Arizona shooting: Crazy talk by Palin, Beck, Coulter and others just encourages crazy people!

Arizona shooting: Crazy talk by Palin, Beck, Coulter and others just encourages crazy people - Joanna Molloy - Tuesday, January 11th 2011, 4:00 AM

Take our Poll/Tough Talk - What 'crazy talk' do you find most dangerous?

Sharron Angle: 'The first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.'
Glenn Beck: 'I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it.'
Ann Coulter: 'Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots.'
Jake Knotts: '[Nikki Haley]'s a f--king raghead. We got a raghead in Washington; we don't need one in South Carolina.'
Rush Limbaugh: 'If Obama weren't black he'd be a tour guide in Honolulu or he'd be teaching Saul Alinsky constitutional law or lecturing on it in Chicago.'
Sarah Palin: 'Don't retreat! Instead - RELOAD!'

Related News
* Sarah Palin speaks out on Gabrielle Giffords shooting
* 'We gotta stand with our North Korean allies': Sarah Palin
* Palin defends 'favoriting' anti-Obama tweet: It was an accident
* Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck will hold 9/11 event in Alaska
* Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck slam Pastor Terry Jones' plans to burn Koran on 9/11
* Crouch: Drowning out the hate hustlers
*

Enough!

We've let the haters and bullies lead the political and moral conversation for far too long.

The national dialogue has descended into a fusillade of hate from politicians, political operatives and TV and radio pundits.

There's no doubt Jared Loughner heard some of it before madness overtook him and he murdered six people and nearly killed Rep. Gabrielle Giffords outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday.

"People who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol," says Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.

"I hope most Americans are as angry as I am ... about the vitriolic rhetoric we hear day in and day out."

"Crazy talk encourages crazy people," says David Helvarg, an ecological activist whose niece Johanna Justin-Jinich was murdered by an anti-Semite.

No one knows if Loughner ever saw Sarah Palin's Facebook map, which put Giffords' district in cross hairs.

No one knows if Loughner, who was obsessed with ultraconservative issues like big government and the need to back currency with gold, was influenced by Glenn Beck or Sen. Rand Paul.

Maybe he's just a madman who doesn't know the difference between rage and rhetoric in the tidal wave of hate politics in recent years.

There's Sarah Palin declaring: "Don't retreat ... RELOAD!"

South Carolina state Sen. Jake Knotts calling his Sikh-descended rival Nikki Haley, "a f--king raghead."

Nevada Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle saying if that people rise up in revolt against a liberal Congress: "The first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

Ann Coulter saying her only regret about Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh is that "he did not go to the New York Times Building."

And of course Glenn Beck's musing: "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it."

It's not just the right wingers. There are the anti-everything radical survivalists and militias.

"We've seen an extraordinarily rapid expansion of hate groups," says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"In 2008, there were 149 'patriot groups.' In 2009, that number jumped to 512."

And, of course, there are the loonies on the left that throw hateful words like "Nazis" and "racists" at people who oppose their ideas, portray American soldiers as murderers and praise terrorists who have vowed to destroy America.

Assured they have it right, the haters across the spectrum keep playing with the fire of dangerous words.

Don't they remember the angry rhetoric over the years that led James Earl Ray to murder Martin Luther King, or the hatred the helped Sirhan Sirhan put his gun to Robert Kennedy's head and pull the trigger?

If you want to see how low we've gotten, go to YouTube and watch Kennedy's speech on an inner-city street in Indianapolis the night Martin Luther King was killed.

"What we need in the United States is not division ... not hatred ... not violence and lawlessness," he said. What we need, he said that dark night in 1968, "is love, and wisdom, and compassion."

True then; even truer now.

It is a message we ignore at our peril - and the peril of generations to come.

The amazing thing is that these hate creators beLIEve they are Christians! Christians are to be known by their love!