It wasn’t from Sarah Palin; it wasn’t from anyone on the right. It wasn’t from anyone on the left, either. No one person’s statement or acts made Loughner what he is. So, where did he come from? Marybeth Hicks over at Catholic Exchange explains:

…So far, only the Rev. Franklin Graham’s statement about the Arizona shootings suggests the cultural connection to the dark and disturbing persona that has emerged in Mr. Loughner‘s profile: “What frightens me is that our country has accepted murder, violence and rape as entertainment, which we see portrayed every day on TV, movies and video games … . If we as a nation are not careful, we could see the destruction of the foundation this nation was built upon.”

I can’t help but wonder if Jared Loughner may have grown into a deranged killer thanks, in part, to a popular culture that feeds not on vitriolic political speech, but on a fascination with death, violence and evil. High school friends say Mr. Loughner seemed relatively normal until his teen years, when one friend says he started to obsessively play video games, listen to music on his headphones and generally isolate himself. Others also recount that his headphones were fixtures in his ears…

Does this mean that everyone who plays video games and isolates himself with head phones will become a crazed killer? No; but a lot of people who do just that will become ever more evil as time goes on.

Sin works like that – it works to isolate the individual and throw him back upon himself. Cut off from God, a person who falls further in to sin eventually is also cut off from people, too. Just out there, spinning in a void, growing more desperate, despairing and self-centered by the minute until the whole world seems a conspiracy against the individual. Step by step, Loughner took that path – just as, step by step, so many others have…and in today’s age, it is easier than it has ever been. Our modern communications, paradoxically, allow us to isolate ourselves better than ever…and feed ourselves on images and sounds which drown out any sense of decency.

Curiously enough, Loughner is probably more sane and reasonable at this moment than he’s been in months, and perhaps years. While being interrogated, probed and prodded by police and psychologists, he’s having more human contact and thus having to adjust himself to the reality that other people live in the world. It is to be hoped that it will all wake him from his delusion so that before he faces the executioner he’ll see and understand his own evil, and beg forgiveness for it. But, that is not something we, on the outside of his life, can do much about. We can, however, take the real lesson from this tragedy.

We can’t live in a sewer and expect to be clean. We can’t, that is, have healthy minds and bodies if all we do, day by day, encourages diseased minds and weak bodies. While this will anger our liberals, the fact of the matter is that liberalism does bear a great deal of responsibility. Not for Loughner’s particular actions – all of us must bear responsibility for the things we do – but for convincing us, as a society, to throw over traditional morality and become tolerant of ever more brazen outrages.

Anger! I can feel it rising in liberal breasts as they read that. So be it. It was liberals who said that easy access to pornography is harmless. It is liberals who said that we can’t in any way, shape or form censor the glorification of crude sexuality and violence in popular culture. It was liberals who told us that the more garbage we allowed to be flouted in public the better we’d be – that if we did this, we’d lose all our hang-ups and become more relaxed, tolerant people. Well, we did just as liberalism instructed and look where it got us.

We must beat back the pollution in our society. We must become, once again, a nation which is truly horrified at rapes, murders and robberies. I defy anyone out there to tell me they were really shocked at what happened in Arizona. After scores of such incidents in the past 20 years, we’re all desensitized…it is routine; it is what we expect to happen. But now it is time to stand up and say, “no”. We must say no to those who insist that not only should we allow the current level of filth, but we must allow even more to be poured in. This is not a demand to draw a line in the sand, but a demand that we push the line back.

Or, we can just make noises about being outraged at this incident, do nothing and just wait for the next pile of corpses as we watch our civilization die. I asked my wife last night just what was it that I, a Christian man, had ever done to protect even one child from turning in to a Loughner? Not a thing – but, not any longer. Now I stand and fight.

Sorry, guys, I wasn’t able to write anything for the AM…suggested subjects of conversation are:

1. Anyone creeped out by last night’s memorial service/pep rally?

2. Inflation is up. This is planned. No, seriously, it is what Bernanke wants. How stupid is this?

3. New claims for unemployment rose. I guess we turned the corner back to bad news?

4. The Chargers are not in the playoffs, so who really cares about football right now?

From the AP:

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn defended a massive increase in state income taxes passed by lawmakers Wednesday and promised to quickly sign the measure to help heal the state’s ailing finances.

