A Short List of Right-Wing Intellectual Thought
When you have the murder of a federal judge and the attempted murder of an elected official, this is when we refer to it collectively as "assassination." And when you have assassinations (or attempted ones), people tend to find political clues for motivations. This is how the world usually works.
By now, who hasn't heard of the right-wing's blustery attempts to stamp their little feet and deny that vitriol might have had a role in the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords last Saturday. Well, they're right that none of them egged the killer on or dared him to shoot people at a supermarket on an otherwise unremarkable weekend morning. Yet given the ugly attitude of the right-wing, can we really be surprised that a political assassination put all that ugly talk under a sudden harsh light? The loud mouths on the right are the biggest ones blathering day in and day out, and suddenly, by terrible coincidence, a Congresswoman is fighting for her life and a federal judge is dead among others. These folks have been yelling "Fire!" for two years now, egging their own listeners and sloping foreheaded admirers about the illegitimacy of the president, the alleged dismantling of the country, socialism, taxes, you name it, the right wing has been creating a climate of fear and panic.
And then a politician gets shot. Suddenly, denial is catching more than VD on a sailor's weekend pass.
Rather than lead, of course, the right-wing merely ratcheted up their standard reactionary demeanor. Again, like I said, it's all a terrible coincidence. Maybe, but the genie was long let out of the bottle but the lack of self-awareness and reflection is, quit honestly, shocking, But then again, maybe the following list might help clarify things (Source: Don't Tea on Me):
”I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. … No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.” —Glenn Beck, May 17, 2005
”If Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”’ —FOX News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, after San Francisco voted to ban military recruiters from city schools, Nov. 8, 2005
Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” (Sarah Palin)
Tea Party candidate in the race for Giffords’ seat was Jesse Kelly. His web site advertised an election event with the words: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”
“If I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” (Ann Coulter)
”Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms.”—Tea Party-backed Texas GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden, suggesting the violent overthrow of the U.S. government if Republicans don’t win at the ballot box, interview with Dallas’s WFAA-TV, Oct. 21, 2010
”The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them.” —Rush Limbaugh
“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee. That’s just a joke, for you in the media.” (Ann Coulter)
”I just wish Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out, and I wouldn’t have rescued them.”—Bill O’Reilly, on his radio show, Sept. 14, 2005
”I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.”—Glenn Beck, on why people who lost their homes in forest fires in California had it coming, Oct. 22, 2007
”I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.” —Rep. Michele Bachmann, March 2009
“We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals.” (Ann Coulter)
”I went to the movie this weekend with a gun. And surprise, surprise, I didn’t kill anybody!” Glenn Beck
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.” (Ann Coulter)