The Tucson shooting has consumed me all this past week. I’ve wrestled with whether or not
Sarah Palin and the army of right-wing, propagandists are responsible in some way for the tragedy. After thinking about it for a week I’ve concluded that, though they are not directly responsible in a legal sense, I believe they are indirectly responsible in a spiritual sense. Their wreckless rhetoric has contributed to the atmosphere of hate and distrust for anyone who disagrees with them.

In the same way that they make connections with Karl Marx to Barack Obama over socialism, we can make the same kinds of connections from Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to Jared Loughner over hate speech. Can you imagine who Rush Limbaugh would blame for the shooting if the victim would have been a Republican?

They have stoked the fires of hate for Democrats, liberals of all stripes and the Government with their inflammatory, over-the-top rhetoric on a thousand radio stations all across the nation.

Sarah Palin said in print and at a live appearance "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" She posted on her Facebook page a "target" map showing the districts of Gabrielle Giffords and other House Democrats in a rifle's cross hairs. Then, she appears on her tv show/campaign commercial looking through the crosshairs of a rifle, shooting a caribou. Just a few months earlier Congresswoman Gifford’s office doors were shot out after her vote for the Healthcare Bill. Giffords was clearly targeted and the animus was out there, boiling in a black cauldron of hate with fires stoked by right-wing leaders, talkers and commenters. Many of whom, talked of “Second Amendment Remedies”.

Just a few weeks ago I truly believed that Sarah Palin could become our next President. If they could put George W. Bush in the Whitehouse they could certainly put Sarah Palin in there. Now, I think it would be impossible because of political ads that could connect her to the Tucson shootings through the gun sight images she has so proudly used. Connect that to the carnage in Tucson and her own words and you have a biased, but effective ad campaign. She couldn’t get elected dog-catcher now.

At a rally a few months ago in Washington DC they carried signs that said, “I came unarmed...THIS TIME!” and “Where’s my gun?”. On Glenn Beck’s website comments are so over-the-top with hateful rhetoric I won’t quote them here for fear they would target me, too.

And, what has the Left done? They certainly have not tried to inspire people to take up arms and shoot people. The worst of the far left are the Anarchists. They have burned cars in a car dealership, they have set animals free in an animal research laboratory and they have rioted so they can loot. It’s just not the same as encouraging people to violence because our President has a “Deep-seated hatred of white people” and is destroying our nation as Beck has said.

Even, though they deny any responsibility for the tragedy in Tucson, they have indeed dialed back the rhetoric. Palin took down the map with the crosshairs on it and every conservative pundit from Pat Buchanan to Charles Krauthammer approved of Obama’s speech at the memorial service for the victims.

So, they have done what I have always wanted them to do: dial back the rhetoric a little bit so as not to inspire some loony-tune to go out and shoot someone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/10/AR201101...

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/who-is-jared-lee-loughner

http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/01/17/2236224/eugene-robinson-palins-egoce...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/sarah-palin-fumbles-and-f_b_8083...