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Once Again, Progressives Prove Willing to Politicize Everything

Via-Pajamas Media

By S. T. Karnick 

Last week’s mass murder at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s meet-up with her Arizona constituents was immediately politicized by progressive politicians and media figures. But it’s wrong to see this as an unusual event. It’s the way things are always done when progressives have any power to reach the public: everything is political. And President Obama is doing his very best to take advantage of the situation.


The politicization of all things is a tactic derived from the foundations of the progressive mentality and in fact necessitated by it. Progressivism assumes that all things should be made fully subject to the rule of experts. In the present case, an atrocity has been used as the pretext for arguing that progressives should be given even greater and more explicit control over what people can say in public, by giving the federal government additional power over the media.


That’s what this really has been about. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman started the ball rolling by asserting that “violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.”


This is in fact a notion that the progressives have offered with increasing boldness, indeed shamelessness, over the past few decades, and not only in op-eds and editorials but also in allegedly scientific studies (frequently, in fact) and in movies and TV shows. Soon after Krugman made his fatuous and contemptible assertion, the deluge came
.
The hypocrisy of this campaign of vilification is obvious. One remembers the explicit calls among progressives for the assassination of President George W. Bush, and this very week countless people tweeted their desire that conservative political figure Sarah Palin be murdered. This sort of demonization of one’s enemies is not the exclusive property of any political position, but as the present instance demonstrates with charming vividness, it is the progressive movement that practices it most shamelessly.


Most sensible people surely saw from the start that the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, was not just a Rush Limbaugh listener, if at all. In the days since the attack, the evidence has mounted, suggesting he was likely suffering from a serious mental illness, probably schizophrenia. On Tuesday, in a poignant story from the Associated Press, a neighbor of Loughner was quoted as observing strange behavior by him as a child:

Linda McKinley, 62, has lived down the street from the Loughner family for decades and said the parents could not be nicer — but that she had misgivings about Jared as he got older.
“As a parent, my heart aches for them,” she said.
She added that when she was outside watering her plants she would see Jared riding down the street on his bike, often talking to himself or yelling out randomly to no one.
McKinley recalled that once he yelled to some children on the street: “I’m coming to get you!”

At that point, at least, the media attacks by the progressive left should have abated. They did not, because the actual cause of the attacks was never the point. Muzzling all opposition to the progressive agenda was the sole intent of the crusade. Thus the assault against the right intensified even as more evidence arose to characterize the attack as motivated by Loughner’s personal demons, such as the observations of the prominent psychiatrist Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who pointed out that the particular type of mass killing Loughner committed is characteristic of certain kinds of schizophrenia and typically has nothing to do with the political climate ^[1].


Additional direct evidence of instability on Loughner’s part was provided by revelations of his scary postings on online gamer sites and the fears expressed by students and faculty at Pima Community College when he attended classes on the campus last year. Yet the progressive commentariat and its political satraps were unwilling to allow this crisis to go to waste, intensifying their campaign to turn it to their political advantage.


Indeed, one of the few really slick and skillful uses of the murders to tar the right was that of President Obama, in his speech at Wednesday night’s memorial service and political pep rally. Obama merits praise for injecting some much-needed dignity into the proceedings and explicitly calling for an end to the political blame game:

Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy.

The main thrust of his speech, however, confirmed the progressives’ take on the situation: that it was about what people can and should be allowed to say in public. “If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should,” the president said, “let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.”


One presumes that he was not referring to his own widely documented use of martial metaphors and gangster talk when referring to his political opponents, and given that the whole “climate of hate” bugbear is a progressive trope, it’s clear enough to whom he was referring. In the context of the past week’s unjustified, blanket attacks against the political right, the president’s statement that “what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another” was in fact darkly comic.


By positing a moral equivalence between the original, completely unjustified attacks against the right and the conservatives’ dismayed and defensive response, Obama placed his presidential stamp of approval on the progressives’ hate campaign. The very point of their assault on free speech rights, after all, has been that the political right is uniquely responsible for the creation of a “climate of hate” that leads to violence and murder. That is indeed a libel, and a contemptible one, yet Obama affirmed it by refusing to distinguish between the progressives’ unjustified attacks of the past week and the rhetoric of the right over the past several years. There is a huge and obvious difference between the two, and eliding that difference lets the real offenders, the progressives, off scot-free. It’s exactly what schools do when they punish a peace-loving kid for fighting back against a bully.


Thus in loftily adjuring the public to “make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” Obama confirmed the essential purpose of the progressives’ hate campaign: regardless of who may be engaging in hate, we can’t live this way any longer. “Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation,” he said. Translation: something must be done. Meaning: more power for the federal government.


Thus Obama’s ostensibly irreproachable rhetoric set the agenda for what the progressives really want, and which was the real purpose behind this entire brouhaha: a campaign for even more unconstitutional federal government power over what people can say and write.


When Obama said, “only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation,” the direct meaning of his words was politically neutral, but the only side of the debate that the mainstream media characterize as uncivil and dishonest is everybody to Obama’s right.


