitler? And when someone is unjustly accused of Nazi tactics or sympathies, what response can we expect other than Buckley's outrage? Let the head knocking begin.

Worst of all, the Vidal tactic does undermine the ''special reverence we need to feel for that which is hateful.'' Nazism is not a useful symbol for everything that makes us angry, from Iraq to abortion. It is a historical movement, unique in the ambitions of its cruelty.

Those who doubt this uniqueness should read Saul Friedlander's The Years of Extermination, which records the Nazi terror with the same meticulousness that the Germans displayed in producing it.

Nazism was the ''beard game,'' in which the beards and sidelocks of Jews were pulled off or set a fire before audiences of cheering soldiers. It was the practice of making elderly Jews dance around a fire of burning Torah scrolls. It was whole orphanages deported to death camps, and pits full of corpses, and ancient communities erased from human memory, and death factories issuing a thick smoke of souls, and a mother trading her gold ring for a glass of water to give her dying child.

Many who study these events think silence the only appropriate response. ''There is nothing,'' says scholar Lawrence Langer, ''to be learned from a baby torn in two or a woman buried live.''

But it is our nature to attempt to wrestle meaning from catastrophe. So we draw lessons about the poison of racism, the dangers of blind obedience to authority, the corruption of grand schemes of social purity, the shallowness of civilization in ''civilized'' nations, and the hatred hiding within ordinary men and women.

These lessons are relevant to politics. But they are trivialized when applied to Obama's health insurance reform plan or the conduct of disorderly town-hall protesters. The burning of the Reichstag and Kristallnacht are not arguments against a single-payer health plan or against the Patriot Act.

For the survivors of Nazism, memory is a kind of sacred duty. The Vidal tactic desacralizes those memories — shrinking them to the size of our political agendas and robbing them of their power to shock and teach. The history of those times should be approached with fear and trembling, not mocked with metaphor.
Gerson is a Washington Post Writers Group columnist. He can be e-mailed at mgerson@globalengage.org.

[7SteelGal43]

Originally Posted by tony hipchest

WHOOOSH!!!!

the complete irony of a person with a rather liberal sexual orientation, bragging on her very liberal pastor and wife, in an anti-liberal thread that said liberals were against democracy, was obviously miles above your head.

tone,

I'm sorry that you've been indoctrinated to believe that all gays/lesbians could not possibly be anything but strong supporters of the liberal party.

I'm sorry that you've been indoctrinated to believe that a conservative pastor and his wife in a Church that believes homosexuality is a sin couldn't possibly show love towards a homosexual.

really ? sexual orientation is either a liberal or conservative thing ?

[revefsreleets]

Originally Posted by 7SteelGal43

tone,

I'm sorry that you've been indoctrinated to believe that all gays/lesbians could not possibly be anything but strong supporters of the liberal party.

I'm sorry that you've been indoctrinated to believe that a conservative pastor and his wife in a Church that believes homosexuality is a sin couldn't possibly show love towards a homosexual.

really ? sexual orientation is either a liberal or conservative thing ?

Don't take it personally...he got caught using a term he didn't understand and you got ground up in his backpeddling...it happens...