Related reading and updates at bottom.
The country still grieves yesterday's heinous shooting of a Democrat Congresswoman and others, many of whom died. But, true to form, liberal mainstream media types -- from the NY Times to the Washington Post to CNN to ABC News to Reuters to CNN again to CBS to CNN yet again -- has been blaming the shooting on the supposed violent rhetoric of the Tea Party movement. Sanctimoniously accused in particular was Sarah Palin, whose nine-month-old U.S. election map on Palin's website containing "cross hairs" (actually surveryor symbols but let's not quibble).
It's a typical template and the lefties who run the media wasted no time in running with it. Facts have been stubborn things for the liberal media for a long time now, but every time an emotion-provoking incident happens like this in the U.S., the first to get blamed without one shred of a shred of a shred of evidence is the Right.
Of course, even as the smoke is still clearing, we are finding out the shooter is a pot-smoking 22-year-old who has verbally or electronically expressed his hatred of the Constitution, his support of the burning of the flag, and his love of books like Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. In other words, this guy is just about as far from a Palin-loving Tea Partier as one can imagine. He's a lefty through and through.
But the left must push its politically expedient lie, truth and facts be damned, so as of this afternoon, the blame-Righty media template goes on.
I truly weep for my country, especially because Sarah Palin released a public statement:
My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona.
On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.
Not only did Palin even need to do this (but that's what a decent human being with Judeo-Christian values does) but liberals like the perpetually incorrect NY Times' Paul Krugman dismissed her statement as insincere and even hypocritical.
But now I've been seeing here and there public statements by prominent conservatives and Tea Party types emphasizing that the Right doesn't condone violence.
I say to any conservative/Republican commenting on the shooting: Do NOT go this route. By saying you condemn violence, you legitimize the wholly illegitimate supposition that we might. That is B.S. The Right has NOTHING to explain or apologize for.
Jared whateverhisnameis -- just like the Fort Hood shooter and the Times Square would-be bomber and the D.C. Holocaust Museum gunman and the D.C. snipers -- is not what would be considered a conservative Palin-loving Tea Party-type.
In fact, just the opposite. The instigators of violence in this country has been primarily the Democrat-supporting Left.
How many of you know that Ted Kaczynski (a/k/a "The Unibomber") and, much more recently, the would-be bomber of the Discovery Channel headquarters in NYC was overtly influenced by Al Gore's global warming literature?
Probably very few of you. And for that you have the complicit mainstream liberal media to thank.
How many of you realize that every time a violent incident occurred at a Tea Party or town hall, virtually every time the violent act was being perpetrated upon a conservative/Republican by a liberal/Democrat?
Probably very few of you. And for that, again, thank the mainstream media.
How about the violence that always occurs at G8/G20 summits, most recently last June in Toronto, by capitalism-hating left-wingers?
How many of you know that in our own White House sits a man who uses violent rhetoric constantly?
How about the oil executive whose wife was seriously injured by a mail bomb last July during the BP oil spill -- you know, when lefty Democrat Barack Obama was talking about "putting his boot on people's throat" and trying to figure out "whose ass to kick"?
Speaking of the Commander-in-Chief, a Facebook user wrote this of about the current head of the proverbial snake:
The media and democrats want us to focus on the nation’s “caustic political climate” after the tragedy yesterday. Maybe they should start with President Obama. He may be the worst offender.
** Obama: “They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun”
** Obama to His Followers: “Get in Their Faces!”
** Obama on ACORN Mobs: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!”
** Obama to His Mercenary Army: “Hit Back Twice As Hard”
** Obama on the private sector: “We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“
** Obama to voters: Republican victory would mean “hand to hand combat”
** Obama to lib supporters: “It’s time to Fight for it.”
** Obama to Latino supporters: “Punish your enemies.”
** Obama to democrats: “I’m itching for a fight.”
If the media really wants to improve the “caustic political climate” they may want to start at the White House.
