On June 5, 1968, a deranged 25-year-old Jordanian named Sirhan Sirhan slithered through a crowd toward Sen. Robert Kennedy as the Democratic presidential candidate basked in the glow of his California presidential primary triumph. Sirhan shot and killed Kennedy, wounding several others. The ensuing investigation showed that Sirhan was a raging anti-Semite who’d become fixated on Senator Kennedy because of the latter’s support for Israel.
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Two people profoundly impressed by the assassination were the terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. In 1974, they dedicated their own communist manifesto, Prairie Fire, to Sirhan, hailing him — among a cast of violent radicals — as a courageous political prisoner. In the book itself, they and the rest of the Weathermen went on to identify themselves proudly as “communist women and communist men underground in the United States” who were determined to lead a violent leftist revolution — a “fight [to] seize power and build the new society.” Their rhetoric, their heedless dehumanization of those they maligned as ideological “enemies,” was coupled with acts of horrific violence, including a plot to mass-murder U.S. soldiers in Fort Dix, a plot that went awry when the nail bomb accidentally exploded during construction, killing some of the terrorists.
This history is one the modern Left, in which Ayers and Dohrn remain icons, would rather you’d forget today. Today, instead, is for politicizing the wanton savagery of another deranged radical, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, who stunned the nation by slithering through a Tucson crowd and unleashing a 31-shot fusillade, gravely wounding his primary target, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. In the spree, Loughner also killed six people: nine-year-old Christina Green; three elderly Arizonans, Dorothy Morris, Dorwin Stoddard, and Phyllis Schneck; John M. Roll, Arizona’s chief federal district judge; and Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide to Representative Giffords. Two other legislative aides, Pamela Simon and Ron Barber, were wounded.
Already, we have learned a great deal about the assassin. He is a deeply disturbed pot-head. In order to give meaning to the addling emptiness of his life, he turned to the anti-Semitic rants of Adolph Hitler, Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the occult, and what appears to have been an obsession with Representative Giffords, a Jewish congresswoman and supporter of Israel. Some acquaintances and schoolmates who’d endured his tirades over the years predicted he’d come to an end just like this.
Nevertheless, the instantaneous reaction of the hard Left, President Obama’s base, was to politicize the Tucson atrocity as a natural, an inevitable, result of conservative ideology, enthusiasm for immigration-law enforcement and gun ownership by law-abiding Americans, and dissent from Obama’s policies — Giffords, a centrist Democrat (indeed, a former Republican) having supported Obamacare and amnesty for illegal aliens.
Mr. McCarthy, the debate is certainly not worth having when one's ostensible opponent cherry picks his villains - and his facts, as you have done. Apparently, according to you, those who murder abortion doctors are not conservatives, just lunatics. Or so I can only surmise, as you fail to so much as acknowledge their existence in your piece. By not admitting that even a few on your side take things way too far, you undermine your entire argument. All you are left saying is "we the right are good and pure in our principles and methods, and the left is bad and devious". Not exactly a promising launching point for a debate.
To be able to think cogently and write intelligently as an Arizonian zone of terror is reported as something it is not, is a gift. Said gift honors our deceased and wounded fellow Americans as well as their families. Thank you.
This may be the most perceptive article I've read about the left's use of the shooting. The frustration of dealing with political opponents who will do or say anything to gain political advantage is intense.
I've also been struck by the way that even the most seemingly reasonable of leftist commentators has conveniently forgotten the relentless stream of hateful "rhetoric" aimed at George W. Bush for eight years. Talk about a "climate of hatred"! I refuse to send that information down the memory hole.
Perhaps, while the Left is agitating for an end to right-wing talk radio and new gun control laws, the right might seize this opportunity to agitate for re-criminalizing possession and use of marijuana, and to bring back the institutionalizing of the chronically mentally ill.
Perhaps, while the left seizes on this opportunity to agitate for putting an end to right-wing talk radio and more gun control, the right might take this opportunity to seek more institutionalization of the chronically mentally ill and re-criminalizing possession and use of marijuana.
Directly below this piece is Mona Charen's piece entitled, "Contemptible Opportunists," with the tag line, "The conversation we should be having is about treating the mentally ill."
I am all for that, but it rings a slightly different bell for me: "the conversation we should be having."
What conversation should we be having?
Let's stipulate that Loughner wasn't incited AT ALL by the "vitriol" that Sheriff Dubnik referred to. After the Right calms down and stops complaining that the Left made a connection that simply isn't there, what about that vitriol? How come everyone knew who the Sheriff was talking about, if so many of you think there's as much vitriol on the Left as on the Right?
The conversation we ought to be having is about the utility of framing every issue as an existential threat to our nation.
Further, I am sick and tired of the bad faith argument. Sheriff Dupnik's a 75 year old geezer who probably thinks more about retirement than anything else. There's no reason to believe he said what he said except for a heartfelt belief that what he said is true.
It's just as convenient for liberals to take the Janeane Garofalo/John Dean line and dismiss everyone on the Right as a bunch of warped wackos without consciences. However, it's useless not to assume the good faith of people who don't share your philosophy. You don't state a case if your adversary isn't open to hear you in the first place -- you're merely talking to yourselves.
Well said Mr. McCarthy, well said. This is the best piece yet on the subject. Now all conservative need to read this and understand state these same facts over and over again. Don't debate, instead educate.
The reason "everyone knew who the Sherriff was talking about" was that he specifically accused the Tea Party. Had he not done so, we would not be having this conversation.
