by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n Very few Americans are fans of both\u00a0The Communist Manifesto<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Mein Kampf<\/em>, as the Tucson killer, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, apparently was. Fewer still post on the Internet fears about \u201cbrainwashing,\u201d \u201cmind control,\u201d and \u201cconscience dreaming\u201d; have a long record of public disruption and aberrant behavior; were expelled from community college; or were summarily rejected for military service.<\/p>\n No matter. Almost immediately following Loughner\u2019s cowardly murdering of six and wounding of 14 including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, pundits and some public figures rushed to locate his rampage, together with his paranoid rantings about government control, within the larger landscape of right-wing politics \u2014 especially the rhetoric of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.<\/p>\n Apparently, we are supposed to believe that Loughner\u2019s unhinged rants about the \u201cgovernment\u201d indict those who express reasonable reservations about the size of government as veritable accessories to mass murder. The three worst offenders were Paul Daly of the\u00a0New York Daily News<\/em>, who claimed just that in an essay with the raging headline \u201cThe blood of Congresswoman Giffords was on Sarah Palin\u2019s hands\u201d; the ubiquitous Paul Krugman, who connected Loughner to the supposedly Republican-created \u201cclimate of hate\u201d; and Andrew Sullivan, who thought he saw yet another avenue through which to further his own blind antipathy toward Sarah Palin and \u201cthe Palin forces.\u201d In their warped syllogism, the Tea Party unquestionably creates hatred; a congresswomen was shot out of hatred; ergo, the Tea Party and\/or the Republican party all but pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n That the 22-year-old shooter more likely fit the profile of an unhinged killer like Ted Kaczynski or John Hinckley did not seem to register. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, commentators pontificated about a right-wing \u201cclimate of hate\u201d in Dallas, Texas, that supposedly explained why a crazed avowed Communist \u2014 pro-Soviet, Castroite 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald \u2014 shot President Kennedy. Suddenly, this week, we are back in a 1963 mood of blaming politics for deranged shootings.<\/p>\n In the times of national uncertainty and fear that immediately follow hideous mass shootings, this cheap habit of channeling insanity into politics always surfaces but never convinces \u2014 as we learned from the deplorable tactic of blaming the Oklahoma City bombing on conservative talk radio. There is usually no clear-cut evidence that a shooter\u2019s ideology has trumped his own imbalances; and we are never quite sure what outside stimulus is the deciding factor that pushes the unhinged over the edge from sounding like a nut on MySpace or YouTube into pulling the trigger.<\/p>\n Loughner was no John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray, whose bouts of insanity and past troubles seemed overshadowed by a virulent hatred of the men they shot, which in turn was driven largely by racism or sectarian hatred. But even in such seemingly clear-cut examples of political assassination as Booth\u2019s small cabal, we do not quite see a Day of the Jackal\u2013like cold professionalism, funded by nefarious and well-organized political organizations. Plenty of southerners wanted Lincoln dead by spring 1864; scores of racists shared the sentiments of Ray toward Martin Luther King. But while both killers carefully planned their shootings, it is far harder to uncover elaborate conspiracies that used Booth and Ray as mere triggermen than to discover that both were troubled, sick, and often violent characters whose demonic furies turned their own political extremism into carefully calculated murders.<\/p>\n Further, there is no evidence that political killers share a common ideology. For every apparently right-wing Timothy McVeigh there is a left-wing Ted Kaczynski; both exhibited a sort of mental derangement in their braggadocio about extreme politics. The Sixties culture of drugs, permissiveness, national liberation, radical politics, and environmentalism no more made the Palestinian extremist Sirhan Sihran assassinate Bobby Kennedy, or Charles Manson follower Squeaky Fromme try to kill President Ford, or pop socialist and cult preacher the Rev. Jim Jones order the execution of Rep. Leo Ryan, or Arthur Bremmer shoot the \u201csegregationist dinosaur\u201d George Wallace, than right-wing politics drove on the equally deranged Jared Lee Loughner.<\/p>\n There is much talk that Sarah Palin\u2019s \u201ccrosshairs\u201d ad pushed Loughner over the edge. But if sloppy use of gun metaphors can drive anyone to shoot congressional representatives, think what we are up against when the president of the United States invokes violent imagery to galvanize his supporters. What are we to make of Obama\u2019s warning of \u201chand-to-hand combat\u201d if the Republicans take over; or his comment that one of his supporters could \u201ctear [Sean Hannity] up\u201d; or his Untouchables boast that \u201cif they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun\u201d; or his advice to supporters of his presidential campaign to argue with Republicans and independents and \u201cget in their face\u201d?<\/p>\n Why would a president boast about figuring out \u201cwhose ass to kick,\u201d or, in a climate of fear about terrorism, call his opponents \u201chostage takers\u201d? In a post-9\/11 world, is it prudent for the commander-in-chief to say of his political opponents, \u201cHere\u2019s the problem: It\u2019s almost like they\u2019ve got \u2014 they\u2019ve got a bomb strapped to them and they\u2019ve got their hand on the trigger. You don\u2019t want them to blow up\u201d? What about, \u201cBut you\u2019ve got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger\u201d?<\/p>\n Also, in a political twofer, Obama once not only evoked gun imagery, but did so in a context of relegating Republicans into second-class citizenry: \u201cWe can\u2019t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don\u2019t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet do we really wish to tie crude presidential metaphors, similes, and bombast to the next violent attack on a conservative political figure? Are we to suggest that President Obama\u2019s occasional indiscretions have created a climate of fear that someday will lead to violence against his political adversaries? Or, did Obama merely from time to time indulge in sloppy thinking and clumsy expression? Even as someone who did not vote for Barack Obama, I do not think the president\u2019s ill-advised and juvenile similes and allusions will ever drive a liberal extremist into \u201cbringing a gun\u201d to a political fight or literally \u201ctearing up\u201d a political opponent.