Liberals who blame the tragedy in Arizona on conservatives are just as guilty of the volatile rhetoric they criticize.
Nineteen people were shot at a Jan. 8 "Congress on Your Corner" constituent gathering in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot in the head at close range by a 22-year-old assailant, was one of the lucky survivors. Perhaps because of the nature of the event or because the target was a politician, there were reasonable questions about whether the alleged assassination attempt was politically motivated. As events cleared, the answer seems to be both yes and no.
Although Jared Loughner - the alleged shooter - may have had political motivations, his articulations were the paranoid ramblings of what almost certainly is a man with severe mental illness - an illness that, unfortunately, has been exploited for political gain. On the day of the massacre, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said the event was caused by "all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it's not without consequences." Although it is inappropriate for a sheriff to immediately point fingers for a crime before the facts materialize, it did not take long for liberals to latch onto this statement and blame America's rightwing for the tragedy.
The following day, Paul Krugman wrote a column, titled "Climate of hate," in which he blamed the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on right-wingers. "You could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again," Krugman wrote. Sure, there has been heated resistance from the right, but what about the eight years of President George W. Bush's term? Was there no hate then? For those of you unfamiliar with Krugman's work in The New York Times, his seething disdain for Bush could only be equaled by his obsessive love of Keynesian economics.
There is a general lapse in memory about the endless hatred toward the Bush administration by those pointing fingers at the right. MSNBC talk show host Keith Olbermann claimed Bush "sided with the terrorists," was guilty of "stupidity" and "treason," and was a "fascist." While Olbermann is often decried as an extreme voice from the left, he was not the only one to make comparisons between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany. Al Gore said that media was often intimidated by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's "rapid-response digital Brown Shirts," in reference to the militant thugs who aided Hitler's rise to power. Apparently Krugman is only threatened by Glenn Beck's comparison of Obama to Hitler; when Olbermann does it to Bush, his statements are described as "caustic remarks and mockery."
Much blame has been laid on Sarah Palin for the shooting, particularly because of her statement, "Commonsense Conservatives and Lovers of America: Don't retreat, Instead - Reload!" Apparently some liberals do not understand metaphors. Does anyone really believe Palin was telling people to shoot political opponents rather than to persevere and try again? I will be sure in the future to avoid terms like "political jousting" and
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