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.

Just disgusting – from The Weekly Standard:

This afternoon Sanders sent out a fundraising appeal, seeking to raise money to fight Republicans and other “right-wing reactionaries” responsible for the climate that led to the shooting.

He writes:

Given the recent tragedy in Arizona, as well as the start of the new Congress, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few words with political friends in Vermont and throughout the country. I also want to thank the very many supporters who have begun contributing online to my 2012 reelection campaign at http://www.bernie.org. There is no question but that the Republican Party, big money corporate interests and right-wing organizations will vigorously oppose me. Your financial support now and in the future is much appreciated…

Sanders’ letter goes on to ask if Democrats are allowed to participate in Arizona politics given all the GOP violence going on there. It is a nauseating attempt to make political and fund raising hay off of a national tragedy. Sanders is up for re-election and while a socialist is hard to beat in Vermont, we should make every effort to target his seat for a GOP pick-up (yes, liberals, Sanders is a target; a political target; someone we want to take down, force out, beat in a political campaign…).

UPDATE: Yet another liberal Facebook page…I Hate it When I Wake Up and Sarah Palin is Still Alive. And 2,148 2,150 2,167 2,175 people like it

UPDATE II: The Other McCain finds an example of liberal love:

“Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.”

– Michael Feingold, Village Voice, Jan. 13 2004

Ed Morrissey notes a new CBS poll:

CBS polled almost 700 adults in the wake of the mass murder in Tucson committed by Jared Lee Loughner to determine whether the media spin that the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six others was a political act had resonated with the public. Perhaps surprisingly, the spin machine seems to have failed. A majority of 57% say that politics had nothing to do with the shooting, and even a plurality of 49% of Democrats agree…

As a poll of “adults” rather than “registered voters” or “likely voters”, you’ll have a much larger sampling of ignorant people…people who only get their knowledge from the MSM and are usually pretty easily suckered by whatever it is the MSM is saying. And even with poll containing a large sample of that part of the population, we still get a solid majority rejecting the DNC/MSM narrative. That is quite impressive – shows how weak the MSM is getting. And I’ll bet a poll of likely voters would show even stronger rejection of the slander about Arizona.

The full truth is beginning to emerge about Loughner:

…”This is just someone who is profoundly mentally disturbed,” said Brian Levin, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “It wasn’t Sarah Palin who did this to him.”

Levin said his writings indicate that he may have borrowed some ideas from various hate websites, but that he didn’t appear to have any set philosophy.

“This guy is on a slippery slope of impairment, and he appears to be at the bottom of it,” Levin said…

You liberals out there have a chance to redeem yourself, at least as far as this blog goes – you can start posting your apologies for even so much as remotely suggesting that any thing the right did played a role in this terrible event. I’m not expecting any of you liberals to show such a sense of honor and decency, but I do hope that you rise above the level you’ve fallen and do the right thing.

From Zero Hedge:

…No government debt has ever been or can ever be repaid in full. This is especially the case when a government imposes a monopoly on what can be used as money by passing and enforcing “legal tender” laws. The US did this with the introduction of the Fed in 1913. Eventual default becomes an absolute certainty when government makes its own debt paper the ONLY “reserve” behind the “money” it alone can create. The US did this under President Nixon in 1971. The whole world went along with it because the US Dollar was the reserve currency and no government or people anywhere dared jettison it.

The result is the global financial quagmire we see everywhere we look…

It was the Brits who invented “national debt”. From Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization:

…In January, 1693, Charles Montagu, first Earl of Halifax, as lord of the treasury, revolutionized governmental finance by persuading Parlaiment to float a public loan of 900,000 (pounds sterling), on which the government promised to to pay seven percent yearly. Toward the end of 1693, as expenditures were dangerously outrunning receipts, a group of bankers agreed to lend the government 1,200,000 (pounds sterling) at eight per cent, secured by an added duty on shipping. The idea of such incorporated lending had been suggested by William Patterson three years before. Montagu now gave it official support, and Parlaiment accepted the plan…The Age of Louis XIV, pg 304

Presto!, national debt was born. And if you go over to this site of the UK government, there is actually a chart of national debt running from 1692 until now – and the debt has never been paid off (as an aside, it was just about 25 years after national debt was created that government instituted the first bail out of “too big to fail” banks in the wake of the “South Seas” stock market bubble…a bubble created, in large part, by the easy money floating around due to government bonds and other financial chicanery).

At no time since the UK first figured out how to borrow and spend has Britain, as a State, been debt free. During all that time Britain rose from minor power off Europe’s coast to global empire and back to minor power off Europe’s coast…but the debt remains. And who benefits from this debt? The British people, or the banks able to make easy money and politicians able to buy votes?