<\/p>\n The problem that political hatchet writers such as Paul Krugman have with channeling acts of unhinged violence into expressions of mainstream political thinking is threefold. First, such politicos cannot calibrate the degree to which ideological motivation trumps mental instability. If Arthur Bremmer hated racists and admired black politicians, did such feelings feed on mainstream liberals\u2019 fears of segregationists, and did they alone result in his shooting of George Wallace? Analyzing an isolated act of violence is more difficult than finding a pattern in the 30-something terrorist plots since 9\/11 in which avowed Islamic terrorists have tried to kill infidel Americans in open emulation of Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n Second, there is no consistent evidence that the Kaczynskis or Squeaky Frommes of the world are less numerous than the McVeighs. If political fervor inspires extremism, is there any evidence that states\u2019-rights zealotry prompts more terrorism than, say, radical environmentalism? Are left-wing nuts more or less numerous than right-wing nuts \u2014 and more or less likely to translate warped politics into pulling a trigger? If Sarah Palin has used crosshairs imagery, has the Democratic-party hierarchy never used shooting-range targets to illustrate their electoral strategy to unseat Republicans? And has any academic collated 100 years of political assassinations and shootings in the US to determine whether radicals or reactionaries are more likely to shoot public figures \u2014 and, far more critically, to prove that such political motivations, rather than mental instability, were the real catalysts for the ensuing violence?<\/p>\n Third, the outrage of Daly, Krugman, Sullivan, and others is partisan and transparently self-serving. Paul Krugman would have more credibility on the topic of extreme rhetoric had he written a column a few years ago warning Americans that it was one thing to oppose George W. Bush, but quite another to publish a novel envisioning the assassination of the president, or to award first prize at the Toronto Film Festival to a \u201cdocudrama\u201d constructing the shooting of Bush, or to compare one\u2019s opponents (as Al Gore and John Glenn did) to \u201cbrownshirts\u201d and \u201cHitler.\u201d Did we ever hear from Andrew Sullivan to cool the sick rhetoric about Sarah Palin, in worries that his incessant rumor-mongering about her supposed faked pregnancies had reached the point of dehumanization?<\/p>\n If crazed gunmen are sadly a periodic characteristic of American culture, so are political vultures who scavenge political capital as they pick through the horrific violence.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The sick are of turning insanity into politics by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Very few Americans are fans of both\u00a0The Communist Manifesto\u00a0and\u00a0Mein Kampf, as the Tucson killer, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, apparently was. Fewer still post on the Internet fears about \u201cbrainwashing,\u201d \u201cmind control,\u201d and \u201cconscience dreaming\u201d; have a long record of public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,86],"tags":[1051,1025,217,12,39,413,460,205,478],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-146","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11549,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-on-contemporary-american-society\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":0},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson On Contemporary American Society","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Hoover Institution Traditional values, whether manifested in public policy or contemporary culture, are besieged in today\u2019s America but can still be found in the right places, says\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the\u00a0Hoover Institution. His focus is on classics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5199,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/multiculturalism-and-its-discontents\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":1},"title":"Multiculturalism and Its Discontents","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton The New Individualist This copyrighted article first appeared in the July 2005 issue of\u00a0The New Individualist\u00a0[http:\/\/www.objectivistcenter.org\/navigator\/index.asp], and is reprinted by permission. England's multicultural delusions were literally exploded this past summer when British citizens, children of Islamic immigrants, turned out to be the murderers whose bombs killed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8224,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/class-race-and-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":2},"title":"Class, Race, And Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Peregrine The driving forces behind three decades of de facto non-enforcement of federal immigration law were largely the interests of elites across the political spectrum. Employers in agriculture, construction, the hospitality industry, landscaping, and food processing wanted access to cheap, industrious foreign national laborers. So\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Peregrine"","block_context":{"text":"Peregrine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/peregrine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5230,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dishonest-and-deadly\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":3},"title":"Dishonest and Deadly","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 14, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Why does the West entertain such a wrongheaded notion as multiculturalism? by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The news that the London terrorist attacks were carried out by second-generation Muslim immigrants should not surprise us. For years now we in the West have indulged a whole set of destructive ideas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4096,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/slouching-toward-geezerhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":4},"title":"Slouching Toward Geezerhood","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com This year the oldest Baby Boomer cohort turns 65, the first of 79 million people who promise to be the whiniest and most annoying crop of geezers in history. Not all of them, of course. Just as many in the Greatest Generation weren\u2019t so great,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":763,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-problem-of-assimilation\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":5},"title":"America’s Problem of Assimilation","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas The current Supreme Court term has been dominated by the Constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare legislation better known as Obamacare. But the Court has recently heard another case, this one concerning the controversial Arizona immigration law passed in 2010. Though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4099,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions\/4099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}