Today’s big political sensation seems to be a video released by Sarah Palin providing her presumably definitive commentary on the shootings in Tucson, the controversy over her PAC’s targeting of Gabby Giffords with what looked like a bullseye on her district, and the broader argument about the possible connection of violent anti-government rhetoric with acts of violence against government officials.
Most of the commentary on the video has focused on her use of the term “blood libel” to characterize accusations of conservative responsibility for the outbreak of violence in Arizona.
The term originally referred to persistent medieval claims that Jews were killing Christian children and using their blood for ritual purposes. Thus, it was suspected, Palin’s longstanding habit of appropriating every available symbol of victimization to illustrate the persecution of herself, her family, and her political supporters had reached a new low.
I personally think it’s more likely that Palin and/or her staff picked up on “blood libel” after it was used (and then endlessly linked to) by Glenn Reynolds in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday to turn the tables on liberal critics of violent conservative rhetoric. Maybe he knew the historical derivation of the term, but there’s no particular reason to assume Palin did; she probably thought, quite plausibly, that it referred to allegations of “blood on your hands” after an act of violence.
In any event, it’s not the “blood libel” reference that struck me about the speech, or the general, predictable effort to deny there was anything at all wrong or unusual about her and other conservatives’ rhetoric towards their political opponents. What was really interesting was how much Palin’s video was framed like a presidential address (disclosure: I borrowed this insight from The American Prospect‘s Mark Schmitt, who mentioned it in a private discussion), from its Olympian tone of reassurance right down to its “May God Bless America” closing. Viewed from this perspective, Palin’s self-exculpatory lines and the accusation of a “blood libel” seem more like a matter-of-fact statement of her viewers’ beliefs than any angrily-intended counterattack against her alleged tormenters
Check out this altar call at the end:

Let us honor those precious lives cut short in Tucson by praying for them and their families and by cherishing their memories. Let us pray for the full recovery of the wounded. And let us pray for our country. In times like this we need God’s guidance and the peace He provides. We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate.
America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country.

