AN OPPORTUNITY!

Tuesday – January 11, 2011

An opportunity!

Today I was going to write about the 14th amendment, how it originated and how to view the words that make up the content and meaning of the amendment. It is not as cut and dry as some would have you believe. I was going to offer up a court case that offers in its dissent the reason why the 14th amendment should not apply to anchor babies. I will get to this later in the week.

There is something that has been weighing heavily on my mind today.

Let me challenge you today to turn the childless, untruthful political assaults into a reason to unify. Violence from all sides is reprehensible. I am referencing the news media and political leaders who have turned the Gifford’s shooting into a right wing political assault. Yesterday I said I was involved in a conversation about the shooting and the first assumption that was made to me was it was a tea party person. This tells me that there are people who can’t wait for a tragedy of this type to be attached to a tea partier or a conservative. This also tells me that there are also people who will tilt the facts to make it appear that a tea partier was responsible.

This past weekend many of the comments on TV and radio have to do with the tea party movement, talk radio and yes, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Glen Beck. Many in the media have turned this into a repudiation of the conservative movement. Many have intimated that it is the conservative movement and its media members that caused Jared Loughner to commit the act of terrorism that he did. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a template that have always been used by the liberals in events such as the horrific attack in Arizona to move their agenda forward.

I said yesterday that this is not a gun control case. I say today that it is a nut control case. The shooter is unbalanced and like the aftermath of many other tragedies his behavior was noticed, but nothing was done. The shooter had it in for Representative Gifford’s since 2007. We have learned he was obsessed with her. The shooter was asked to leave his school and get a psychological exam before coming back. Many of his classmates exhibited fears and concerns about his behavior and thoughts. Many felt unsafe in the environment that should have been safe – our society.

The FBI has said that Loughner’s profile was that of a “loner who was a disenfranchised angry young man.” He was a drug user and practiced the occult with a skull that was enshrined in his backyard. He is a deranged, insane and emotionally disturbed being. While the left is making it seem like conservatives are at fault, our media should be asking and investigating what his family life was like and where the safety net failed that moved him to shoot. I can assure you that it is not conservative vitriol.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times said “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was.” He went on to say: “Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear what we’re going to see in the months and years ahead.” Krugman’s words are what cause political vitriol.

Sherriff Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona continues to politicize the shooting of Rep. Gabby Gifford’s and the death of several aides and bystanders.
He said on FOX News: “When you have people like Sharron Angle in Las Vegas running against [Harry] Reid making outrageous statements such as we may need to resort to taking the second amendment in certain cases, for people like Sarah Palin to say we have people like Gabby Giffords in our cross hairs, they are irresponsible not without consequences and we are seeing the fruit of it here.” What I have to ask is this: where were the Sheriff and Loughner’s family in all of this? I am sure that Sheriff Dupnik was aware of the shooters proclivities, certainly his family had to have been.

Loughner went to a local WALMART to purchase his ammunition. The clerk there observed that the shooter was displaying strange behavior and refused to sell him the bullets he needed. The shooter then went to another WALMART and was able to buy them there. Some of us are more apt to recognize warning signs and some just don’t. The Sheriff should have been more alert and the clerk should have reported his fears certainly his family should have. Curbing violence does not happen with government, it happens with citizens who report their concerns and local authorities acting on those concerns.

The liberal has spent billions of dollars over the course of decades to protect these individuals who do harm. They have turned this violence into a rightwing conspiracy over the last 50 years of history. Lee Harvey Oswald was portrayed as a right wing extremist. He was found to be nothing more than a communist nut case. The assassin of Dr. King, James Earl Ray, was found to be nothing more than a racist petty criminal. Look at John Hinckley whose failed assassination attempt on President Reagan was the result of his obsession with actress Jodi Foster.
The list goes on. It is not a gun problem; it is a problem with recognizing those who have violent tendencies. Unfortunately, we cannot do anything until something happens, because of the political correctness that is attached too much of the destructive forces in our society. Every one who came into contact with the shooter said one thing: he is dangerous and he will commit a horrific act.

This is a genuine tragedy that is not being treated like one. It is being treated and massaged for political benefit. Mark Penn, a Democratic strategist, said in 2010, “what Obama needs is his Oklahoma City.” This is now an opportunity for the President to call for unity and to call for real action that will stop another unbalanced person from committing another genuine tragedy. He must not use this as an opportunity in the way his former Chief of Staff wanted him to use an opportunity: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” –Rahm Emanuel. This is not a gun ownership case. This is not a reason to blame the far right it is a reason to look at why these people can be free to commit acts of violence in an open environment that is supposed to be safe for one and all.

The President can no longer say or use the words he himself used as a Senator in 2008. “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” There has never been a connection of a tea party member or a conservative using a phrase like this. This goes unnoticed by the press as did the violence that the president’s former relations have committed and professed as needed elements for social change. I bring in the terrorist Bill Ayers and, of course, the Reverend Wright. However, when a conservative brings this into the political discourse they are the ones who are identified as partisan and unbalanced for not understanding the deeper meaning of these educated and intelligent people.

The suspected shooter will get his due process. The suspected shooter will cost the government millions of dollars for his defense. The question I have is where is the due process for those along with the Judge and the little girl who will not wake up to see another day’s sunrise?

It is not a matter of saying political campaigns should not use the word or the symbol of “target” in any advertising or in any political discourse. The fault in this case is not the words or the process of campaigning. The fault comes in the form of those who did not recognize the signs that were there far before the campaigns of 2008 and 2010. The fault does not come from those who exercise their freedom of speech in a responsible way.

I challenge you to use political discourse to change the ways of government and those that would have you believe that a conspiracy of conservative thought and action are at fault.
Gregory C. Dildilian

Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: I challenge myself everyday to be a good citizen and to recognize those who want to do harm in our environment of freedom and liberty. Some might think I am extreme but most of my ideas come from people who are far greater than those who will shift the blame to convenient targets for political gain.