I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get rid of government debt until we forbid our government from having debt. Debt is ruinous to nations no less than to people…and we can see from history that once a government is allowed to run up debt it will never stop doing so.

The United States government will take in about $2.2 trillion in fiscal year 2011. That should darn well be enough – whatever it is we want government to do should fit nicely in to that figure. And if there is something which doesn’t fit, then it shouldn’t be done. That is the budget – spend that much, and not a dollar more. Balance the budget and pay off the debt – for goodness sake, if we paid off our debt then that is $14 trillion which can be invested in other things…not just businesses, but all the stuff liberals are always yammering on about (its just a matter, liberals, of you investing your own money, instead of everyone else’s…).

Time for a change – time for a debt-free United States government.

There is a time for a President to get really deep in to an issue, and other times a President should adopt an “above it all, I’m America’s President” attitude. Obama may be about to go deep in to Arizona:

He’s handled it well thus far, actually, by keeping things low key. But alas, my friends, alas.

Mr. Obama was considering delivering a speech about the greater context surrounding the shooting, but advisers said it was premature to do so until Ms. Giffords’s condition stabilized and more became known about the gunman’s motives…

The subtext for the political discussion was the new balance of power in Washington, and how the shootings might play into Democratic efforts to regain initiative — and Republican efforts to keep it — after their losses in November. Both sides emerged from the weekend cognizant of the ways in which a politically charged act of violence, whatever the actual motives or mental state of the gunman, can recalibrate the national dialogue…

If Obama and his Democrats are seeing the Arizona tragedy as a means to revive their fortunes in the manner of Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing then they are going to be very badly mistaken. This time, it is different.

First off, the narrative post-OKC was still largely controlled by the MSM; while Rush was on the air back then, he was really the only major, national conservative voice and there was no conservative New Media to challenge the MSM narrative. Any attempt to twist Arizona to partisan advantage will not be able to gain as much traction as the post-OKC effort did.

Secondly, we on the right are in no mood to sit still for this. We, our views and our rhetoric had nothing to do with setting off a lunatic in Arizona. The man is crazy and, if you really want to assign a political alignment to him, he was of the left far more than of the right. Glenn Reynolds correctly identifies efforts to tie Arizona to the right as a blood libel – and if you think we were mad in 2010, just wait to see how mad we’ll be in 2012 if Democrats try to smear us with this.

Now, Obama can surprise me in this – maybe he will take the high road and just discuss in general terms the tragedy of the Arizona shootings and how we, the people, must remember the better angels of our nature. That would be fine – but I have grave doubts about Obama’s judgment and thus I am concerned that he’ll really step in it this time.

Now, liberals, is the time to drop this as a political issue. Right at this moment; stop it. We didn’t do this. We didn’t instigate it. We didn’t in any way, shape or form cause the event in Arizona. Leave it alone – you won’t like the result if you persist in this slander.

Well, Governor Moonbeam, Jerry Brown of California, has come out with his budget plan:

California Governor Jerry Brown’s budget will cut spending by $12.5 billion, including as much as a 10 percent pay reduction for most state employees, aides said.

The plan, which Brown is to unveil today, will also raise $12 billion by retaining tax increases due to expire and making other modifications. Some of the revenue will go to cities and counties as part of Brown’s plan to transfer spending authority from the state to local governments…

So, Brown is proposing cuts which, as Mish points out, will solve 44.6% of California’s budget problems…and that is if the cuts are real, rather than fiscal hocus pocus. And where does Brown want to get the other 55.4% of the money he needs? From the unemployed, cash-strapped people of California, who will be asked to approve higher tax levels going forward. Want to take bets on the chances of that happening?

At best, Brown has bought himself 6 to 9 months of “extend and pretend” on the California budget. At the end of that time it will transpire that the cuts weren’t as much as advertised and that revenues didn’t come in at expected levels (even if Californians agree to the extended tax hikes Brown proposes)…and so California will be right back where it is now: teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

California’s government is bloated – it spends far too much money on things which government should not be doing. Even in areas where government should have a role, California spends too much on over-paid, union labor and on un-necessary and wasteful budgetary padding. You could reduce California’s budget by 50% and as long as you didn’t cut in to what people really need – police, fire, emergency medical, primary education – no one would ever notice…except when they started to notice California’s economic boom as the burden of government is lifted.

But, Californians didn’t vote for that. They vote for Jerry Brown, an uber-liberal government hack and matched him up to a legislature firmly under the control of uber-liberal government hacks. And so rather than the real spending reductions necessary, California will get bankruptcy on the installment plan.

