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PrintJanuary 12, 2011
Rep. Slaughter uses AZ tragedy to push for Fairness Doctrine
In Arizona, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz) was shot in an attempted murder that cost six other Americans their lives. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) is disgustingly using the tragedy as a call to arms to legislate a better way to “police language on the airwaves.” Her contention is that the “incendiary rhetoric” of talk radio can lead to incidents of violence.
The first thing that should stand out for Americans (as it undoubtedly has many times in assessing the left’s response to Saturday’s horrific events) is the ridiculousness of aligning conservative talk radio with the crime. This becomes especially ridiculous when you consider that the targeted politician in this incident is regarded as a centrist; and exponentially absurd when you factor in that all reports and evidence would link the culprit to the leftist fringe long before any faction of the right.
Murderer Jared Loughner has been described by those who knew him as a “left-wing pothead.” Among his favorite authors are socialist figureheads including Karl Marx, who has been revered by prominent American leftists like the late Howard Zinn and his supporters. And in Loughner’s back yard can be found a shrine that suggests a practice of Satanism.
It is quite clear that the murderer’s political views and spiritual alignment couldn’t be more antithetical to what is generally referred to as “conservatism.” So it is highly unlikely that Rush Limbaugh indoctrinated him to commit the act, despite a delusional Sheriff Dupnik’s laughable assertion.
So in spite of all of this, why has the left chosen Jared Loughner as the poster child to bring the “Fairness Doctrine” back to the table? The truth is that it was probably an early, wild guess that Loughner was a subscriber to talk radio. It’s as if the left, disoriented from the political shellacking they took in November, simply tossed a dart blindly in a darkened room, and they just happened to hit the biggest target on their blame board: Rush Limbaugh.
The left would have loved for Loughner to have been revealed as an ex-military Tea Partier when the curtain was pulled back, thereby proving they were right and Rush is to blame. But there has been no such confirmation, nor does it look like there will be. So when we reasonable Americans examine the actual evidence that has been released surrounding this case and cast aside all politicization that has ensued in its aftermath, where does it really lead?
Not surprisingly, it leads to the simplest answer. Jared Loughner is an evil man who committed a crime that cost innocent people their lives, and his actions are directly the result of a mental instability that afflicts only the most depraved of our species.
So let us take the left’s manufactured assault on talk radio for what it is: a blatant and continued attempt to silence its opposition. And as for representatives like Louise Slaughter that would work in spite of all reason to convince us otherwise, let us recognize how vile her political game is. She is selectively using an unspeakable attack on a fellow federal representative as political currency to legitimize the institution of a derivative of the “Fairness Doctrine” that she has longed to pass.
But the real question I have is, if Louise Slaughter has always been so deeply concerned about “incendiary speech” causing violence, why did she not suggest that global warming propaganda be stifled months ago, when James Jay Lee took hostages at gunpoint at Discovery Channel Headquarters for the network’s refusal to singularly disseminate anthropogenic global warming theory? After all, he was admittedly awakened into political and environmental activism by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and that is what led to his act of terrorism.
For political opportunists like Slaughter, some forms of free speech are more dangerous than others, it seems. And never more dangerous than when she disagrees with it.
I blog at: http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com
