Posted on 01/09/2011 11:42:35 AM PST by Second Amendment First
Language has an effect. Violent political encounters have an effect. The link of the use of guns with patriotism and morality has an effect. Expressions like "targeting" and "in the crosshairs" evokes images of shooting to kill. The murder of a liberal leader in Pakistan seemed far away. Now it's here days later. Given all the death threats, it was almost inevitable. Gabby Giffords was in the crosshairs.
Republicans will say it was just the work of some crazy. Hardly. Even crazies get their ideas from somewhere. Violent political encounters and the language of violence activate the idea of violence. Ideas are physically there in the brain. People act on what is in their brains.
Keith Olbermann is right. And it's not just Palin and Beck. The Republicans who benefited from violent political confrontations and cross-hair language, who did not speak out and use their influence forcefully against it, bear full responsibility. Whatever John Boehner now says, he bears responsibility.
The tea party leaders gave explicit instructions on how to angrily disrupt public political meetings. Tea party rallies not only displayed violent signs, but rally leaders did not discourage them, and hence tacitly approved them.
As conservatives like to say, you bear the responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
This was tea party murder.
We should not shrink from calling it that.
Is this Obama’s Reichstag Fire? It sure looks like the Commie Lefties were poised to pounce on this one. Did they arrange the massacre, too? Two can play at this game of speculative invective. Hmmmmm, Georgie?
The “last word(s)” ...
I was Born in 1960, so I hardly qualify as a “boomer” ...
Moreover, few but the most rebellious of my contemporaries would have entertained the vile actions regularly engaged in by those of the present generation. We at least gave the appearance of respect to our superiors... and they in turn made no bones about putting us in “our place” if we stepped out of line. Fathers and Mothers did not think them selves in the capacity of acting as a “friend” to their children ... Oh, sure enough, they were “Mom” and “Dad,” but infinitely more certain, they were PARENTS—and the final AUTHORITY, which you best did not challenge.
It was not until the advent of Dr. Benjamin Spock, and his fellow travelers, that insubordination against parents—and all other rightful authority—became the institutional norm.
Today, everything of our culture is inverted. As the saying goes: “the inmates now run the asylum.” That may not be 100 percent of the cases, but it is approaching that apogee in ever-increasing degrees of boldness—aided and abetted by the state.
Denial is not a river in Egypt.
Your refusal to acknowledge the extent of the problem and its obvious symptoms does not make it any less real, and exemplifies why the devaluation of our society continues unabated and grows more destructive.
“Just observing you engaging in the same inane behavior that the bitter old have been engaging in since the dawn of time”
Really? So then you have lived for all those centuries to realize the inclinations of the “bitter old” by way of your own first-hand experience?
“Dumbass”?
Now, is that the best your intellect could manage?
Since you are wont to compete, you first need to master an English lesson: “Dumbass” is spelled “dumb ass” — two separate words. Go it?
Much like the shooter, liberals know the damage they will cause to innocent people.
They just don’t care. They have the lap dog media there to blame it on George Bush.
The whole AZ shooting is an affront to law and order for ALL Americans.
In all fairness, he did get some of the baseball scores right back when he was on ESPN.
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