All the discussion this past week about conservative speech and media depictions influencing the behaviors of an obviously mentally ill individual has me wondering about a far more widely spread liberal mental illness, one characterized by a rabid, simultaneous defense of two diametrically opposed positions. We do tend to refer to those with multiple and wildly differing ideas as schizophrenic, do we not?

Yes, I know that F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the ability to hold two opposing ideas simultaneously was the sign of a first rate intellect, but some contend that Fitzgerald added the caveat, "And still retain the ability to function," which disposes of any rebuttal of my assertion from many liberals. And while he did not use the term simultaneously, Voltaire did say, "Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively." Perhaps liberal mental infirmity is best described as Orwellian doublethink.

Within hours of the Tucson shooting, we were being bombarded (snark intended) by liberals attempting to place blame on militant conservative speech. Typically blind and deaf to the same transgressions by their own kind, liberal pantywaists like Paul Krugman, frothed about the big, bad bullying conservatives and their threatening political discourse. Conservatives howled in angry outrage and pointed to endless examples of liberal usage of even more militant language.

After listening to the back and forth on this for a week now, I am reminded, as in similar situations in the past, that the Libs are trying to have it both ways. They contend that conservative speech and actions disseminated in the media to the masses are the principal causes of periodic acts of violence by a deranged but easily influenced few within those masses. Yet when was the last time you had a discussion with a liberal about the influence that depictions of antisocial behaviors up to and including rape, sodomy and mass murder portrayed in movies, popular music and video games disseminated to the masses have on our impressionable youth?

I can remember the haughty ridicule with which my arguments were met and I'll wager you can as well. The very idea that any such association exists between media disseminated violence and violent individual behaviors is always met with a snotty, eye-rolling contempt that leaves no doubt as to what is thought of your benighted intellectual capabilities. To the supposedly intellectual Left, this is such a ridiculous allegation as to be unworthy of discussion and you can only be one of those small-town buffoons clinging to your guns, religion and xenophobia.

So once again we must pose the question to liberals, which is it? Does the depiction and dissemination of violence in the media cause some people to behave violently or not? To which far too many of them, demonstrating the truth of my first paragraph, will no doubt respond with an Orwellian, or perhaps schizophrenic, "Both."