That’s the real purpose behind all this concern about hate: an effort to suppress opposition to the progressive agenda, through calculated media attacks and more government regulation. As Fox News and others ^[2] have reported, numerous progressives are taking advantage of the Arizona attacks to press for federal government regulation of public communications (which just happens to be unconstitutional). According to Fox News ^[3]:

In the wake of the shooting, the National Hispanic Media Coalition used the incident to reiterate its call for the FCC to update its definitions of hate speech in media. It also asked the FCC to “examine the extent and effects of hate speech in media, and non-regulatory options for counteracting the violence that extreme rhetoric breeds.”
Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., said he has no knowledge about what motivated Loughner to attack Giffords and the others, but he still wants legislation that bans the use of certain imagery when talking about congressional targets.
“I want to eliminate what may have been,” Brady told Fox News. “I’m not a psychologist…. All I’m saying is you can’t put a bull’s eye or a crosshair on a member of Congress.”
…
[Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY)] said that while she’s not up to speed on current regulations, the Federal Communications Commission should work to sanction broadcasts that could incite people to violence.
“No one owns the airwaves,” Slaughter said. “They are owned by the people.”
If lawmakers were to seek remedies to quiet distasteful discussion, the so-called Fairness Doctrine is at the top of lists inspiring supporters and alarming opponents.
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., told National Public Radio said he “came up in a time that the Fairness Doctrine did not allow media outlets to say things about a candidate or a person in public office without giving that person equal time to respond. And I really believe that everybody needs to take a look at where we are pushing things, and may need to take a serious step back and evaluate what’s going on here.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s Federal Communications Commission, led by Julius Genachowski, has been greedily lusting after control of the internet through an illegal imposition of net neutrality and by extracting concessions from Comcast and NBC/Universal in trade for FCC approval of the firms’ merger.


What has happened in the past week has been about one thing and one thing only: politics, pure and simple, in pursuit of even greater power for the federal government. There’s nothing the slightest bit unusual about that.

Climate Change

Via-The American Spectator


By George Neumayr

The eruption of wild accusations after the shootings in Arizona illustrate once again that those who talk about civility the most practice it the least. Pious calls for the restoration of civility have come from a parade of pundits and pols famous for celebrating or rationalizing the most egregious violations of it.

Civility is a political, not moral concept, in the minds of many on the left. "Civility" means to them peaceful submission to liberalism and "incivility" means annoyingly effective opposition to liberalism. Were greater respect for human beings the meaning of the term, "civility" would require massive changes to their agenda, starting with their support for a right to abortion. Mother Teresa once pointed this out to the tony elite at a prayer breakfast in Washington, D.C. But they weren't terribly interested in her definition of civic virtue. They want "civility" and a culture of death at the same time.

Moreover, it makes no sense that conservatives who called for a restoration of respect for the law in Arizona would receive the brunt of the criticism for a crazed gunman's violation of it. Who has fed a "climate" in which violent crime occurs? The answer can't be citizens who plead with the authorities to enforce the law. A climate of lawlessness has been fostered by those in authority deaf to those protests.

It was killings and kidnappings that led the Tea Partiers and conservatives to demand that authorities in Arizona take the law seriously again. Has any of that violence led the left to engage in soul-searching about its fashionable support for selective application of the law? The left prides itself on being "pro-government," even as it shows no consistent respect for the rule of law underpinning government.

The "climate" change they have in mind in the wake of the shootings is not greater respect for the law but greater respect for "government," which roughly translates as liberals in power. The left often glorifies rebels, revolutionaries, and lawbreakers. Its leading lights trot off to Cuba to pay their respects to a practitioner of political violence, Fidel Castro, and attend movies that cast defiant nonconformists like Che Guevara as heroes. One of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's most vocal apologists was the left-wing writer Gore Vidal, whom the self-appointed guardians of civility have long indulged. Left-wing film director Oliver Stone has talked about making a movie that will soften the images of Adolph Hilter and Joseph Stalin.

Several networks have solemnly replayed clips of Bill Clinton's remarks at the memorial of those who died in Oklahoma City bombing. "The words we use really do matter because there are, there’s this vast echo chamber. And they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike," he said. Does the left really believe that? Left-wing Hollywood and left-wing academia would have to be shut down if it did. Children are fed a steady diet of violence from the music and movies that come out of Hollywood, before heading off to college where they hear tenured professors like Ward Churchill present academic justifications for nihilism.

The same politicians who appear on civility panels and commissions also pop up at ACLU events where money is raised to defend the vitriolic speech of open jihadists at Ivy League colleges. Barack Obama started his ascent to his higher politics from the living room of a domestic terrorist turned educator of youth, Bill Ayers, and honed his views of hope and unity under the tutelage of the "God Damn America" sermonist Jeremiah Wright.

This coalition of radical intellectuals, Alinskyites, Constitution scoffers, and 1960s nostalgists is the last group Americans should entrust with the task of purifying and elevating America's political discourse.

Via- Massacre, followed by libel

VIA-WAPO


By Charles Krauthammer
 

The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.
The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.


As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.


Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann,the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding toanything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.
A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world."


His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.


This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.


These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.
Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."


Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence.


Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.
When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder.


Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin.


The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?