Verbal Arsonists

I'm a pistol owner and believe in free speech, but both come with responsiblity. In the wake of today's murder of six people and the wounding of 18 in Tuscon including Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in the head by the gunman, count on the rightwing pols and pundits to angrily denounce anyone who says their violent rhetoric helped trigger the bloodshed. But they are verbal arsonists with blood on their hands.

I'm always leery about anything that discourages speech and links it to violence, but to deny their words bear any responsibility for acts like today's shooting is sheer hypocrisy. But of course those most responsible will scream the loudest and blame their critics for their own deeds.

Like House Speaker and Republican Rep. John Boehner saying he was "horrified" by the shooting http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html?pagewanted=2&hp Where was Boehner 's voice when Gifford's office windows were broken or shot in after her vote in favor of the health care law, the one Boehner compared to "Armaggedon" in a speech on the house floor? And what did he say in defense of his Democratic colleagues who had anti-gay and racial epithets and spit hurled at them after their votes in favor of the law?

How about Sarah Palin who called the shooting tragic? http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/assassination-attempt-in-arizona/?ref=politics The same Sarah Palin who told supporters, "Don't retreat, reload." And who included Giffords in her infamous "crosshairs list."

Or Glenn Beck - whom I was unfortunate enough to have to briefly work for at WELI Radio in Connecticut in the 1990s - who previously regularly says things on his radio and television shows like, "there will be rivers of blood if we don't have values and principles." http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006150032 Count on Beck to try to blame liberals like me for the shooting while getting rich egging on the crazies with his divisive and ignorant anti-government rhetoric.

The suspected shooter, Jared L. Loughner, had anti-government rhetotic on his Facebook Page, according to ABC News and wrote about his imminent death hours before the shooting, according to ABC News. People like Loughner are sponges and love to be told what they want to hear. That it's us against them in a life and death struggle.

People who commit acts like the one Loughner is accused of are time bombs and they might explode regardless of what some politician or pundit says. But don't think verbal bomb throwers don't help set them off. It's like having a crazy cousin and buying him a gun  for Christmas after telling him that the mayor is the anti-Christ. And then when the mayor gets killed saying, "Hey, don't blame me. I didn't tell him to shoot the mayor."

Martin Luther King said that, "the ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks do destroy. Instead of diminishing evil it multiplies it. "

 Today King is considered a saint often quoted by people on the right like Beck. But it was the kind of rhetoric that people like Beck spout on a daily basis that helped create the climate for King's murder. Words have consequences, but those who speak them rarely pay for those consequences. They profit from them.