January 14, 2011 07:02 AM UTC

A cordon of reason

• 10 Comments
• by: Raf

(Raf is a great veteran of the Colorado blogosphere. Well written and thus promoted. – promoted by redstateblues)

It’s Thursday, and the shockwaves from Saturday’s attempted assassination of Rep. Gabby Giffords, and the brutal murder of six people at the “Congress in your Corner” event she was hosting, still reverberate.

The response, though, has been swift: on Tuesday, Republican Congressman Peter King of New York officially introduced legislation that would bar anyone from willfuly bringing a weapon within 1,000 feet of any event in which a member of Congress or a federal judge is appearing, and give police the right to search ‘suspicious bulges’. No less a conservative figure than Cliff May, former communications director of the Republican National Committee and a regular at National Review, endorsed this measure, using an analogy that this former resident of Colorado found endearing:

“Even in the old West, cowboys hung up their guns when they entered a saloon.”

   

Cliff and the Congressman are right, and I don’t have to travel far in my memory to see the utility of such a law. I had the chance to travel far and wide across America at the height of the debate on health care reform in the summer of 2009. From Yorktown to Fargo to Pueblo, I saw people arguing passionately, with conviction and verve. I attended my fair share of “Congress in your Corner” events across this great land of ours, and I never failed to be struck at just how vulnerable the various Congressmen were.

Oftentimes, these elected officials would sit under the shade of the entrance lobby to a Kroger’s or a Safeway, shielded by nothing more than a cheap folding table, a couple of staffers and interns, and only occasionally, an off-duty cop. Anyone could’ve done what Jared Lee Loughner with considerable ease; in that sense, my shock and surprise isn’t that it happened at all, but that it took so long to happen, given the scalding rhetoric used over the last few years.

I mentioned that people argued with passion and conviction earlier: sane folks know that the clash of ideologies should be engaged with ideas, principles, and ballots; but in a nation of 300 million, it is all too inevitable that a fractional few would be driven to use bullets and bombs, given the rhetoric of the last few years, especially the words and ideas employed by members of various ‘Tea Party’ contingents. The examples are legion in number, but consider these:

   – in Pueblo in 2009, I documented a featured speaker referring to the health care reform law as the American equivalent of Hitler’s Final Solution. Not content with that analogy, the speaker then compared it to the killing fields of Cambodia, before tossing in various smaller massacres, before wrapping by musing: “I wonder what we’ll call our ‘Final Solution'”.

   – the various signs at various events, invariably borne aloft by men carrying weapons, quoting Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” I think we can all agree that these men aren’t just inveterate fans of Jefferson.

You would think that after Saturday’s attempted assassination, these folks, and their anointed leaders, would pause, reflect, and then proceed to ratchet their rhetorical excesses down to a reasonable level.

You would be mistaken.

Yesterday, Sarah Palin – who, it must be noted, used a gunsight to target 20 members of Congress as part of the ad campaigns designed to gain control of their districts, including Rep. Giffords – took a massive step backwards by blaming anyone, everyone other than herself:

“But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

“Blood libel”. Imagine that. For those that don’t know, the words “blood libel” carry a deep, atrocious, and shameful history. Historically, they’ve been used to incite anti-Semitic campaigns of violence, by insinuating that Jews literally use the blood of Christians in order to prepare their food. Thus provoked, the population would then run riot, ransacking and often killing scores of people guilty of nothing more than practicing the faith of their ancestors.

It so happens that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish, as am I. Asking Palin to take ownership of her words and actions isn’t a blood libel. Her response is only the cowardly abdication of responsibility and honor by someone who knows that they are, in large part, responsible for cranking up the heat and political radicalism.

I’ve often been a stout critic of Rep. Peter King in the past, but I’m glad to see him and other conservative leaders, like Cliff May, standing up for a reasoned exchange of ideas.