Paul Hair: On Toning Down The Rhetoric

The right should be commended for responding vigorously to the baseless accusations that the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and conservatives in general inspired Jared Loughner to go on a shooting rampage that left six people dead and fourteen wounded. Yet the fact that this defense of conservatives had to occur at all is beyond disturbing.

There were two critical points that immediately sprang to my mind when I saw the left predictably blame the right for Loughner’s murderous rampage. I know that Rush Limbaugh has touched on these points and others may have as well. However, I want to offer my own take and explain why these points are so critical, and why it should be clear now that the differences between the left and right are irreconcilable.

The first critical point is that this is the latest example of a string of incidents over the past two years or so where someone who committed national-level violence (and who can more closely be identified with the left than the right) was said to be a conservative—or influenced by conservatives—and thus “proof” that conservatives are dangerous. Similar accusation were made about Joe Stack, John Patrick Bedell, James Von Brunn, Michael Enright, and Clay Duke.

The second critical point follows on the heels of the first. If the response to Loughner’s bloodbath is the kind of two-minute hate that the left drums up against the right when a leftist goes on a murderous rampage, what is going to happen once someone who truly can be identified with the right actually does do something violent that captures national attention? The answer is that the left will set in motion the process of complete criminalization of any opposition to the left.

These critical points combine to underscore the absolute danger that faces our nation. The mainstream left has become so insane that it now can have one of its own go on a murderous rampage, then shamelessly blame the right for it in the face of overwhelming evidence, and then use that obvious lie to call for an end to any opposition to leftism. The left is so far gone that it is even willing to make up “hate” in order to “prove” how bad the right is. This is frightening stuff.

Some may note that it is unfair to call Loughner a leftist. People have pointed out that while Loughner can more easily be identified as on the left than the right, he is better described as being on neither side; he simply appears to be crazy. I would agree that this would be a perfectly acceptable response if we lived in a civilized nation. However, we no longer do; the left has seen to that.

This should be clear from the way that Mayor Michael Bloomberg gladly speculated that a conservative likely perpetuated an attempted attack on Times Square. Yet once he learned that the would-be attacker was a Muslim, Bloomberg immediately announced that, “. . . I want to make clear that we will not tolerate any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers.”

It should also be clear from the way that Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is baselessly blaming the right for Loughner’s murders, or the way that the mainstream left regularly disparages conservatives and the Tea Party even as it tells us in response to Islamic and leftist violence that we must not “rush to judgment,” that we must “understand what has made them so angry,” and indeed that we must give sympathy to them.

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