Now there’s obviously some red meat tucked into this passage, with the references to “mindless finger-pointing” and “stifling debate.” But that’s not the central thrust, which was bascially to tell “her people” that they were on the side of the Tucson victims, not to mention the angels, and that their political activities were in the best traditions and interests of the country as a whole.
It’s as though she knew “her nation” wouldn’t listen to its dubious commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, when he speaks tonight, and felt it needed its own presidential address to calm fears and restate pieties.
If this is an accurate interpretations of her motives, then it’s a token of the depth of divisions facing America that we can’t unite even rhetorically except by proxy. And it’s also a sign of Palin’s own self-appointed role as not just one of many conservative leaders, but as the voice conservatives have been waiting to hear.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Warning label: This article will make civil libertarians unhappy. Read at your own risk.
We are embroiled, alas, in a politicized argument about the slaughter in Tucson. While most of the charges being flung about rest on a scanty basis (at best), the most important and least contestable facts are getting lost: Jared Lee Loughner was mentally ill when he pulled the trigger, there were multiple signs of his descent into delusion over the past year, and no one did very much about it.
To be sure, the authorities at Pima Community College finally suspended him after five contacts with the police and conditioned his return on clearance from a mental health professional. Police delivered the letter of suspension to Loughner’s home and talked with him and his parents. We do not know what happened next. Perhaps his parents tried to persuade him to seek help and were rebuffed; perhaps they were reluctant to have further involvement with the authorities; perhaps they were too confused or conflicted even to try. In any event, there’s no evidence that he did receive treatment, and according to college officials, he did not attempt to return to school.
The bottom line: No one was legally responsible for taking the next step, and they might well have hit a wall if they had. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the director of the Urgent Psychiatric Care Center in Phoenix said that in the absence of specific threats, parents or authorities might well have failed to meet the tests for involuntary commitment under Arizona law, which resembles laws in most states as well. Liz Rebensdorf, a retired psychologist and an official in the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said, “Unless there’s a crime committed, it’s very difficult to force someone into treatment.” For someone delusional who’s bent on mayhem, that’s too long to wait.
The story repeats itself, over and over. A single narrative connects the Unabomber, George Wallace shooter Arthur Bremmer, Reagan shooter John Hinckley, the Virginia Tech shooter–all mentally disturbed loners who needed to be committed and treated against their will. But the law would not permit it.
Starting in the 1970s, civil libertarians worked to eliminate involuntary commitment or, that failing, to raise the standards and burden of proof so high that few individuals would meet it. Important decisions by the Supreme Court and subordinate courts gave individuals new protections, including a constitutional right to refuse psychotropic medication. A few states have tried to push back in constitutionally acceptable ways, but efforts such as California’s Laura’s Law, designed to make it easier to force patients to take medication, have been stymied by civil rights concerns and lack of funding.
We need legal reform to shift the balance in favor of protecting the community, especially against those who are armed and deranged. This means two changes in particular. First, those who acquire credible evidence of an individual’s mental disturbance should be required to report it to both law enforcement authorities and the courts, and the legal jeopardy for failing to do so should be tough enough to ensure compliance. Parents, school authorities, and other involved parties should be made to understand that they have responsibilities to the community as a whole, not just to family members or to their own student body. While embarrassment and reluctance to get involved are understandable sentiments, they should not be allowed to drive conduct when the public safety is at stake. We’re not necessarily cramming these measures down anyone’s throat: I’ve known many families who were desperate for laws that would help them do what they knew needed to be done for their adult children, and many college administrators who felt that their hands were tied.
Second, the law should no longer require, as a condition of involuntary incarceration, that seriously disturbed individuals constitute a danger to themselves or others, let alone a “substantial” or “imminent” danger, as many states do. A delusional loss of contact with reality should be enough to trigger a process that starts with multiple offers of voluntary assistance and ends with involuntary treatment, including commitment if necessary. How many more mass murders and assassinations do we need before we understand that the rights-based hyper-individualism of our laws governing mental illness is endangering the security of our community and the functioning of our democracy?

Sarah Palin’s going through a pretty tough stretch as a national conservative icon. Her daughter didn’t win Dancing With the Stars. Her second book did not rocket to the top of best-seller lists. Her TV reality show isn’t getting renewed for a second year. Polls show her becoming even more unpopular among the national electorate, and showing some weakness among Republicans. And now she’s drawing heat, and not responding very well, in the wake of the Tucson shootings, thanks to her PAC’s adoption of a bullseye-targeting map last year that included Gabby Giffords’ district.
It would be foolish to underestimate Palin’s residual appeal to conservative activists, who may not want her to run for president but may also support her if she does so. But let’s say for the sake of argument she doesn’t run in 2012 (at 46 she is, after all, young enough to make the presidential prospect lists for the next five or six cycles). Does that mean the GOP presidential field for ’12 will be under less pressure to tilt hard right?
Not necessarily. For one thing, there’s a potential candidate out there, another woman as it happens, who makes Palin look like a milquetoast moderate: Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Famous as a provocatively right-wing quote machine, and a particular favorite of religious conservatives, Bachmann has suddenly started making noises about entering the next-door Iowa Caucuses in 2012 (she’s an Iowa native, which never hurts).
Sure, House members almost never gain traction as presidential candidates, and Bachmann barely showed up in a new poll of likely 2012 caucus-goers (though the pollster suggested she had a significant upside if and when she’s taken seriously as a candidate). But as veteran Iowan Republican activist and blogger Craig Robinson pointed out, Bachmann has a couple of potential aces-in-the-hole:

[I]f Bachmann does run, she will have one thing that no other presidential candidate will have when campaigning in Iowa – the support of Iowa’s conservative standard-bearer, Congressman Steve King….
A Bachmann run would create a perfect storm in Iowa. Bachmann is already the darling of the Tea Party. Combine that with King’s statewide network of conservative in a caucus election and its bound to befuddle everyone in the beltway as well as her caucus opponents.
Another point to ponder is, what if Palin backs Bachmann’s campaign? Palin has already headlined a fundraising event for Bachmann last year. The event was a huge success, and Bachmann has proven herself to be an astute fundraiser. She raised $13.2 million in 2010. That’s as much as Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, and Duncan Hunter raised for their 2008 presidential campaigns combined. It’s also almost as much as Huckabee raised for his campaign.

