[livius]

But the strange thing was the reaction of Linder's parents. A gentle-looking aging couple, they were widely interviewed in the ensuing months. In these interviews, nothing of the normal response to the death of an offspring was visible -- no grief, no regret, no longing. Instead, the smiling Linders simply sat repeating revolutionary slogans and accusing the Reagan administration of responsibility for their son's death.

I remember this. The author is right: leftists subsume everything into politics. That's how it was possible for the Communists to get family members to turn each other in, refuse to support each other, etc. If you violate the creed of Communism, no family relationship matters and can protect you. Or if your death can be perceived of as being useful to Communism, again, no family relationship matters and can protect your death from being exploited.

It was quite creepy that Gifford's father would come out and make such an idiotic statement, even allowing for what must have been his shock and horror at the moment. Why is politics always the first thing in the liberal mind?

A big slogan of the left in the 1960s was that the "personal is the political," and that is clearly embedded in the minds of modern leftists, even theoretically moderate ones.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Apparently Rep. Gifford’s father is unable to distinguish between a political opponent and a lunatic who wants to blow your head off. I am sure that she was asked much more pointed and heated questions at Town Halls than the one that Loughner asked, yet none of those people ever tried to harm her. In her father’s defense he has to be absolutely beside himself with grief.