As for his heartfelt belief that what he said was true, publicly accusing your political foes of suborning mass murder before an investigation has even begun is not something a competent law enforcement officer does, regardless of his heartfelt beliefs.
And it is your pretense not to know or understand these points that leads others to question your good faith.
The reason we know what was meant is because the media and left wing political elites (yeah I know - probably the same people) have spent the last 2 years talking about it, even though all their assertions were false.
This guy was a nut. Actually sounds like a left wing nut. A 9/11 truther and an anti-semite and a communist. So I will blame Pelosi, Krugman and Olberman. Go tell them to settle down.
We knew who Sheriff Dupnik was referring to because he use the same old, tired, worn out "code" (yes, the Left speaks in "code" that's why they accuse the Right of doing it) always used by the Left to refer to talk radio in general and Limbaugh in particular. He just didn't have the integrity to name names. Dishonesty is the foundation of "bad faith."
The Lefts first premise is that when anyone on the Right reveals what is actually happening; that is, by definition, vitriolic speech. Their goal is not to promote "civil" Free Speech but to shut Free Speech down. That is operating in "bad faith."
I don't dismiss everyone on the Left. I only dismiss the ones that identify themselves, by their own words and actions, as opponents of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Mike, you still haven't explained exactly what your argument is. If rhetoric is dire, but defensible (i.e., arguably true, or flowing logically from views held by large segments of the population), should we refrain voluntarily from that rhetoric? Should it be banned? If so, what do we do when a true danger emerges?
Or does your argument apply only to rhetoric that's demonstrably false? In that case, who decides?
You keep posting complaints and snarky asides, but I don't think I've seen you post anything about what you would do about it, if you were congress-for-a-day.
We as "THE PEOPLE"need to stop letting the politics and media influence us and divide us.We are Americans. Our Dads,Moms,Brothers and Sisters have fought side by side to protect our country and now we are letting a force divide us.If we are divided we will fall. Why are we allowing so much hate to grow. We can not hate people just because we have different views. PLEASE don't let this grow!!! I do not hate my political opposites but we have to learn to work together. I love My Country and my fellow American, But there are some in this country who are trying to take us down.I call all Americans to Stand up and say this is our country and we will not let you take it away from us or our kids. In war or a disaster we are all People trying to help each other.Now is the time to do the same. We all suffered a loss in Arizona and We are all hurting for it. May God be with the people who lost loved ones and May God Bless our awesome Country
Certainly, Loughner is not directly connected to any specific political persuasion. His preferred reading list included both nazis and communists. He is mentally ill.
Maybe what is scariest about the whole situation is not how close he is to one of our political parties, but how close our political dialogue has gotten to him.
Loughner is certainly not motivated by any particular political party. His preferred reading list includes both nazis and communists. He is mentally ill and thereby not bound by common sense and logic.
Maybe what scares us most about this issue is not how close loughner is to one party or the other. May it has much more to do with houw close our entire political dialogue has come to him.
Honor killings have been the work of many hands, among them, Bill Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s.
Just as deranged as their murderous actions were for the honor of communism and its triumph over capitalism by contriving revolution and mayhem in the midst of middle-class prosperity as is a Mohammedan’s slaying of his daughter in reprimand for her having laid longing eyes on a tribe other than her own, the honor of our enemies does have its singular virtue of repulsiveness in its manifest insanity fixated on all that is antithetical to what our Western way of life stands for, thus identifying who we have to fight and defeat.
Give McCarthy credit - he threw everything but the kitchen sink into his inarticulate argument. A deranged 22-year old AMERICAN shoots a bunch of people in TUCSON, and McCarthy still manages to bring up Bill Ayers and Islam!! Why did he leave out Rev Wright?? Sirhan Sirhan was an Egyptian that opposed Israel - he may or may not have been an anti-Semite. Anti-Israel does not make one an anti-Semite - McCarthy and other neo-cons don't seem to know that.
I'll agree that the Left often speaks in code; the Right does not, which is why people and politicians should disassociate themselves from unsavoury characters like Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and Malkin. The Right needs to show that they will challenge Obama's agenda in an articulate way, with alternative strategies for governing - not "birthers" wondering where Obama was born, bringing up Bill Ayers and Rev Wright, or egging people toward violence. The 2012 election is there for the Right - you need to find the right person to articulate the path forward. Not the current crazies that you are lining up behind now.
To Allesnarf on "who decides". Free people of reason who defend individual rights. Only their opinion on what is right and wrong is considerable. All others only serve to push an agenda of slavery over those who are free and reasonable. to South Paw: the words and actions of all confessed leftists are by definition in opposition to "life liberty and the persuit of happiness". And to A Burton, those who murder wantonly cannot, by virtue of their ultimate violation of the victim's right to life, be labled as individualists or "right wingers" as you call them. One only has to look at the nature of other confessed "leftists" or "collectivists" of history to know their motives ie; Stalin, Pol-Pot, Sadam Huesein. To all the above: Do your homework. History is the road map.
1. Yes, some things shouldn't be said even if they're true. No rhetoric should be banned but a lot should be shunned. My argument is that raising real issues to the level of existential threats incites a small but dangerous fringe and deludes much larger segment of the population with reasoning skills far less powerful than yours to stop thinking.*
2. Please keep asking whether things are true.
3. I am here in good faith, and I assume you are too.
* I encourage you to visit the online comments to stories posted by any mid-size city's newspaper (Quad Cities size, not LA or NY). I do so almost daily. I assure you, you will find that there is no Left-Right equivalence when it comes to vitriol.
