Feed: History Rebuts Tucson Lies - AggScore: 13.0

History Rebuts Tucson Lies

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img classalignleft srchttpmedia.townhall.comTownhallReub20115C145C20110114T202247Z01TUC111RTRIDSP0USASHOOTING.jpg alt width225 height150 The debate between left and right on contributing factors in the Tucson shootings has unfolded along utterly predictable and thoroughly unenlightening lines.Liberals accuse conservatives of overheated, gunrelated rhetoric that created a hostile, edgy climate that may have encouraged the killer the right responds that theres no evidence of Jared Lee Loughners conservative orientation and that liberals make equally reprehensible and irresponsible statements.Neither side bothers to examine two highly dubious core assumptions1That the Obama era constitutes a uniquely polarizing and hostile political period.2That assassinations take place most frequently when politicians and commentators make vicious comments against one another.First, no American with a memory can honestly suggest that todays political divisions count as more toxic than ten years ago when a majority of Democrats questioned Bushs very legitimacy as president, or the late 90s when Republicans mobilized a determined effort to drive Clinton from office through impeachment.Moreover, where is the evidence that bitter political divisions produce murderThe national murder rate has fallen precipitously in precisely the period the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama associated with ferocious partisan warfare and even in 1995, the beginning of the plunge an unprecedented government shutdown.Some past periods of nasty debate produced no assassinationsthe McCarthy era resounded with charges of treason, espionage, disloyalty, demagoguery and coverups, but no major shootings of public figures. Even earlier, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams battled one another in 1800 in what many historians consider the nastiest, most divisive presidential battle in all American history, but wellarmed Americans attempted no assassination of a president until more than a quarter century later when a delusional loser sound familiartried to kill Andrew Jackson. In 1884, Republican Presidential candidate James G. Blaine and Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland fought through an epic orgy of mudslinging featuring charges true, as it turned out of an illegitimate daughter and financial corruption neither individual nor any members of their administration faced crazed shooters.Killings often occur in relatively placid political climates of consensus as with the assassinations of two popular, young centrist presidents, James A. Garfield 1881 and John F. Kennedy 1963, following close elections in 1880 and 1960 when the major candidates all of them widely admired war heroes largely agreed on issues.Despite the current attempts to blame partisanship and polarization for a nonexistent rising tide of violence the evidence of history is clear fierce rhetoric doesnt cause shootings, any more than moderate, consensus politics guarantees safety for our public figures.