Lawmakers worked overnight to pass the increase to raise the personal income tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent for four years — a 66 percent increase. Corporate income taxes also will rise, but Quinn rejected the notion that it would decimate businesses…

It was a lame-duck, Democrat legislature which passed the tax hikes – from what I understand, about 12 hours before the end of the session. Gov. Quinn appears to be upset at the GOP over this – probably because the GOP voted against and thus put the entire blame for this travesty in the laps of the Democrats. Democrats lost State legislative seats in November, but still retain their majority…but not a large enough majority, it seems, to raise taxes…so, they had to use people rejected by the voters of Illinois in order to ram through the tax hikes.

Still, the people of Illinois are responsible for this – they could have voted GOP for governor; they could have voted in more State legislative GOPers. They choose Democrats – and Democrats have given them what Democrats always give: bloated, wasteful government and higher taxes.

These tax hikes will severely punish Illinois families and businesses – businesses which can often move a few miles down the road to another, lower tax State; States which will be delighted to thrive while Illinois withers and dies. It is just astounding that anyone would think that tax hikes in a severe recession would help…but, I guess, that isn’t the point. Democrats don’t care if it helps – they just didn’t want to cut the wasteful spending.

One thing will be interesting about all this – we now have a set of States completely controlled by one side or the other. Almost all the States are in dire financial straights, and we’ll now get to see over the next two years which set of ideas works. Will taxing and spending bring the good times, or spending and tax cuts? The proof will be in the pudding – by 2012, we’ll know who has the better economic ideas.

Because violence is only something the right does:

An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska governor’s team has been talking to security professionals…

But we can rely upon it that if anything happens to Sarah Palin, the left won’t be calling for toning down the rhetoric. Why? Because, as I’ve observed, it isn’t that there is heated rhetoric from the right, but any rhetoric, at all, which the left has rued out of bounds. Liberals, on the other hand, can say whatever they want…even about bringing a gun to a knife fight, and that is fine..because liberals are good, and thus whatever they do is good.

Once you really get in to the pretzel thinking of liberals it is difficult to get out of it…

UPDATE: And let’s not forget that wonderful, loving, liberal Facebook Page, I Hate it When I Wake Up and Sarah Palin is Still Alive. 2,326 2,334 2,346 people like it – including a caring liberal who had this to say:

Sarah Palin days are numbered. It’s a matter of time. When it happens I will pop a bottle and toast to it.

The tone which was supposed to be set tonight:

A 9-year-old girl killed in last weekend’s mass shooting in Arizona will be buried in a hand-crafted casket donated by a group of Roman Catholic monks in Iowa.

Trappist Caskets , which is owned and operated by monks of the New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, was contacted by the Bring Funeral Home in Tucson, Ariz., on behalf of Christina Taylor Green’s family.

It’s a comfort to the family “to know that it was made by monks and blessed by the monks,” said Belinda Motzkin Brauer, a representative for the funeral home…

Today was supposed to be about mourning for loss. I’m still trying to digest what really happened at the memorial, but the more I consider it the less I like what I saw and heard. But some people know what to do when others have suffered loss…

Is it just me, or is this event starting to look more and more like a political rally?

Do the people there know they are supposed to be gathered in solemn remembrance of the dead – not cheering like yahoos at a football game?

UPDATE: Ok, its not just me…there’s a Twitter feed on this and I’m not the only person nauseated by the cheering.

UPDATE II: Open thread comments at Hot Air…until now, I didn’t know that they kept the concession stands open and had t-shirts for the event. Sorry, but that tears it – Obama’s people must have set this up as a rally; you just don’t do things like that when the President is coming to town without his ok.

Sarah Palin: “America’s Enduring Strength” from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

I have to say that I can’t agree with Sarah Palin’s contention that only the individual is responsible for such horrors as we’ve witnessed – while the man who pulled the trigger must pay the price for that action, all the events which led up to the trigger pulling played a roll. And in 2011 America the events which lead up to this and other massacres are varied, and all the result of societal breakdown. It is absurd to think that Sarah Palin’s targets on a map caused this lunatic to go off, but it is obvious that our popular culture’s glorification of violence has gone a long way towards making it more likely that someone will pick up a gun and shoot in to random crowds of Americans.