Bachmann’s very close relationship with King is a fact; he was one of the few supporters of her recent unsuccessful bid for a House GOP leadership post, and he’s apparently planning to squire her around Iowa during her upcoming temperature-taking trip to the state. They were also the original cosponsors of the “ObamaCare repeal” legislation.
If nothing else, you have to figure a Bachmann candidacy would be an ongoing nightmare for fellow-Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty, whose vanilla personality would be constantly contrasted, poorly, with Bachmann’s crowd-pleasing fiery appeal.
The bottom line is that there’s a clear political opening in the 2012 campaign for a candidate who gets conservative activists all lathered up and snake-dancing to the Iowa Caucuses. Whether or not that candidate is Palin or Bachmann, someone will audition for the role. You can bet on it.

As J.P. Green noted yesterday, you’d think that some mild and relevant gun control legislation (e.g., Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s proposed ban on high-capacity ammunition clips, which is a variation on the Clinton-era assault weapon ban) might get fresh attention in the wake of the Tucson shootings. But no, it’s not much happening. As Justin Elliot of Salon explains:

Republicans have, so far, been united in dismissing the need for any new regulation. As Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday: “The weapons don’t kill people; it’s the individual that kills these people.” It’s unclear at this point whether McCarthy’s bill will even get a vote in the GOP-controlled House.
But it would be wrong to blame congressional Republicans alone for the failure to put in place new gun control measures. In the first two years of the Obama administration, with Democratic majorities in Congress, the only significant piece of gun legislation signed by the president was a measure tacked onto the credit card reform bill that allows concealed carry of firearms in national parks.

The truth is, Democrats decided more or less collectively during the last decade that gun control was a loser for them as a party, and that talk about it made life too difficult for candidates in rural areas of the country where it was literally a “bullet vote” issue. The size and wealth of the gun lobby, moreover, made it possible for opponents of even the most timorous kinds of gun safety measures to constantly frame the issue as an all-or-nothing choice between the Second Amendment and immediate confiscation of all firearms (which millions of Americans seemed to believe was somehow going to happen the minute Barack Obama was elected).
So it’s not surprising that Democrats are gun-shy on this issue. But if we ever intend to ask Americans to reconsider the country’s status as a place where virtually anyone can quickly get armed to the teeth, now would be a good time. After all, the assault weapons ban was enacted during the Clinton administration, and the sky did not fall. It can be done again.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’ TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira takes a look at public attitudes toward the tax deal passed last month, and finds congressional conservatives hoping for further tax breaks for the rich on shaky ground. As Teixeira explains:

…A mid-December CNN poll showed that 75 percent supported the recently passed bill, which included an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, a partial payroll tax holiday, an extension of unemployment benefits, and a reduced estate tax. Just 23 percent were opposed.

The deal has good overall buzz, but in some provisions “most dear to conservatives hearts” resonated poorly with poll respondents, as Teixeira reports:

…Only 37 percent of the public favored the extension of tax cuts for the rich compared to 62 percent who where opposed. Similarly, 39 percent favored the reduction in the estate tax for wealthy Americans while 59 percent were opposed.
These findings stand in stark relief to public views about extending the tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year (89 percent in favor/11 percent opposed), extending unemployment benefits (76 percent in favor/22 percent opposed) and a one-year reduction in the Social Security tax (62 percent in favor/36 percent opposed).

