One of the states "targeted" by the DailyKos, below, is Arizona. Oh no... DID PROGRESSIVES CAUSE THE SHOOTING OF REP. GIFFORDS BY RELEASING SUCH A HATE FILLED AND VIOLENT MAP?? As if this isn't PROOF ENOUGH THAT PROGRESSIVES ADVOCATE VIOLENCE, the DailyKos has also previously published a story suggesting violence against Speaker Pelosi [b]:
The DailyKos also couldn't help themselves from "targeting" Rep. Giffords in the past, either [b]:
SHOULD THE DAILYKOS AND THE ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR VIOLENT RHETORIC AND APPARENT ADVOCACY OF MURDERING THOSE WITH DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW??
Um, no. They should not be, because "target" maps and the like aren't violent rhetoric. They are illustrations using a phrase which Americans understand to mean that the Congressional seat is up for grabs and deserves more focus than the other races. This just goes to show how one-sided the media is and how stupid the political discussion in this country has become. The story here is that a Congresswoman was shot, and others around her were murdered - there is absolutely no excuse for this in the United States.
To that end, I formally petition God for a miracle - complete recovery for Rep. Giffords and the others injured, and for her prompt return to Congress. Godspeed, and good luck.
- TBP
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Original post
While the rest of the press and blogs are busy immediately assuming that the gunman who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) in the head earlier today and killed several others is somehow affiliated with the Tea Party, conservatism, Constitutionalism, etc., purely because she happens to be a Democrat, I believe that it is much, much more important to make a point based on actual facts. That said, I would like to begin very clearly with the following statement:
There is absolutely no excuse for violence of any sort against any member of Congress (or anyone else for that matter), regardless of political affiliation. A functioning Republic demands the ultimate in individual responsibility - action on your frustrations is to be taken to the ballot box and nowhere else.
The shooting of Rep. Giffords and of the crowd around her is absolutely deplorable. My prayers go out to her family and I sincerely wish her and the other injured a speedy recovery. With any luck, Rep. Giffords will eventually return to her elected position and continue representing the People of Arizona's Eighth Congressional district.
If, after a fair trial, the suspect Jared Lee Loughner is found to be guilty by a jury of his peers, he should be swiftly executed for his crimes. There is no room for leniency in a crime of this magnitude.
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I had not intended to write anything more than a simple statement of condolences about today's shooting, but unfortunately, the press is busy attempting to paint the shooter as some sort of crazed, Rush Limbaugh-listening right-wing nutbag without having even a single shred of evidence to suggest that this is the case. Just so we're clear, if the suspect were in fact a right-wing nutbag, my condemnation of him would be exactly the same as it is now. This man is in no part representative of anyone but himself.
I am actually quite surprised to see the amount of stories cropping up on the internet suggesting that Rep. Giffords' shooting was motivated by the Tea Party or some other right-leaning faction:
- Rep. Giffords' own father, when asked if she had any enemies responded, "Yeah - the whole Tea Party." [1]
The DailyKos, in suggesting an introductory paragraph the President might use in a speech, writes,
When political opponents are demonized and political disagreement is discussed in terms more appropriate to war, unstable individuals like [the Arizona shooter] are encouraged to act in violent ways. When political opponents, like Sarah Palin, use gunsights and 'targets' to identify politicians they disagree with, they must be held morally responsible for the violence such over-heated rhetoric causes [2].The DailyKos article goes on to say,
What we're going to be saturated with for the next week or so are the inevitable false equivalencies. We'll hear, for instance, how there are "nuts on both sides." Undeniably true. But there is no ubiquitous liberal - much less, left-wing - network of talk-radio stations spouting Two Minutes' Hate [note: this is a reference to 1984 - the "two-minutes hate" was used by the gigantic government "The Party" to indoctrinate the people - not exactly in line with small government Tea Partiers] 24/7. The collective voice of the right wing on radio and the Internet with its coded and uncoded calls to violence, of "2nd Amendment remedies," of cross hairs superimposed on states and on individuals simply has no visible counterpart on the left. When the right discusses the violent left, it must seek overseas examples or something from decades ago in America's past [3].Paul Krugman of the New York Times has also blamed the shooting on conservatives without offering any evidence for his assumptions whatsoever [4]:
We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.
Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing.
You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.Eugene Robinson, of the Washington Post, makes the assertion:
But today, I think we can say incontrovertibly, that violent political rhetoric and the threat of political violence in this country comes almost exclusively from the right [5].
