RedState.com contributing editor Leon Wolf and MSNBC host Chris Hayes found themselves bridging an ideological divide on Monday night, agreeing that many on the right should give more credence to a Department of Justice report finding widespread patterns of racial bias in Ferguson, Missouri.
The conservative Wolf appeared Monday night on “All In With Chris Hayes” to discuss his recent post, titled “Many Conservatives are Blowing it on the Ferguson DOJ Report”
In that post, Wolf decried the “ideological tribalism” that led conservatives to defend the Ferguson Police Department. He wrote that he had read the 102-page report on the department and came away convinced that “no conservative on earth should feel comfortable with the way the Ferguson PD has been operating.”
Hayes called the piece “really fantastic” and thanked Wolf for writing it.
“Conservatives, as much as liberals or even more so in many cases, are attuned to civil rights issues,” Wolf told Hayes. “I think where the disconnect comes in a lot of times is that conservatives are less likely to believe that they occurs or that they’re as widespread as they might be.”
The DOJ report showed that “these civil rights violations are relatively commonplace,” he added.
“In some ways, it’s the worst vision of big, bad government,” Hayes said, explaining that he expected more conservative outrage about the report’s findings. “I mean, here you are essentially turning armed agents of the state into revenue collectors, first and foremost. The whole thing is about extracting money from people for the public till!”
Watch below via MSNBC:
h/t Raw Story
And here I was getting all fired up to start trashing Dick Lic… and then this guy wrecks it for me by saying something I agree with. Just goes to show you that there are reasonable people on both sides.
Methinks Wolf doesn’t understand his audience.
That said, good for him for being bright and honest enough to admit these things and speak against the dogmatic, knee-jerk RWNJ position. I give him a B+. I’d give him an A if he connected the dots and admitted that the apparent disconnect is a result of the combination of rampant, pervasive racism and deeply ingrained plutocratic economic ideology in the conservative movement. Some of them just want blacks to be “put and kept in their place” and some of them just see convenient victims for keeping taxes low and further redistributing the nation’s wealth upwards…and for some it’s both.
Indeed. I want my sane opposition back.
Not sure that’ll happen in either of of our lifetimes (grasshopper!).
jw1
It’s nice to know that some Conservatives understand the problem…you know, it’s like Ted Olsen. I remember getting a lot of angry people yelling at me for supporting his and Bois’ challenge to Prop 8.