Worse, for conservatives,

…The public sharply differentiates between those elements of the tax cut bill that are broadly helpful to poor and middle-class Americans and those that are basically for the rich. And overall they believe the bill does too much for wealthy Americans. Fifty-six percent say that is the case compared to 35 percent who say the bill does about the right amount and 9 percent who believe the bill does too little.

As Teixeira concludes, “The tender concern of conservatives in Congress for America’s wealthy citizens and the public’s strong disagreement with that priority are two things that haven’t changed in the new year.”

A virtual who’s who of conservatives – from George Will and Marc Thiessen to virtually every well-known conservative media figure and blogger has now reacted with outrage to the idea that violent rhetoric by conservatives had anything to do with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Many, in fact, reverse the accusation and claim that they are the victims of a new “McCarthyism” or a “blood libel” when critics suggest that violent rhetoric by conservatives in any way contributed to the crime.
On the currently available evidence, Jared Loughner appears to be psychotic and delusional and not a typical right-wing extremist. However, it would be interesting to ask the conservative “who’s who” if they also believe that violent right-wing rhetoric had nothing to do with the following 21 attacks or thwarted attacks that left 8 innocent people dead
(list from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence)

July 27, 2008–Jim Adkisson shoots and kills two people at a progressive church in Knoxville, Tennessee, wounding two. Adkisson calls it “a symbolic killing” because he really “wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book,” but was unable to gain access to them.
April 4, 2009–Neo-Nazi Richard Poplawski shoots and kills three police officers responding to a 911 call to his home in Pittsburgh. His friend Edward Perkovic tells reporters that Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on its way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” Perkovic also commented that Poplawski carried out the shooting because “if anyone tried to take his firearms, he was gonna’ stand by what his forefathers told him to do.”
May 31, 2009–Scott P. Roeder shoots and kills Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. The FBI lists Roeder as a member of the Montana Freemen, a radical anti-government group. In April 1996, he had been pulled over in Topeka, Kansas, for driving with a homemade license plate. Police found a military-style rifle, ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder, and two 9-volt batteries in his car.
June 10, 2009–James W. von Brunn, a convicted felon and a “hardcore Neo-Nazi,” walks into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and shoots and kills a security guard. Von Brunn believed that Western civilization was going to be replaced with a “ONE WORLD ILLUMINATI GOVERNMENT” that would “confiscate private weapons” in order to accomplish its goals.
June 24, 2009–Hal Turner, a New Jersey resident and white supremacist blogger/radio host, is arrested again after calling for the murder of three Republican-appointed jurists on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who had issued a June 2 decision upholding handgun restrictions in Chicago. Writing on his blog, Turner says, “Let me be the first to say this plainly: these judges deserve to be killed,” and includes photographs, phone numbers, work addresses, and room numbers of the judges, as well as a map of Chicago’s federal courthouse which points out its “anti-truck bomb” pylons.
January 12, 2010–Mark Campano of Cuyhaoga Falls, Ohio, pleads not guilty to charges of possessing destructive devices not registered with the federal government. Law enforcement are called to Campano’s apartment in November 2009 after he accidentally detonates a pipe bomb and loses parts of two fingers. They find 30 pipe bombs, 17 rifles and handguns, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the dwelling. Campano’s next-door neighbor states, “He was always trying to get me and another neighbor to listen to anti-government tapes and watch anti-government videos … He was some kind of radical, and he didn’t believe in the government.”
February 18, 2010–Joseph Stack of Austin, Texas, flies a single-engine plane into an office building containing nearly 200 IRS employees, killing one and wounding 13. In a suicide note, Stack lays out his grievances with the federal tax agency, stating, “The law ‘requires’ a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not ‘duress’ than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is … Violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.”
March 19-22, 2010–During consideration of health care reform legislation by the U.S. House of Representatives, vandals attack Democratic offices in Pleasant Ridge, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Tuscon, Arizona; Niagra Falls, New York; and Rochester, New York. Mike Vanderboegh, the former leader of f the Alabama Constitutional Militia, takes credit for the violence after posting a blog on March 19 that states, “If we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democratic party headquarters across this country, we might just make up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.” Several Democratic members receive death threats, including Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who is told snipers will “kill the children of the members who voted YES”; Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who receives a message saying, “You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you”; and Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO), whose staffer is told by a caller, “Better hope I don’t run into you in a dark alley with a knife, a club or a gun.” House Minority Leader John Boehner, speaking about Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), says he “may be a dead man.”
March 29, 2010–Nine members of the MIchigan-based “Hutaree” Christian militia are arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempting to deploy weapons of mass destruction. The group had allegedly plotted to kill a law enforcement officer and then detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) during the officer’s funeral procession. The group targeted federal officials, members of the law enforcement “brotherhood” and other participants in the “New World Order.”
April 1-20, 2010–Walter Fitzpatrick, a member of American Grand Jury (AGJ), attempts to effect a citizen’s arrest on grand jury foreman Gary Pettway at the Monroe County courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee, and is arrested. Nineteen days later, on the day that Fitzpatrick is scheduled to face trial, Oath Keepers member Darren Huff is pulled over by Tennessee state troopers as he attempts to drive to the courthouse to arrest county officials he calls “domestic enemies of the United States engaged in treason.” Huff is armed with a Colt-45 handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle with 300-400 rounds of ammunition. He is indicted on federal charges of traveling in interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot and transporting in commerce a firearm in furtherance of a civil disorder.
July 18, 2010–California Highway Patrol officers arrest Byron Williams, 45, after a shootout on I-580 in which more than 60 rounds are fired. Officers had pulled Williams over in his pick-up for speeding and weaving in and out of traffic when he opened fire on them with a handgun and a long gun. Williams, a convicted felon, is shot several times, but survives because he is wearing body armor. Williams, a convicted felon, reveals that he was on his way to San Francisco to “start a revolution” by killing employees of the ACLU and Tides Foundation. Williams’ mother says her son was angry at “Left-wing politicians” and upset by “the way Congress was railroading through all these Left-wing agenda items.”
November 3, 2010–James Patock, 66, of Pima County, Arizona, is arrested on the National Mall in the District of Columbia after law enforcement authorities find a .223 caliber rifle, a .243 caliber rifle barrel, a .22 caliber rifle, a .357 caliber pistol, several boxes of ammunition, and propane tanks wired to four car batteries in his truck and trailer. Patock former neighbor in Arizona reported that, “He hated the president. He hated everything. He said if he got a chance he would shoot the president

