PrintJanuary 13, 2011
Liberalism's Ugly Face
While most normal Americans still reeled in shock in the wake of the Tucson shooting, liberals across the country were out in force, blaming conservatives for it. Given how heart-rending the whole tragedy was, their reaction is truly mind-boggling. One can only wonder what kind of human beings would react in this way.
To liberals' eternal shame, it turns out that the shooter was anything but a Tea Partier and that his "conservative" credentials are rather thin indeed. In fact, the information that has emerged since then would appear to place him in the leftist camp, if anywhere in the political sphere. But in truth, he inhabited the alternate reality of a deranged mind.
This is what it boils down to: A madman shoots a Democrat congresswoman, and a group of innocent bystanders and liberals want to blame conservatives for it. This is worse than outrageous or cynical.
Liberals' response to this atrocity is not a normal human reaction. Normal human beings do not think like that. The normal reaction to this kind of event is grief and tears. Only morally and emotionally deformed individuals could embark on a political smear campaign just moments after such a tragedy without possessing any facts whatsoever.
When I first heard the news of the shooting, I immediately assumed that Giffords was a Republican, and it took me several hours to register that she was not. Not once during that time did it occur to me to blame liberals for the atrocity despite the hateful and vitriolic rhetoric which is the hallmark of their political discourse. (Do you remember some of the things they have said about Bush or Palin or conservatives in general?)
As I followed the coverage, I was stunned by the unspeakable pain inflicted on the victims and their families. The realization that Giffords was a Democrat changed absolutely nothing about the way I viewed the tragedy. When normal people see that a woman has been shot through the head and six others are dead -- including an angelic little girl -- scoring political points is as far from their minds as the east is from the west.
There is a point at which politicking ends and considerations of political gain or ideology fade into insignificance. For most people, the Tucson tragedy was such a point. At such moments, we can only shake our heads in disbelief at the diabolical insensibility of the shooter while our hearts overflow with love and empathy for those so grievously afflicted. It matters not a bit what their beliefs or ideological orientation is.
Whether liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans, we are all human beings created in God's image. And even though we may sometime heatedly disagree on political issues, we should ultimately relate to each other on the basis of love. I believe that this how most ordinary Americans feel about what happened in Tucson. Sadly and shockingly, it quickly became obvious that many liberals had little love or empathy to waste.
I would like to ask my liberal friends these questions:
How come that upon seeing this terrible tragedy, your first impulse was to gratuitously smear your political opponents?
Why, instead of grieving and sorrowing -- which is what most normal people did -- you immediately began your sick scheming to extract political advantage from such a direful event?
What's wrong with you?!
What's wrong with you?!
As if this were not enough, liberals demanded that Sarah Palin respond to the events in Tucson. But when she did so, and eloquently, they denounced her as un-presidential and worse. Palin's connection to this tragedy can be only on the human level. But even if the gunman had posters of Sarah Palin on his walls and memorized all her speeches, she would still not be in any way culpable. Sarah Palin has never advocated the assassination of politicians or mass shootings of innocent Americans.
John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan because he wanted to impress the actress Jodi Foster. No one called on Jodi Foster to justify herself in that tragedy. So why should Sarah Palin? Why should she answer for someone else's actions, especially since that person is by all indications a left-wing lunatic?
The attempt by liberals to paint the Tea Party movement as a dangerous aberration that breeds homicidal maniacs is simply egregious. The Tea Party is a movement by everyday Americans who are sincerely concerned about the due intrusion of the federal government into their lives. If the last election is anything to go by, most current American voters are either part of it or in sympathy with at least some of its goals. In other words, the Tea Party is a broad, mainstream political phenomenon. That liberals want to brand it as part of a lunatic fringe is offensive beyond words.
As more information comes out about the shooter, the liberals' initial attempt at the blame-game has become painfully embarrassing to them. We must, however, keep reminding the nation of what they tried to do, because it teaches an important lesson.
Carried away by the hope of scoring political points, liberals inadvertently revealed something about themselves and their system of beliefs. They showed us that liberalism is a convoluted ideology that strips its proponents of their humanness to the point where they do not think, act, or feel like regular people.
May their behavior not become only a sad footnote to this tragedy, but may it be long remembered. Let the people of this nation behold the repulsive ugliness of liberalism, and may they recoil from it in disgust.