Damn right. But notice that the media Left isn't focusing on any of these overtly incendiary statements. Just some 9-month-old map of the woman they hate with a level of evil very rarely seen.
More examples of when the Right was blamed for Liberal violence from Legal Insurrection [via I Hate The Media].
Before concluding with this post, here is Amit Ghate at Pajamas Media from March 2010:
Force and Violence: How the Left Blurs Terms
The left’s modus operandi is to denounce the open use of “violence,” while promoting and condoning every other form of force. ...... It’s telling that [NY Times' Frank] Rich harkens back to the “good old days” of the 1960s. Not merely because its drug-addicted, anti-reason hippies are his intellectual mentors, but because they’re the ones who popularized the idea that overt violence resulting in bodily harm is the only true form of crime.
Rich’s “radicals” proudly engaged in rock-throwing student riots, forcible sit-ins, and other expropriation and destruction of private property. More importantly, they actively suppressed evidence of Stalin’s horrors, materially supported the reigning Soviet dictators, and unabashedly exhorted Mao Zedong to continue his “experiments” with the “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution.”
Clearly their actions involved — and sanctioned — various degrees of force; small but still significant in the case of sit-ins, of historic proportions in the case of Communism. Yet none of this concerned them because, in their view, attacking property or compelling someone to act under threat of force is not “violence” and thus not objectionable. You can take a man’s property, oust him from the cities, order him onto collective farms, and force him into hard labor, but as long as the threat of force is so overwhelming that he can’t resist, there’s no “violence” and no foul. Lives are shattered and destroyed, but the left approves because there’s either no actual blood spilt or, in the case of Communism, the rivers of blood are carefully kept off camera. (Clearly leftists will countenance anything in the name of making men slaves to the State.)
The left’s modus operandi then, is to denounce the open use of “violence,” while promoting and condoning every other form of force.
Indeed, under the left’s influence and urging, government now exerts force against its own citizens in myriad and ubiquitous ways. It forcibly takes our tax dollars to fund public schools — leaving us with little choice or means to give our children the education we consider best. It decides which drugs can and can’t be tested; how approved drugs are to be marketed; and which patients, no matter how willing they are to take a risk, qualify for experimental drugs, etc. It regulates commerce and trade in issues ranging from trivial to critical. Just ask any businessman how many arbitrary rules he must heed every single day — under punishment of fine, closure or even jail. Everything from the placement of signs, to interview questions, to campaign contribution limits — even pricing! — is dictated to businessmen.
So while leftists may recognize the evil of a thug shooting an innocent victim dead, they simultaneously champion laws that prevent a person from buying the life-saving medicine she needs. The pain and suffering leftists cause by unleashing governmental force leaves them unfazed. As long as their victims remain nameless, and the proceedings are carried out behind closed doors (preferably by some bureaucracy or committee to give them “legitimacy”), the left is happy to use force to advance its agenda.
More about the Left's disgusting attribution of violence to the Right, and their own use of hateful rhetoric and violence to achieve their own ends, has been discussed before. And it must continue today.
So, this is one conservative who refuses to even accept the premise that Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, or conservative talk radio, is remotely responsible for violence such as that which occurred yesterday in Tucson. The blood resulting from violent rhetoric and bitter hatred is a predominantly left-wing/Democrat phenomenon. The trail of blood left by the Democrat Left -- unlike that of tilting windmills erected by the Right -- is documentable and factual.
UPDATE 6:15 PM: Tom Lifson at the American Thinker's blog writes:
Politico quotes an anonymous source it identifies as a "veteran Democratic operative":
"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."
The game being played is obvious to anyone with eyes. Democrats are nakedly exploiting tragedy to harm the tea parties. For shame.
Shameless yes. But not surprising.
Related reading:
Business Pundit: Sarah Palin Crosshairs: Kill the Myth;
Tony Lee @ Human Events: Mainstream Media: Conservatives Responsible For Giffords Shooting;
Black & Right: MoveOn Email of the Day;
Red State: The Ends Justify the Means
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