The Center for American Progress [6] and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow [7] seem to suggest that Sarah Palin's PAC using a graphic with crosshairs over several Congressional districts across the country implied that SarahPAC was recruiting some sort of secret army to assassinate twenty sitting Congressmen. Maddow's blog also suggests that Rep. Giffords' opponent Jesse Kelly's M15 machine gun shoot event during the campaign season may have had something to do with today's tragedy. Evidently, Progressives must believe that Kelly used SarahPAC's secret army to kidnap sitting Congressmen to use as targets for the event - the handcuffs and chairs he used to strap the Congressmen kidnapped from SarahPAC's twenty districts, however, must have been made in China, because it appears that Kelly's event had to use paper targets. Who would have guessed:
To her credit, Maddow also updated her original post with the following statement:
ADDING: As several commenters have noted, there's no indication that the alleged shooter was politically motivated. Even if the perpetrator turns out to have been seriously involved in political causes, which again there's no evidence of, his actions will likely remain senseless. What we can say is that today's shooting, whatever its motivation, comes after an election season that was marked by the language of violence, like Sharron Angle's call for Second Amendment remedies. And so today's literal violence in a political context will inevitably raise questions about the effect of violent rhetoric.My praise of Maddow was short-lived, however, as she concludes her "no political motivation" update by suggesting that the "violence" of the last election cycle (i.e. Sharron Angle mentioning the 2nd Amendment as a remedy against governmental tyranny) may have played a role.
Does anyone else remember the 10-10 ad campaign advising that children who do not agree with radical environmentalism should be murdered [8] [9]? How about when Keith Olbermann suggested murdering Hillary Clinton in a room to end the 2008 Democratic primaries [10]? (Olbermann has apologized for the comment.) What about Frances Fox Piven's recent call for a violent revolution [11]? The violence in Europe recently has all been fueled by Socialists angry over austerity measures [12] [13]. Some idiot even threw himself over a balcony in the Romanian parliament in protest of governmental reduction of social welfare benefits [14]. To top it, French Communists have published a manifesto which specifically discusses violent revolution - the manifesto has become popular among the far left and the far right in the United States and offers advice to pursue radical communism, which includes the annihilation of the Police [15] [16].
So we're clear, Loughner did leave some quasi-political comments both in writing and on video. The only statements he made which might suggest a motive were [17]:
I know who's listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen (sic).and,
Firstly, the current government officials are in power for their currency, but I'm informing you for your new currency! If you're treasurer of a new money system, then you're responsible for the distributing of a new currency. We now know - the treasurer for a new money system, is the distributor of the new currency. As a result, the people approve a new money system which is promising new information that's accurate, and we truly believe in a new currency. Above all, you have your new currency, listener?and,
You don't allow the government to control your grammar structure, listener?and,
I didn't write a belief on my Army application, and the recruiter wrote on the application: None.and,
The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America's Constitution. You don't have to accept the federalist laws. Nonetheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.and,
If property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution then the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and the laws.
The property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution.
Thus, the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and the laws.
In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the government because of the ratifications: The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.
No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver!
No! I won't trust in God!
What's government if words don't have meaning?
I know what you're thinking: But he mentioned CONSTITUTION!!! HE'S A TEA PARTIER!!!
Right...
Based on the quotes listed above, Loughner is apparently a braindead atheistic moron who is concerned with government mind control, loss of both private and government ownership of land, fiat currency, non-acceptance of Federalism, and reading the "second United States Constitution," whatever that is. Yep - he sounds like the typical God-fearing, free thinking Christian that accepts Federalism and the first United States Constitution and thinks that government has no place in ownership of land in the first place!
If we really want to boil down what political persuasion Loughner actually might take an interest in, one need only look at his list of "favorite books" on his YouTube page [18]:
Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.The first several are largely pulled from any high school summer reading list - who hasn't read Fahrenheit 451, The Odyssey, or The Old Man and the Sea? The insight into what Loughner really might believe regarding political philosophy is found in the books,
The Communist Manifesto - Written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as the modern incarnation of communal living, i.e. Communism.
Mein Kampf - Written by Adolf Hitler. While Hitler took many political positions through his years, mainly to side with whatever was popular at the moment, he wound up being the principle figure of the Nazi Party - the National Socialists. Far from being a right-leaning ideology, as we're so often told by Progressives, Nazism was about gigantic, oppressive government. Not exactly in line with the limited government motives of the Tea Partiers. Nazism was clearly a religion on the left side of the spectrum (if you assume that the extreme of the left side is totalitarianism and the extreme to the right side is anarchy), as it tended more towards extreme government rather than no government.
The Republic - Written by Plato. This is the first book that describes a Communist-esque system run by philosophers as the "ideal" system [19]. Ultimately, Marx and Engels likely lifted material thinking from Plato in founding modern-day Communism.
None of the books listed are popular with Tea Partiers. Loughner never mentions the Tea Party, talk radio, Republicans, or Constitutionalism. But - the three political books that he lists as "favorites" all enshrine Communism.
If there is an answer to be had, I believe we have it.
In love of liberty,
The Bulletproof Patriot
Update (10:53pm): Apparently, a former classmate of Loughner's said [20] that he was "a political radical," and "left wing, quite liberal." If this actually turns out to be true, I certainly am not going to be blaming Progressives for this idiot's actions. He is responsible for himself. I wonder how many corrections will be made to the "Tea Party" labeling?
Update (11:07pm): According to CNN, Rep. Giffords offered her support to Arizona SB 1070 [21], and although she may have disagreed with some of its methods, she ultimately supported sending the National Guard to the border [22]. However, she also voted for the DREAM act [23], which would have legalized the children of illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. after birth (even though when those "children" turned 18, they chose to violate US law by continuing to be present in the United States unlawfully).
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