For the sake of this discussion, let’s stipulate that Loughner was a “lone nutjob” who had never listened to Glenn Beck or been a card-carrying member of either the Tea or Communist parties. Let’s also face another tragedy: The only two civic reforms that might have actually stopped him — tighter gun control and an effective mental health safety net — won’t materialize even now.
As the president said in Tucson, we lack not just civil discourse, but honest discourse. Much of last week’s televised bloviation was dishonest, dedicated to the pious, feel-good sentiment that both sides are equally culpable for the rage of the past two years. To construct this false equivalency, every left-leaning Web site and Democratic politician’s record was dutifully culled for incendiary invective. If that’s the standard, then both sides are equally at fault — rhetoric can indeed be as violent on the left as on the right.
I have never killed or injured anyone with my keyboard. I seriously doubt that anything I have ever written has shoved some loon off the edge to where he went out and killed people.
Give me a forum like FOXPAC or Hate Radio and maybe that would change. Can you see everyone in the country getting fired up over due process and holding those in power accountable for their crimes and and taking to the streets over liberty and justice for all?
Neither can I. Maybe one or two crazed guys with unicorn horns.
Hate and fear work so much better.
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