And as for our coming together and shaking hands after the political battles – that is the usual thing to do after an election. But I doubt that much hand shaking will happen after the next few elections. As I noted earlier, we are a house divided and we have to work out what sort of nation we wish to be. While we’re doing that, rhetoric will remain heated and the ties which bind will grow weak.

Things will get better. This, too, shall pass – but there’s no sense, in my view, of trying to pretend that things are other than as they are. We’re a society in crisis and the crisis must be resolved before we can get together in amity.

From Mail Online:

From the air they form a neat patchwork of grey and blue, nestling between rundown factories and crumbling slums.

But on the ground these sprawling tent cities are a fetid mass of humanity where cholera and crime run rife.

A year since a cataclysmic earthquake levelled much of Haiti, little has changed for the 1.2million residents still scraping an existence in these squalid refugee camps.

Survivors have been further blighted by an outbreak of the deadly water-borne disease cholera. The illness has struck 155,000 since October, killing 3,651…

Crime is rampant and while charitable organizations labor with incredible dedication, things simply aren’t getting much better. Back on January 15th, 2010, I had this to say:

…We have to let go of a false morality which says that a nation, as such, has a right to complete self-determination. Most nations do – but most nations can also ensure that buildings are constructed with at least minimal safety in mind. It is also false morality to state that we dare not judge the society of Haiti by our own standards – that is just a cowardly dodge by which we pretend we don’t have an obligation, when we actually do. We must embrace the truth – and the truth is that millions of our brothers and sisters in Haiti are suffering, quite needlessly, simply because of the failure of good people to act in time…

I said we had to step in and set up a protectorate in Haiti back then, and I’ll say it again, now: the people of Haiti have, for a variety of reasons, been unable to secure for themselves a government capable of providing even such basic things as an enforced building code, or a water supply which will prevent things like the cholera epidemic. Haitians, themselves, are wonderful – this is demonstrated, daily, by the hard work and glowing success of Haitians who live in the United States. Given reasonably decent government, Haitians thrive – but for whatever reason, they can’t get that in Haiti. And, so, we should impose it upon them.

As I noted last year, this does contravene two modern lies – that any nation has absolute sovereignty no matter how badly it is misgoverned; that no society is any better than any other. Well, gross misgovernment does, in my view, justify better government to intervene, and some societies do things better than others. A good society can exist in Haiti, but not under its current morass of corruption, mismanagement and violent animosities. Make Haiti a UN Trust Territory, place an American governor over it with an advisory body of Haitians and start to rebuild Haiti – with a mind towards Haitian independence in 2061.

Or, we can just pour in more money, allow things to drift, and be right back in Haiti helping out in the next disaster to come down the road.

The reaction of the political left to the events in Arizona has strained mightily any conception that we Americans, as a people, share a set of values. While the initial reaction to the liberal slanders on the right has been justifiable outrage, a more careful analysis indicates a much greater worry. Are we, once again, a house divided against itself?

There is no other way to put it than that there was a sense of satisfaction on the left over the massacre – that the massacre happened and had as its target a Democrat Congresswoman appeared providential. This was their long-awaited “we told you so” moment. To put it bluntly, the massacre in Arizona – which the left now and forever, and in spite of all evidence, will hold is the natural effect of having conservative rhetoric abroad in the republic – demonstrates conclusively that the left holds conservatism to be wicked.

Considering this, it becomes worthwhile to ask if there is anything left and right agree upon? It is important because a society, to put it in St. Augustine’s terms from the City of God, is a group of persons who share a common moral code. Naturally, there are always going to be divisions of opinion about how the code is to be applied, but a genuine society – a united civilization – presupposes that certain things are right and certain things are wrong and acts, in the main, according to these views. To the left, the wrong of Arizona was not so much the shooting, itself, but the alleged climate created by the admission in to society of ideas which are wrong – to the left, that is, the common moral code proscribes conservatism.

