Incendiary rhetoric leads to violence

I'm sure I'm not the only one who was at Rea's condo yesterday who remembers something Bob Burns said about the brown shirts in Germany in the 1930's. Bob was comparing what happened back then with the way things are going in our country. "First they were disruptive. Then they became violent." We all remember the town hall meetings held by Sen. McCaskill and Congressman Carnahan over a year ago about health care reform and how disruptive the anti-health care people were. Not a day went by in 2010 that someone with a right-wing agenda didn't say something provocative about doing violence to liberal leaders. It was only a matter of time before someone like the kid in Tucson went on a killing spree.

Of course the Republicans are on TV saying "both sides are guilty," "both sides need to turn down the volume." And, as they always do when their hate speech and incendiary rhetoric pushes someone over the edge, they say he was a "lone gunman."

NO. NO. NO. The two sides are NOT equally to blame. Progressives do not have hate radio shows. Progressives on MSNBC do not call for people they disagree with to be shot. Progressives do not question the birthplace of Republicans or sport bumper stickers questioning their patriotism. We don't call them "Hitler" or "communist" or "lawn scum to be scraped off." (That last one was a comment posted on a Washington Post article two days ago.)

CREDO is collecting signatures on a petition calling on Sarah Palin to accept some responsibility for the murders in Tucson because her website had a target on Rep. Giffords' district. Good luck with that. I signed the petition knowing full well she and the other Obama haters will NEVER admit their culpability.

Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun posted this question today - how do the right wingers get away with killing our progressive leaders time and time again? He continues:

"Why does what Hillary Clinton once quite accurately described as "the vast right-wing conspiracy" get a free pass when its rhetoric can easily be seen to contribute to the climate of hate from which the actions of this "lone gunman" can be easily understood to have emerged? Isn't it time for us to demand that our government investigate the violence-generating discourse of the racists and the haters? Why, when the House of Representatives was in the hands of Democrats, did they not have any committee or subcommittee at work holding pubic hearings to explore what kind of legislation might help protect us citizens and our liberal and progressive representatives from the kind of violence that exploded in Arizona earlier today? Because if there is no such larger exploration of how to stop the haters and to uncover the full dimensions of those who are committed to destroying, one way or the other, the non-military functions of our government, then ordinary people are going to be more afraid to participate in the democratic process or come to any public events--and that is a decisive step toward allowing fascism to triumph in this country. So don't think of this action as a mere "irrational event," because it fits very well with the agenda of those who want to give the country back 100% to the corporate powers and their Republican agents in Congress while scaring those who might wish to participate in helping build any kind of progressive alternative."

While most of the talk is about beefing up security in the physical sense for our Congress men and women, there should also be a public discussion about the escalation of rhetoric to the point of making us all unsafe. When a Republican Congressman called President Obama a liar during his state of the union speech last year, why didn't his colleagues sanction him? When something like that is glossed over, it makes it easier for the next outburst and the next and the next. Louder. More and more disruptive. One thing leads to another and someone gets killed. Next week we celebrate the birthday of one of our heroic progressives, Martin Luther King Jr. We can honor him by insisting that Congress investigate those who incite others to violence.