Tim D’Annunzio, the 8th District congressional candidate who is holding a “Machine Gun Social” in Fayetteville, takes umbrage at the criticism hurled at him by anonymous commenters on Jim Morrill’s blog. He tells Morrill:

“The old racist red-neck hick was somebody who used the ‘n’ word and focused all their attention on blacks,” he said when asked about his post. “Now, it’s that same type of person. The new buzz words are ‘Christian’ and ‘Conservative’ and ‘Constitutionalist.’ They’re the targets of those same basic haters …. They’re now doing their lynching via the Internet.”

He says most posters make baseless and personal attacks. While the Klan “hid behind the anonymity of their white hoods,” he says, people “nowadays do it by hiding behind the name of ‘Anonymous’ on these blogs. To be perfectly honest, it’s evil what they’re doing.”

And the people doing it? As he sees it, the authors of most posts are liberal. “To be perfectly honest,” he added, “some of them may be Republican.”

“Typically people who are against those things are liberals …. How do you know a liberal? They hate everything this country stands for. They hate everything based on thoughtful analysis. All their thought is emotion-based. They want to stir up hate because hate doesn’t require thought.”

Truth be told, nothing in the comments on D’Annunzio and his event struck me as particularly out of bounds.

Sure, they called him a “psychopath” and “nutcase” and “creep” — and so? You deliberately try to push buttons by having a gun-fest — sounds like a ton of fun, BTW — and then flip out and play the victim when the totally predictable array of criticism comes your way. That is nothing more than treating your fellow citizens like idiots. Sack up and take the heat, Tim.

You were not lynched — an odious comparison to the victims of nothing less than a bloody period of domestic terrorism across the South — no evil was done to you. Stupidity, perhaps. Welcome to life. To political life in particular. People can disagree with you without hating their country and its principles — although they may well not have a clue as to what limited government and a republic of free men and women should look like.

Better you educate them on that than freak out over blog comments.

Bonus Flog: It was wrong for Jim Morrill to have edited his initial description of an AR-15 as machine gun without informing readers of the change. Just a simple machine gun semi-automatic rifle would’ve done the trick. Lord knows I’ve had similar WTF moments.