What's all this caterwauling about "overheated political rhetoric"?
Republicans and Democrats are falling all over themselves to blame partisan rhetoric for the shooting of a Republican Congressman yesterday by a deranged Sanders-ista. I know; that's redundant.
But there's nothing wrong with passion. ("Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," said Barry Goldwater). Without righteous indignation, we would have had no American Revolution, abolitionists or the Civil Rights movement.
If you can't tell the difference between outrage and incitement, you shouldn't be involved in the political process.
If I decry the crime wave caused by illegal immigration, am I responsible for attacks on illegal aliens?
If I observe that there's a connection between Islamic terrorism and Islam, am I helping to create a climate of hatred? The left would say most definitely.
If I said that communism produced the most despotic regimes in the past century, and someone shot up a communist rally, is it my fault?
Still, while Democrats shed crocodile tears, Republicans flagellate themselves over their imagined sins. Rep. Rodney Davis (RINO, Ill.), who was on the playing field when the murderous attack occurred, says we have to "ratchet down the rhetoric on both sides."
Excuse me?
• Conservatives don't shout down or physically assault college speakers. Today, it's almost impossible for a conservative to speak on any save a handful of campuses. I found that out a few years ago, when I tried to speak on hate crimes at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
• We don't wear black ski masks, wield tire irons, throw rocks and bottles, assault cops and innocent bystanders, set cars on fire or engage in any of the other brown-shirt behavior seen at such bastions of scholarship as UC, Berkeley.
• If Charlton Heston was alive when Barack Obama was in office, he would not have told an NRA rally that he "thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House." He also had better personal hygiene than Madonna – even when he was a Roman galley slave in "Ben Hur."
• During the last administration, I don't recall a conservative comic posing with what appeared to be a severed head of Obama.
• Did I miss it or during the last administration did the Chairman of the California GOP lead his party's convention in chants of "Fu—Obama"?
• We don't have assassination fantasies played out in public venues – like the current production of Julius Caesar (Political Correctness in the Park) which shows what looks like Donald Trump being stabbed to death by women and minorities, his supposed victims. Among others, the play is sponsored by The New York Times and CNN, which like to feign objectivity.
I'm not blaming Bernie Sanders for the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, or Hillary Clinton, even though her husband blamed conservative talk radio for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and Sanders blamed "Tea Party rhetoric" for the 2011 shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords.
Sanders is an annoying codger who understands less about economics than my 6-year-old grandson. Hillary Clinton lives in a walled estate while calling those who want a border wall or a limitation on immigration from terror-rich countries, "deplorables."
I don't blame Charles Schumer or Nancy Pelosi, who ritualistically denounced this act of barbarism. On the other hand, have you ever heard them condemn Christian persecution in the Muslim world or the anti-cop ravings of Black Lives Matter?
Leftist rhetoric that labels the president a fascist, a racist, a would-be dictator, calls for his overthrow or accuses him of treason (colluding with the Russians to fix the last election), approaches incitement. But don't expect Democratic leaders to denounce any of this. They save their moral indignation for the right.
The left has always been violence-prone, from the French Revolution to the present. Think of the Reign of Terror, the Russian Revolution (and those that followed it), the crimes of the National Socialists, the Weather Underground, the Khmer Rouge killing fields (in an era when Jane Fonda fantasized about shooting down American planes), and other acts of progressive slaughter.
The left's fatal attraction to violence betrays its intellectual impotence.
That impotence is also seen in their mania for limiting free speech and compelling others to violate their conscience. Whether it's about abortion, same-sex marriage or "transgender" rights, they avoid a debate by calling it hate speech. Worse, they would force doctors to perform abortions and town clerks to participate in the travesty called gay marriage, even when they object on the conscience grounds.
With all due respect for Rep. Rodney Davis and other masochistic Republicans, we aren't all to blame for the climate in which a bloodthirsty Bernie supporter (who had a crush on Rachel Maddow) decided to use Republican Congressmen for target practice.
The left has turned viciousness into an art form. Leftists substitute suppression for speech, have infantile temper tantrums when they lose, and rationalize violence when they don't condone it outright.
Or am I guilty of indulging in overheated rhetoric?