(Note: an alert commenter has pointed out that there is evidence that Laughtner was familiiar with various ideas of right wing groups associated with the Patriot movement See the link Here)

In assessing the political fallout from the Tucson slayings, one of the few things that could be done to prevent further such tragedies is for traditional media — primarilly television, newspapers and radio — do a better job of calling out politicians who flirt with violent rhetoric.
A few traditional media reporters did express some concern when the rhetoric of violence began to escalate months ago. But more vigilance is clearly needed. Any political figure who even vaguely suggests physical violence against another political opponent ought to be hounded by all media until they apologize for it.
Nor am I including the blogosphere, because quite a few progressive bloggers have done a good job of calling politicians into account for violent rhetoric. The problem is most politicians still feel free to ignore the progressive blogosphere, which exerts its influence more indirectly than does TV, newspapers or radio. Public figures get more worried when a meme adversely reflecting on them gets discussed on the nightly news, morning talk shows. op-ed columns and radio reports.
There is plenty of discussion going on right now in the MSM about the role of violent rhetoric on the part of political figures like Sarah Palin. In six months, however, I would be surprised if Beck, Limbaugh and others are still coolling their propensities for referencing physical harm to their political opponents. The question is, will the MSM, not just the progressive blogosphere, make them account for it?
I’m not going to make the case here that a “violent climate” caused the tragedy. Others have done that about as well as it could be done (see Olbermann here, for example). Regardless, a huge majority of Americans would agree that political leaders need to tone down the ad hominem attacks, at least to the point of not using gun-related imagery in talking about how to deal with political adversaries. Certainly there is no downside to doing so.
I don’t buy the false equivalency argument that progressives have been as guilty as conservatives in suggesting physical violence against political opponents. There may be a couple of examples, but nothing as outrageous as the incidents Vega discussed yesterday. But if we get bipartisan agreement on nothing else, let it be that even vague references encouraging physical violence against political opponents be immediately and loudly condemned by leaders of both parties.
But I would hold Dems to account for weak leadership on gun control, which has become a sort of ‘third rail’ for office holders. I don’t expect most Democratic office-holders to lead the charge for a broad range of gun control measures. Regretfully, America has not yet reached the point where sane gun control reforms can be broadly enacted. But this tragedy certainly underscores the need for a ban on high capacity ammo clips, as has been proposed by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), who lost her husband to gun violence and saw her son seriously injured by it. That, at the very least, should be doable.

