MADNESS

It is all so depressingly familiar. A man commits a heinous act of violence, in this case a massacre of people at a meet-and-greet with their Congresswoman in Arizona. Innocents are killed, and the Congresswoman is gravely wounded. Almost immediately, people ascribe motivations to the gunman without waiting for additional information. Folks like Paul Krugman blame the Republicans and the Tea Party for fomenting an atmosphere of hate. Others like Glenn Reynolds and John Podhoretz push back. Can we not wait for a little while to get more information about the gunman? No. For people who are paid to provide opinions, or are in the political arena as activists or politicians, there is no waiting for facts. There is only the relentless push for a political narrative to achieve their political goals.

What should you do? I can only tell you what I do. I read them, I search for anything of value, and discard the rest. I wait to find out more about the gunman and then come to my own conclusions. I do not advocate for policies based on the isolated actions of deranged individuals, therefore, if this recent shooting is simply the isolated action of a deranged individual, I will not advocate any particular policy based on his actions, nor will I come to any particular conclusion about our political system or our current rhetorical climate based on those actions.

Political leaders are sometimes assassinated by deranged individuals (the historical list is too long to get into here). Those assassinations, while they can have momentous significance in terms of the course of history, have no more moral or intellectual significance than an earthquake or a bolt of lightning.