Second Amendment Remedies

by Dick Mac

After the slaughter and rampage in Tucson, Arizona, this past weekend, the teabaggers have circled the wagons and their media warlords at News Corp. have started the spin.

Sunday's popular line among the teabaggers and their supporters was that all of the media on "both" sides are responsible for the violence in our national discourse. One person on a Facebook thread actually said that the statements Markos Moulitsas made about targeting certain Congressional districts, using palinesque language, was just as dangerous as the language used by Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle.

Now, I am not familiar with the post referred to here, but I am familiar with Markos Moulitsas and I suspect his use of the right-wing language may have been a poor choice; but, he has not inflamed Americans to use guns in the same manner as the teabaggers and the right-wing politicians. To say that any liberal or any Democrat has used language like Palin and her minions to the same effect is to have little or no grasp of reality.

No liberal or Democrat has made statements like this:



Even a sheriff in Arizona has said

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice.

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, Saturday, January 8, 2011

Why should we minimize the impact that the words and actions of Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, and the rest of the teabaggers have had on the national discourse?

There are plenty of people in prison for murder who were never anywhere near the scene of the crimes for which they are serving sentences. People are sent to prison for inciting others to murder, which is what Angle and Palin have done with this guy in Tucson.

Why is Sharron Angle, who has called for killing government officials, allowed to walk free?

Why is Sarah Palin, who published a map with cross hairs over Gabrielle Giffords' district allowed walk free after someone took her advice and guidance and actually shot Giffords?

These two, and scores more like them, have been guilty of treason for months, and now they are guilty of murder!

Angle and Palin are guilty of the murders of nine-year-old Christina Green, Dorothy Morris, John Roll (a Federal judge!), Phyllis Scheck, Dorwan Stoddard, and Gabe Zimmerman.

These people made the mistake of being interested in the ideas of a liberal in Arizona; and some guy who listened to a year of violent gun rhetoric from Palin and Angle, decided these were the people to take out.

Sure, he may have been unstable. Sure, he may not have been a teabagger or a conservative. Sure, he may never have met Angle or Palin. Some other things are sure, too: he has been in the United States for the past year listening to Angle and Palin call for using guns to solve our political differences, and he's been living in Arizona, the center of this hateful movement from the right. It is not a coincidence that this happened in Arizona to people at a liberal gathering.

It was not an accident, and although he may have arrived at that mall all by himself, he did not act alone. He acted with the chorus behind him, loud and clear, of rabid Americans who have been whipped into a violent frenzy by Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, and the right-wing media. He pulled the trigger knowing he was carrying out the wishes of some very famous, powerful people.

He may have been a "lone shooter," but he did not act alone. Those who insist he did act alone are wrong.

The blood of these deaths is on the hands of Angle, Palin, Fox News, and all the other right-wing extremists who have called for this exact thing to happen.

Congratulations, it's happened.

In the twisting of our nation and pretending to honor America's Founding Fathers, a 9-year-old, a federal judge, a handful of American citizens have been killed, and a member of Congress critically wounded.

Second Amendment remedies, indeed.