The “debate” over the alleged connection between right-wing rhetoric and the shooting spree in Tucson this weekend isn’t turning into much of a debate at all. As evidence mounts about the scrambled thinking of mass murderer Jared Loughner, the few liberal voices willing to draw a direct connection between right-wing demonization of target Gabrielle Giffords and the shootings have grown even more sparse. This hasn’t, of course, kept conservatives from seizing on such talk to play the victim, bitterly complaining about a media/liberal conspiracy to “politicize” the tragedy and create a “blood libel” against the poor, innocent Right.
So no one should expect conservatives to do much soul-searching in the wake of this event, and that’s too bad; this is a particular moment in American history when they could use some. For all their attacks on “arrogant elites,” too many of today’s conservatives consider their views sancrosanct or self-evidently correct. To put it bluntly, it has become common on the Right to treat conservative policy prescriptions as exempt from the normal procedures of democracy because they reflect the preferences of God, the Founding Fathers, or Real Americans. Indeed, the essence of the Tea Party Movement, which dominates the GOP from top to bottom, is the belief that by advancing such quotidian centrist policies as a managed-competition health care system or a market-based cap-and-trade device, Democrats are not simply wrong, but are violating permanent and never-to-be-amended guarantees of low taxes, small government, and laissez-faire capitalism. That point of view helps explain the spluttering rage of people like Glenn Beck and his most devoted fans, who really do seem to believe their “fundamental liberties” include the right to enrich themselves limitlessly and to be exempt from any collective responsibilities, and that mildly redistributive and exceptionally traditional practices like progressive taxation or unemployment insurance represent a totalitarianism that must resisted by any means necessary.
The growing refusal on the Right to accept the legitimacy of political competition does indeed promote a poor climate for civility in politics. But that by no means makes conservatives responsible for acts of violence against the politicians they “target,” so long as they systematically eschew violence.
But there’s one exception that needs to be noted right now: The talk of “Second Amendment remedies,” made famous by 2010 Senate candidate Sharron Angle but a hardy perennial of hardcore conservative rhetoric for years, really does need to stop. It reflects the belief that the Second Amendment is not only a permanent guarantor of unlimited personal firearms possession, and inviolable for all times, but is in fact the most important provision of the Constitution, the “crown jewel” of the Bill of Rights. Why? Well, beneath lots of mealy-mouthed talk about widespread gun ownership being a bulwark against tyranny, the idea is that it may become necessary at some point for right-thinking citizens to undertake the violent overthrow of the government on behalf of some higher law. That’s what “second amendment remedies” refers to, and you can only imagine what kind of reaction this thinking would get if it were being articulated not by middle-class white property-owners but by, say, Islamic jihadis.
The problem is, of course, that crazy people may well take advantage of an ideology that holds we should all stockpile shooting irons in case we decide at some point to stop doffing our hats to those in authority and instead consider them jack-booted thugs who need killing. Perhaps quasi-universal private gun ownership is a good thing on balance, but let’s stop encouraging Americans to think that aiming guns at cops or elected officials or our political opponents is ever a good thing, even in theory.
More generally, everyone in American politics, left or right, needs to guard against use of the language of violence and warfare, however metaphorically. Bad things happen in war zones, including most notably the slaughter of innocents.

