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The Washington Post and NPR both covered this story this weekend (and Stacy hit it with a joke) but this is a story that will have repercussions for decades and should not be ignored.
The Christian black south have long been oppressed by the Muslim Arab north (Simon Deng can tell you a bit about that). If the separation can be done peacefully it will be a major achievement.
I took an unexpectedly long nap and ended up awake at midnight, looking around the net I saw this via Lisa Graas:
Is it just me, or is there an incredible lack of reason on the Left?
Incidentally, the way I found out about the shooting was through an avalanche of tweets calling Sarah Palin a ‘murderer’. I was even called a murderer for asking people not to point fingers of blame. There is certainly ‘vitriol’…..but it’s not coming from the direction the Left claims.
For two days I’ve been seeing people hurling the vilest accusations at the Tea party in general and Sarah Palin in particular without any factual basis. And if that isn’t enough everyone’s favorite Democratic Pastor Fred Phelps plans on jumping into the fray..
Phelps praises Loughner’s violent acts in this video, where he announces he will be taking his sick protest to the funerals of the victims of the Arizona shooting spree. He also refers to Loughner as an Afghanistan war veteran, even though initial reports of Loughner being a veteran turned out to be false.
It’s pretty bad, almost as bad as this reaction to the murder of another poll half a world away:
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Pakistan’s largest city on Sunday to oppose any change to national blasphemy laws and to praise a man charged with murdering a provincial governor who had campaigned against the divisive legislation.
The rally of up to 50,000 people in downtown Karachi was one of the largest demonstrations of support for the laws, which make insulting Islam a capital offense. It was organized before the governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was shot dead on Tuesday in Islamabad by a bodyguard who told a court he considered Taseer a blasphemer.
Muslim groups have praised the bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, and have used Taseer’s death to warn others not to speak out against the much-derided laws.
Now what does a group of religions fanatics Pious Muslims marching have to do with the left?
Simply this. The Governor of Punjab by challenging his fellow Muslim’s belief was a threat to their mind-set. It’s much easier to eliminate people who challenge your religious beliefs than to defend those beliefs, much less thinking involved.
When I look at the left willing to blame Sarah Palin, Andrew Breitbart, the Tea Party and even Lisa Graas for inciting violence while both using violent rhetoric and ignoring their own violent rhetoric in the past the pieces fit together.
The left secular political beliefs have essentially morphed into a religion. The right feelings and opinions are the sacraments (much easier than having to follow actual commandments like traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs) if you have them you are considered righteous.
Conversely if you don’t share those beliefs you are outside, you are the devil and evil, and since you are evil any level of vitriolic rhetoric or action is permissible. Rather than praying for your enemies as Christianity commands one can hate them openly and feel good about it.
This is why above all Sarah Palin is their Anti-Christ. She symbolizes all that they hate, she is a person of action who lives her beliefs and does so publicly and unabashedly. She is a reminder of a reality that their religion needs to suppress. Screwtape 13 had it pegged:
The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method—by making him a kind of Childe Harold or Werther submerged in self-pity for imaginary distresses—you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem.
But you were trying to damn your patient by the World, that is by palming off vanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium as pleasures. How can you have
failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn’t you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value?
This is why the right in general and Sarah Palin in particular must be attacked here. Every moment that she is not brings the possibility that realization might strike, that the superficial might be replaced by a foundation in reality and that reality is anathema to all that has come before.
Today Elizabeth Scalia asks the question what is wrong with the world. Chesterton’s spectacular Catholic Answer was “I am” and thus stove to change and improve himself. A great example to all Christians in general and Catholics in particular but self-realization is a tough and painful process and many don’t want to face it. Much easier to carry on confident in one perfection.
Until those on the left can come to Chesterton’s answer and work to correct it we will see more of the same. Remember screwtapes final warning:
The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilizing the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel,
I didn’t hit the sack till 3 so I missed most of the first hour and a half of Morning Joe but the line I heard was similar to a couple of liberal hosts I heard on the radio this morning.
