"Defending Inflamed Rhetoric" in political discourse following Tucson shooting

"The great miracle of American politics is that although it can tend toward the cutthroat and thuggish, it is almost devoid of genuine violence outside of a few scuffles and busted lips now and again. With the exception of Saturday's slaughter, I'd wager that in the last 30 years there have been more acts of physical violence in the stands at Philadelphia Eagles home games than in American politics.

Any call to cool "inflammatory" speech is a call to police all speech, and I can't think of anybody in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with that power. As Jonathan Rauch wrote brilliantly in Harper's in 1995, "The vocabulary of hate is potentially as rich as your dictionary, and all you do by banning language used by cretins is to let them decide what the rest of us may say." Rauch added, "Trap the racists and anti-Semites, and you lay a trap for me too. Hunt for them with eradication in your mind, and you have brought dissent itself within your sights.""

Great, well reasoned article by Jack Shafer at Slate

Pray for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the surviving wounded, and for the souls of the murdered in Arizona

...they are innocent victims.

You have but to watch Jared Loughner's video on youtube to know that he is insane (psychotic and sociopathic);  he is likely to be diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic. 

Towards the end of the video, you can see elements of contitutionally conservative ideas that he has come across, but the ideas and his use of language are deranged.  

This guy is not one of us;  he is seriously mentally ill.  It is to be expected that the left and the mainstream media will exploit the tragedy to re-assert their assault on private gun ownership.  You can expect the media to connect the shooting to the patriot/constitutional conservative movement:

Here is an opening paragraph from neocon FoxNews:

Jared Loughner, the 22-year-old man who sources identify to Fox News as the gunman in custody in the deadly shooting rampage Saturday in Arizona, is suspected of posting a series of YouTube videos that show a focus on literacy and currency -- as well as his distrust in the government.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/08/shooting-suspects-apparent-youtube-video/#ixzz1AUXCHcBd

This type of act is random, and happened only because of the man's mental disease.  

That Jared Loughner came by a gun at all is a breach of the current laws.  Either he acquired the weapon prior to his disease progressing (schizophrenia can manifest and become debilitating in late teens to early 20's, and he is 22 years old), or someone screening him had no reason to suspect his illness (a weakness in the law), or he stole the gun or otherwise obtained it outside the law.

This guy is a perfect example of the fallability of gun control efforts.  

If more citizens were armed,  trained to react to such situations, and practiced concealed carry, it might not have stopped Jared Loughner from getting off his first shot or shots;  however, it is unlikely that he would have been able to shoot 18 people.

I am very sorry for all the victims.