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other individuals many commentators have noted the sinister background of violent rhetoric that emerged after the Democratic victory of 2008. This sinister background ranges from Sharron Angle’s hints of “second amendment remedies” and Sarah Palin’s bull’s-eye rifle targets on Democratic congressional candidates to the implicit threats of violence by people carrying guns at political rallies and displaying signs extolling violent resistance to laws they oppose.
The defenders of the rhetoric of violence excuse their statements and implicit threats of violence by saying it is an understandable reaction to encroachments on their liberty since Obama’s election. Had Democrats not overreached, they argue, conservatives would not have overreacted.
This argument has no basis in fact. Violent rhetoric and literal threats of murder against Democrats, liberals and progressives have been a gradually increasing feature of American politics since the 1990’s. They are arrayed along a slippery slope of increasingly direct threats and incitement to murder.
Here are a number of clear examples from the time of the Clinton and Bush administrations, clearly predating the supposed “provocations” that right-wing conservative spokesmen are pointing to as the justification for their violent rhetoric.
1. Disturbing “Jokes” About Killing Liberals

Rush Limbaugh: “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we
can have two on every campus–living fossils–so we we’ll never forget what
these people stood for.”
Ann Coulter: “My only regret with Tim McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times building”

2. Implied Threats:

Bill O’Reilly: “Americans who work against our military once the [Iraq] war is
underway will be considered Enemies of the State by me. Just fair warning to
you, Barbara Streisand, and others who see the world as you do. I don’t want
to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this,
well, let’s just say you will be spotlighted.”

3. Overt Threats of Violence against Liberals:

Glen Beck: “Hang on, let me just tell you what I’m thinking. 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.”
Eric Erickson (Redstate.com): “At what point do [people] get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?”
Michael Savage: “I say round liberals up and hang em’ high. When I hear someone’s in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-25.”

4. Specific Incitements to Violence against Law Enforcement Officers

Dick Morris: “Those crazies in Montana who say ‘we’re going to kill ATF
agents because the UN’s going to take over.’ Well, they’re beginning to have
a case.”
G . Gorden Liddy (broadcasting advice on how to kill law enforcement officers): “…head-shots, they are wearing body armor, head shots… or shoot for the groin.”

In writing this week about the hole Democrats have dug in terms of their numbers in Congress, and the considerable value of stopping Republicans from disabling the public sector for many years to come, I should probably have made it clear that a mission of “damage control” does not mean surrendering to the opposition, adopting its rhetoric and policies, or even seeking compromise. It does mean scaling back expectations for what Democrats can accomplish on their own in the short term, and adjusting strategy and tactics accordingly.
Indeed, the extremism of the contemporary GOP makes fighting Republicans, and insisting on solidarity in that fight from other Democrats, pretty much unavoidable. And even when the Right is on the offensive, defensive tactics must include positive messaging that makes clear the stark alternatives being offered by the two parties
I guess my attitude on this issue is heavily influenced by being from the South, where Democrats have had a tough time lately, and where Republicans have long been as extremist as the national party has become more recently. Some people look at the supposed “conservatism” of southern Democrats from a distance and conclude they are triangulating compromisers with no fight in their hearts. But up close, partisan politics in the South are typically pretty vicious, primarily because they revolve so often around very basic issues of principle, like the existence of universal public education, the legitimacy of progressive income taxes, the right to vote, the right of workers to unionize, and the most modest forms of separation of church and state. These battles ain’t beanbag, and the stakes are very high for the people Democrats claim to represent.
So let’s don’t confuse realistic objectives with a willingness or unwillingness to “fight.” We all know the most important fights are when you feel you have your back against the wall.