Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Evil of the Tucson Shootings and the Sadness of Those Who Seek Political Gain From It

I don’t often find much in which I am in agreement with John McCain these days, or in the past for that matter, but I thought his comments on the horrific shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and all of the other victims of by the sick young man down in Tucson yesterday morning were darn near perfect.

“I am horrified by the violent attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people by a wicked person who has no sense of justice or compassion. I pray for Gabby and the other victims, and for the repose of the souls of the dead and comfort for their families. I beg our loving Creator to spare the lives of those who are still alive, heal them in body and spirit, and return them to their loved ones.


Whoever did this; whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race, and they deserve and will receive the contempt of all decent people and the strongest punishment of the law.” – Senator John McCain

After having read Senator McCain's statement, I was quite appalled at then reading Judson Phillips statement of Tea Party Nation,

“While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing.”   

I could not believe that in such an instance as this that Mr. Phillips would issue such a statement and in that statement refer to a matter of politics.  It struck me as not only highly inappropriate but rather disgraceful.  Although I continue to be appalled, after much sniping from the left for seemingly political grandstanding reasons from such detestable people as Keith Olbermann and Paul Krugman, I now understand that Phillips' statement had merit, and sadly, I can at least fathom why he would have said it.

No decent person, regardless of political persuasion, would want or encourage this evil. Making this a political issue associated with and “supported” by an ideology that encompasses nearly half of the American populace by their political adversaries for political gain is SICK and completely unfounded!  Those who think this evil is condoned by ANY American should be ashamed accordingly.

3 comments:

free0352 said...

I must say I've enjoyed firing down the libs on the blogs and even my facebook for trying exactly this. They seem so shocked because in the past we've always laid down to their equqting the actions of terrorists and assassins like Laugher the other day and McVey in Okalahoma city with our support of free markets, and personal responsibility. Today we don't back down. Atta boy us.

Darrell Michaels said...

Damn straight! And now that more facts are coming out about Loffer, the lefts' cynical political grandstanding is making them look like fools.

Evidently Loffer thought George W. Bush brought down the World Trade Center, thinks that the moon landing never happened, and one of his favorite books is the Communist Manifesto. Hardly a Tea Party conservative, I'd say.

This guy was not a politcal ideologue of the right. He was an unhinged lunatic.

John Myste said...

I do think this event has been politicized by the left. They pounced like a puma on a canary. The first bazillion responses I posted on blog sites were in defense of conservatives because the rhetoric coming from the left was absurd. The left and the right seem quite equally intolerant of each other’s views.

However, once the shock of the initial onslaught passed, the right start firing back (presumably after having time to digest the attack by the left, find data and regroup). In their counter attacks, the right argued that the media was not more aggressive, that it did not generally use more violent overtones than the left, and many of them argued that the left was more intolerant and aggressive. The arguments made were by the right were so weak, they pushed me slightly into the left’s camp. They found no name liberals making the same kinds of comments as Palin, Beck and Limbaugh. With very few exceptions they could not find anyone on the left of much stature to compare (a quote from Chris Matthews being one notable exception). The whole “violent media” argument is mostly a gigantic exaggeration used for political gain. However, I was rooted, nonetheless, from location in neutral territory, had to pack up my stuff again, and return to my camp on the left. I was pushed back unwillingly by the right, who used inferior examples to support their examples, instead of attacking the fundamental assumptions and their political use in the first place.

It would have been better for the right to attack the arguments made by the left, instead of trying to compete with them on major media examples. Had they done that, I would have kept posting in their defense. Instead, I would try to take the argument in this direction, but next time I looked, people had brought it back to one of showing examples of violent-toned rhetoric. There is no way conservatives can win if that is their strategy in this matter. While I tend to favor the conservative’s case, I do not think the general arguments they used were adequate, and moreover, I do agree that the conservative leaders in the media are overall more aggressive than their liberal equivalents, even though I see no evidence that the same is not true for the body of conservatives in the U.S. vs. the body of liberals in the U.S.

Any other time, conservatives admit that liberals are weak non-confrontational wimps in comparison to them. To say this is one exception would not make a whole lot of sense.