This didn’t take long – from Politico:

One of the fiercest gun-control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday, promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday…

National tragedy, don’t know what happened yet, people are still clinging to life and may yet die…and here comes a Democrat, trying to work it to political advantage. All too typical, I’m afraid…and the story goes on to note that another Democrat is considering legislation which would make it illegal to use words or symbols which can be construed as threatening to a Congressman…I guess that reading of the Constitution failed to get through to some Congressional brains. Neither, I guess, did the recent Supreme Court rulings about the right to bear arms being an individual right…

Have at it, Democrats – use death and destruction for your own ends. Never let a crisis go to waste, right? But this time, Democrats, you are walking right in to your own trap.

UPDATE: Seeking political advantage and using the tragedy for fund raising. Democrat class on display…

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: Today I received an email from a former Democrat candidate for congress, Beth Krom, who ran unsuccessfully last year in CA-48… Why I am on the list, I have no idea, but the email opened with the following:

In two short years, we’ve gone from the aspirational vision of America reflected in President Obama’s campaign to the angry, frustrated tone conveyed by the Tea Party. The tragic assault on Rep. Giffords in Tucson exposes the dangerous situation that now exists in America as a result of the highly charged anti-government rhetoric that drives political discourse today. The shooting spree was not an event, it was a wake-up call.

Yada, yada, yada. This email, sent at 11:38:19 AM EST has come after it has been revealed that the shooter was actually a left-wing pothead, and not some fanatic tea partier, as the media has tried to imply from the moment the story broke. I’m not trying to feed the fire here, but I think it is worth noting we should keep an eye out for actual candidates (not just political groups) who not only exploit the shooting for political purposes, but try to raise money off of it. I’m on a lot of email lists for candidates… this is the first one I’ve received from a candidate (albeit one who lost, but keeps her campaign list active) but I doubt it will be the last.

UPDATE: Obama in 2008: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” And yet, the left claims Sarah Palin is to blame because of a graphic?

UPDATE IV: War Room calls for political civility. No, I’m not kidding.

UPDATE V: Did the Pima County sheriff ignore the threat?

UPDATE VI: Facebook has taken it down, but Vodkapundit has the screen shot of the Kill Sarah Palin page.

UPDATE VII: If at first you don’t succeed…a Sarah Palin Should Die Facebook page…

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air goes in to detail about the way CNN has disgraced itself over its Arizona coverage. What is most striking is the way CNN was all caution and concern when the Ft Hood massacre occurred, but leaped at the chance to slander Sarah Palin over this incident.

That is, pretty much, all there is to the MSM these days – a mere adjunct to the liberal part of the Ruling Class. This Ruling Class wants us to not be concerned with Moslems who do have a penchant for insane violence but does want us to fear the TEA Party, which is entirely non-violent. So desperate are they to advance this narrative that they are just making stuff up about connections between the Arizona shooter and conservatism.

The good news is that fewer and fewer people are paying any attention to the MSM – and fewer and fewer people are identifying themselves as Democrats, the preferred party of the MSM. Dinosaurs do go extinct, though it does some times take a while. Hopefully we’ve got no more than a few more years left of these cretins at CNN…

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds further discusses this issue as a matter of blood libel against conservatives.

J. Hanson at Catholic Phoenix discusses the judge murdered yesterday:

…He was committed to Christian truth. Or, as the person responsible for securing Judge Roll as a speaker this summer put it: “He truly passionately demonstrated truth.”

It also seems that Judge Roll passionately—and frequently—experienced Truth in the Holy Mass. One person I spoke with today described Judge Roll as a “daily communicant.” This fits with a memory I have of Judge’s Roll’s address this summer, specifically when he was discussing his appointment to the federal judiciary.

According to the story as I remember it, his family learned of the appointment when his wife answered the telephone one Saturday morning. It was the president. He asked her if he could speak to her husband. She told him that he couldn’t—John Roll was at church that morning. The president would need to call back after Mass.

Finally, I have in my notes one line that stuck out in Judge Roll’s talk this past summer. (Judge Roll probably said more noteworthy things but I’m a very bad note-taker.) He told us:

“God doesn’t bring you to a point in order to abandon you.”

We are being instructed here – even the most senseless and wicked acts are turned by God to His plan for the world. We have the freedom to choose evil, but God’s plan will not be turned from its course. A politician just doing her job, a little girl learning about life, a decent judge, a score of innocent people…all harmed by the wicked act of a depraved, pathetic young man…but his evil deed will not stand. Good will triumph…our task is to pull the lesson out of this and learn both that each day is a gift as well as doing the right thing, in each moment, is all we ever need do.

De Profundis

Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.

Let Your ears be attentive to my voice in supplication.

If You, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand?

But with You is forgiveness, that You may be revered.

I trust in the Lord; my soul trusts in His word.

My soul waits for the Lord more than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn, let Israel wait for the Lord,

For with the Lord is kindness and with Him is plenteous redemption;

And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.