The gist was: We aren’t saying Sarah Palin is responsible but look at this cross hairs and the rhetoric being used. Politico was particularly not covering itself with glory and Mika seemed to egg on Tom Brokaw in the imagery business.
If Byron York was watching doubtless he would be feeling nostalgic because today he notes what Bill Clinton did to turn the attack in Oklahoma City to his political advantage:
Later, under the heading “How to use extremism as issue against Republicans,” Morris told Clinton that “direct accusations” of extremism wouldn’t work because the Republicans were not, in fact, extremists. Rather, Morris recommended what he called the “ricochet theory.” Clinton would “stimulate national concern over extremism and terror,” and then, “when issue is at top of national agenda, suspicion naturally gravitates to Republicans.”
As York notes this morning this is exactly the line Democrats in a political hole right now are trying to play.
One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did.
“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
Another Democratic strategist said the similarity is that Tucson and Oklahoma City both “take place in a climate of bitter and virulent rhetoric against the government and Democrats.”
Lets cut to the chase, tough talk has been the political rule in the US since 1789 and before. Nuts are going to be nuts no matter what. The idea of watching out for “inflammatory” rhetoric is yet another attempt to suppress speech. No amount of speech restriction is going to make a dangerous nut any less dangerous.
Who decides what rhetoric is “inflammatory”? The eastern elites? The same media that had nothing to say about the nasty Anti-Bush stuff until he was out of office? The same media who didn’t say boo when we see signs in marches that say. “Behead those who oppose Islam” or “We support our troops when they shoot their officers?“. For some reason until the Bush years were over this was not a topic the media (other than fox) choose to bring up.
Look for the passive aggressive business for a while. It’s the left and the media best chance to put conservatives on the defensive without actually doing anything to actually earn support by positive action. Watch for it also be used to attempt to restrict 1st and 2nd amendment rights.
This weekends NFL games are an excellent metaphor on the more tragic events of this past weekend.
Looking at the Wild card games 3 times out of 4 the home team (the actual division winner) lost. The one exception was when the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks, after a week of breast beating concerning their presence in the postseason , defeated the defending Superbowl champion New Orleans Saints.
All of the predictions and punditry meant nothing, when the actual game was played the only things relevant were the facts on the ground. (Fans of teams like New England should take this to heart)
Likewise in the last election cycle. People claimed that opposition to the health care plan would not work, that opposing a president who was wildly popular would hurt Republicans. That conservatives needed to compromise. As the polls failed to back up those views pundits instead talked about how the John Stewart Rally, the Coffee Party and the idea that the president’s healthcare plan were not as unpopular as people claimed yet when the dust had settled a net gain of 63 seats in the house was the result.
One again prognostications were useless when compared to the actual facts on the ground.
Now we see the violence in Arizona and once again we see an incredible array of pundits making statements concerning the motivations of the shooter. It’s Palin’s fault because of a map icon, it’s the tea party’s fault because of their support of the 2nd amendment, On twitter this morning (1 a.m EST) an incredible array of people are trying to blame Andrew Breitbart.
All of these have in common a complete lack of evidence or objective facts to support their claims, in fact as time progresses the facts tend to show exactly the opposite.
As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out the narrative has been written long before this event and no quantity of facts on the ground is going to change it.
For example an Arizona state senator when faced with the anger and objections of supporters of the US Military after falsely stating the shooter was an Afghan vet (when in fact the Army rejected him) rather than retracting and apologizing (an easy thing, it was early and all the facts weren’t in) instead removed her contact information from her site.
This morning I suspect we will see the usual suspects continue this narrative, unfortunately unlike a football game or an election this isn’t a question of an actual result that is scored. This is all about massaging the ground for political gain. The goal is to influence those who normally don’t pay attention in the hopes that they will dismiss any arguments to the contrary.
With the race card gone the way of the dodo the violent tea party card is about to be played, facts be damned.
It will be up to the American people to decide if this rhetoric will be rewarded or not.
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