Being a promoter of self-critical leftism compels me to say something about how to assign blame for the shooting in Arizona. The first obvious piece of advice I’d give leftists is simple: Wait for the facts to emerge. It is perfectly natural to want to blame the opposition when someone in your party is shot, but there’s no guarantee that someone from the opposition did it or that they were even influenced by the opposition. Not many wanted to wait, and they now look awfully stupid, with the only redeeming feature of the situation being that because they control our media, they are not likely to suffer much. Oddly enough, this was their own advice regarding the Fort Hood shooter; they encouraged people not to be hasty in making judgments about his motives.
The second piece of advice is to be consistent and fair. As many on the right have noted, to blame the shooting on inflammatory rhetoric from the right would mean that the left, together with their allies (reactionary Muslims), should be blamed for the Fort Hood shooter because of their constant, vitriolic, anti-American rhetoric. (In fact, they should be blamed for 9/11 also, by this sort of reasoning.) The left, of course, refuses to accept any blame for anything, but this is not exactly to their credit. No one on the left (or the right) is perfect, and it is hardly likely that they are free from all blame. If harsh political rhetoric from the right is supposed to be the cause of this sort of incident, then it stands to reason that the left’s own harsh political rhetoric is the cause of similar incidents. To pretend that one’s own side is always free from blame is childish. It’s like a sports fan who can never acknowledge that the referee has made a good call against their team.
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01/11/2011
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It's time to stop trying to reason with the liberal elites dabbling in this madness. Since they're not thinking rationally here, there's no reason they'll compromise rationally in political discussion.
http://reformaliberal.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/busting-ours-to-kick-yours/
Posted by: b5blue | 01/12/2011 at 04:56 AM
Good post. The thing that frustrates me the most about all of this is that we just went through eight years of flat-out assassination fantasies directed towards Bush, and NOW there's a climate of hate? There's such a shocking lack of self-awareness here I'm not sure what to think about it. Do they not realize they're applying blatant double standards? Do they not remember the vitriol directed towards Bush? How could anyone be so out of it to not realize these things? And assuming that they don't realize them is the kindest thing we can say, since the alternative is that they are dishonest and using a tragedy to score political points while knowing it's inappropriate.
Posted by: Jim S. | 01/12/2011 at 12:17 PM
Yes, I absolutely agree. The best I can make of it is they don't understand the power they hold. When I was a more or less orthodox leftist, I thought the left had no power, but as my position slowly shifted, I realized that the left had quite a bit of power. I posted about this a while back.
Posted by: John Pepple | 01/12/2011 at 12:59 PM
Thanks.
Adding to your comment, would the leftists making these delirious false charges also argue that we should try to reason with Loughter now that he has revealed himself?
Absolutely not.
...why, then, should we reason and compromise with leftists with similar delusional thought processes?
Screw compromise. We need to vote in solid fiscally conservative gov'ts and let the real leftist whining begin.
Posted by: b5blue | 01/13/2011 at 03:22 AM
I'd also like to see a more neutral MSM.
Posted by: John Pepple | 01/13/2011 at 10:15 AM