America Eats More Than Its Young

It did not take long for the conservative apologists and Republicans to get on their soap boxes after the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Saturday in Tucson. While many expressed outrage at the shootings of Giffords and 19 other people -- what else could they do -- they also unleashed a torrent of comments denying that their over-the-top rhetoric may have contributed to the attack.

Indeed, it may turn out that Jared L. Loughner, the suspect in the murders of six bystanders and the wounding of 14 others, acted alone, driven more by a distorted sense of reality stemming from mental illness than anything else. But to say that his deranged state is the sole cause is to deny the damage done by the vitriol that currently passes for political discourse, as well as the tendency of the right to label anyone who disagrees as a conspirator working for the downfall of America.

By now everyone has heard about how Jesse Kelly, the Republican who challenged Giffords in the Eighth Congressional District race, held a "targeting victory" fund-raiser in which he invited contributors to shoot an M-16 with him. That summer event, which has been reported in The New York Times and other media outlets, was simply a pre-cursor to the paranoid, anti-establishment, us-against-them rhetoric that followed.

“These people who think they are better than us, they look down on us every single day and tell us what kind of health care to buy,” Kelly told his supporters during a rally in October in which he attacked President Barack Obama's health care plan. “And if you dare to stand up to the government they call us a mob. We’re about to show them what a mob looks like.”

The problem is that, true to his word, Kelly and others like him have repeatedly shown us what a mob looks like. And the faces in those mobs are quite often the same. While one could reasonably argue that there is nothing wrong with directing a people's anger to benefit a political cause, those who choose to stoke that anger through lies, paramilitary metaphors and ridiculous conspiracy theories cannot abdicate responsibility for the aftermath.

Too often, those who engage in wrongheaded and hateful speech complain about society trying to stop them from telling the truth. They attribute criticism of their speech to political correctness. Being PC -- or even civil for that matter -- is not the issue here.

When one uses hostile and violent words in a community where anger runs high, then there will be dire consequences. Sarah Palin's placing a rifle scope over Giffords district and telling her Tea Party supporters to "reload" creates an atmosphere in which people are given the impression that violence is acceptable. The same is true of Sharron Angle's comment about "Second Amendment" remedies.

Add to that the number of ludicrous conspiracy theories -- the President is not an American, but is part of a global plot to take over the U.S., etc. -- and the possiblity that an unstable individual might seek violent retribution increases.

For many, the concerns over the current political rhetoric go beyond whether Loughner was influenced by one set of thoughts or individuals. It goes to the heart of what kind of nation we seek to be. Shall we be a nation that believes in the ideas of open and free debate, where issues are hashed out in public? Or will we prefer to stifle discussions through threats, intimidation, lies and violence?

More important, will we be a country where citizens demand more of their leaders, regardless of political stripe, or a people who seek out the angriest words in an effort to reinforce our darkest and most dangerous thoughts?

The ball rests most surely in the courts of Republican lawmakers who have spent the last two years doing all they could to regain legislative power regardless of the damage to the national psyche.