Saturday morning, a hail of bullets took the lives of five Americans, including a federal judge and a nine year old girl. 19 others were injured, including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. For most, Saturday was a day of tragedy – a day of reflection. Well, Saturday morning, at any rate. By Saturday afternoon, the left-wing brain trust had shifted into high gear. By Sunday, every tired, worn out, leftist mouthpiece, from Jane Fonda to MoveOn.org, had shuffled down from their lofty intellectual perches, determined to educate the masses. Their hypothesis was obvious to anyone smart enough to comprehend it. Clearly, the Arizona bloodbath was the end result of two years dominated by conservative vitriol, hatred, and “elevated rhetoric.”
It’s an assertion that left wing luminaries have made before, most memorably when New York City Mayor Bloomberg told Katie Couric that the Times Square bomber was probably a white male Tea Partier, likely disenchanted with Obamacare. He was later forced to eat those words when the would-be terrorist turned out to be a Muslim extremist. Still, he had exposed a truth: the left has been desperate for a situation that will allow them to hang a crazed killer around the neck of the Tea Party. With Arizona gunman Jared Loughner, they seem to feel that their ship has finally come in.
In order to make Loughner work as their right-wing poster child, all they have to do is deny reality and ignore their own history.
First of all, the idea of Loughner as the consummate tea-partier is laughable. The left has always described the Tea Party movement as a collection of under-educated, flag-waving weirdos who ineptly fetishize freedom, American exceptionalism, and the Constitution. A quick look at the killer’s MySpace and YouTube pages reveals an image of a barely coherent madman, fascinated by flag burning, Mein Kampf, and the Communist Manifesto. His classmates have described him as “anti-flag” and a “Left-wing Pothead.” In fact, he was arrested in 2008 on misdemeanor drug charges. Somehow, because he made some vague, rambling statement about the gold standard, we’re supposed to ignore his previous arrest, turn a blind eye to the flag burning, forget about his love of fascist and communist literature, and accept the Loughner-as-conservative fallacy?
Well, yes, apparently we are. If we don’t, the left will have trouble moving on to the next phase of their plan: controlling political speech in the media.
Only two days after the violence in Arizona, Rep. Robert Bradley (D-Pa) has announced that he will introduce a bill designed to protect members of Congress from “language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official.” The exact meaning of “could be perceived” has not been pinned down, but perhaps we can look to the past for some examples.
During the Bush administration, MoveOn.org made waves multiple times by comparing President George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler. Their rhetoric hit its Zenith when the George Soros funded group released and advertisement which stated “A nation warped by lies, lies fuel fear, fear fuels aggression, invasion, occupation. What were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003.” The spot featured images of marching Nazis, juxtaposed with reddened images of George Bush and Adolph Hitler.
The group also raised the specter of left-wing spite with their infamous “General Betrayus” newspaper ad, which directed the organization’s caustic gaze at General David Patraeus. Most recently, they made headlines when one of their supporters was caught on film attacking, assaulting, and choking a Conservative opponent – ironically in the district held by Gabrielle Giffords.
Apparently, Move On has forgotten about all of this, since they’ve just begun a petition to put an end to such language. Those who sign agree to “call for an end to all overt and implied appeals to violence in American politics. We must debate, not hate.” How nice that they’ve seen the error of their ways.
In a similar situation is Democrat luminary Jane Fonda, who, Saturday evening, declared that the hateful rhetoric of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin lead to the tragedy in Arizona. According to the actress, irresponsible speech had a direct influence upon Loughner, and all but caused him to end the lives of innocent Americans. Fonda is, of course, is no stranger to such language. Her 1972 trip to Hanoi and her subsequent speeches, loom large in American political history.
While in North Viet Nam, Fonda posed for enemy propaganda photos atop the very artillery being used to kill American military personnel and issued several false statements claiming that U.S. POWs were being treated humanely. When those POWs began to return home after nearly a decade of captivity and torture, Fonda lashed out at them with all the hatred shoe could muster.
She called the returning soldier’s claims of abuse “laughable,” adding that “These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed.” Later, she argued that their claims of torture were fabricated by “military careerists and professional killers” that were “trying to make themselves look self-righteous. But they are criminals according to law.” She urged the country not to treat them as heroes.
These days, Fonda evidently sees such language as unacceptable and, more importantly, a dangerous problem that needs to be dealt with. Since she’s stated her belief that the political opinions of Beck and Palin were directly responsible for the deaths in Arizona, can we assume that she believes her rhetoric during the Viet Nam war was directly responsible for the torture and deaths of U.S. servicemen?
If national Democrats are truly interested in eliminating the “elevated rhetoric” they so despise, they need to stop trying to control conservative speech, and start looking within their own ranks. Of course it’s something they’ll never actually undertake, since this is all just an obvious excuse to use a violent tragedy to quiet their opposition. Even if they were working in earnest, if they managed to reign in organizations like MoveOn.org and The Daily Kos, or prominent left-wing crazies like Fonda and Michael Moore, they’d still have to deal with their own commander in chief.
After all, it’s Barack Obama who famously said of his opponents “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
Good thing there’s no implied violence or “elevated rhetoric” there.
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