Think about it: what unites conservatives and liberals? Upon what things can the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal and his conservative counter part agree? Do they agree on what constitutes marriage? What constitutes family? What the role of government is? Ah, but both the liberal and the conservative hold that the murders in Arizona are wrong. Really? In what sense? A liberal would have been ok, 9 years ago, with that girl being killed via abortion, even up to the moment she emerged from the womb…and as for 79 year old Phyllis Schneck, a liberal would be ok with helping her to commit suicide a couple years from now, if things weren’t working out well for her health-wise. Conservatives, on the other hand, are horrified not just if a lunatic kills them at 9 and 79, but if a perfectly sane person kills them 8 months in to gestation, or 8 months before the natural end to life.

Can this chasm be bridged? Its not a matter of one person wanted to spend a billion dollars on education and another person wanting to spend half a billion and they compromise at 750 million – those people share the same basic idea of paying for education, but just disagree on the details. But when it becomes a matter of one person saying a certain thing must be, while the other person says it must not be – and both are asserting their views as matters of basic morality – there can be no real compromise. A conservative says that gay marriage must not be because it is morally wrong; a liberal says it must be because basic morality requires it. Where is the middle ground?

Do keep in mind that this isn’t a plea for uniformity of thought and action – as a conservative I’m in favor of amnesty for some of the illegals in country; I do think that firearms ownership should be licensed like automobile driving; I’d like to sink our banks beneath the sea…things which, on the face of it, some liberals might subscribe to. And yet I remain a conservative, and my fellow conservatives don’t read me out of the movement because we share the same understanding of what is right and what is wrong. And while some liberals could acknowledge some merit to my views, we’d swiftly fall out over the fact that, unlike liberals, I think that illegal border crossing must be stopped regardless of expense, that people must be allowed to own all the firearms they wish and that the free market is the only rational economic policy. That, at times, a liberal or conservative idea can be compatible with the other side doesn’t mean there is a shared sense of morality – just an ephemeral coincidence arrived at by different paths of reason. I and any liberal out there simply do not agree on what is right and what is wrong – and so, in practice, we can’t work with each other for the betterment of society because we disagree on what constitutes “better”.

Does this mean we’re heading for a violent civil war? Not at all, but it does mean that we will, once again, cease to be divided. We will become all one thing, or all the other. Once we were half free and half slave, now we are half conservative and half liberal; as we once upon a time became all free, so we will in the fullness of time become either all liberal or all conservative. Calls to tone down the rhetoric are just words shouted in to a void – the rhetoric doesn’t cause the problem; it is a symptom, not the illness. The illness is that we have parted ways and have utterly different views of what is right and what is wrong…eventually, one side or the other will so predominate that it will be able to re-make the entirely of society in its image, and then the conflict will end, and rhetoric will tone down, and we’ll argue from a shared world view…until the next time we part ways, and have to decide again what sort of nation we wish to be.

Hat tip to Zero Hedge on this report. From the BBC:

At least 35 people have died in violent unrest in Tunisia, according to a human rights group. The authorities say 21 people were killed.

Meanwhile, two people were killed in riots linked to food price increases and unemployment in Algeria…

While oppressive regimes and corruption are playing a role in these violent incidents, the thing which concerns me the most is the fact that it was a basic item like the price of food which triggered the violence. While the central banks are printing money like mad to support the global financial system (which may well be absolutely insolvent) and we watch our dollars decline in value and our debt skyrocket, we must remember that most of the world lives on a very thing margin. Around the world, outside our cozy enclaves, people struggle, day by day, just to have enough to eat. Me here in America paying 10% more for my steak is annoying – some poor guy raising 5 kids in Algiers is already paying 50% of his income for food…and now its to be 60%?

As always when financial systems teeter on the edge of collapse, the plight of the poor is ignored. We’re being told that if we don’t continue to bail out these banks, disaster will ensue. Well, with 1.5 million bankruptcies in the United States in 2010, I’d say disaster has already happened…and maybe its time that the bankers started to feel it, too? With food riots happening in foreign lands, I’d say we’ve got a bigger problem than whether or not Goldman Sachs will remain profitable.

It would, of course, help if the United States produced as much food as we used to. But, we don’t – and, in fact, a lot of our best farm land is lying fallow for various reasons…from government subsidies not to plant, to asinine environmental regulations which hold a guppy to be more important than farmers and their families. We’ve made one heck of a mess of this world and we’d better wise up right quick, or we’re eventually going to have to pay a very price for our folly.