Oh, please. The Weather Underground has been inactive for 40 years. The Earth Liberation Front, which you mentioned as some sort of equivalent to all of the right-wing militias which now exist in the U.S. has set a few fires, which potentially could have killed someone, but they haven't gone out and MURDERED people and, to date, NOBODY has died due to their actions. In fact, even with the Weather Underground, the only person who died was A WEATHER UNDERGROUND MEMBER.It's not ALWAYS the radical Right. Unless you number Weather Underground as Right Wing.
There hasn't been radical left wing terrorism in this country since the Vietnam War. To state otherwise is to expose your own shocking ignorance on the subject of domestic terrorism.
To ignore that domestic terrorism is a Right-wing phenomenon is not only counter-factual and ignorant, it's downright dangerous. Name ONE person who has been killed in the past 20 years in this country as a result of "left-wing terrorism." 168 were killed by anti-government, right-wing crazy Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City Bombings ALONE. 19 of which were children under the age of 6. This guy who shot the Congresswoman also killed a baby under the age of 1.
While I agree that this person was probably just crazy, and it's far too early to read into any political motivations, it is abundantly clear to ANYONE paying attention that the right-wing media is stoking violent, anti-government, anti-immigrant sentiments amongst their base for their own political purposes and doesn't really give a damn what the end result is.
As I've already said, it's too early to tell what this specific individual's motivations are, but eventually someone out there is going to take Sarah Palin saying, "Don't retreat- reload," seriously. Someone MIGHT take a LITERAL target on elected officials seriously (in fact, someone may have already done so... it's too early to tell). There are more than 300 million people in this country, many of them are unhinged. When right-wing politicians are using this language, they need to be very cognizant of how their speeches may be interpreted by psychologically unstable people.
And Palin isn't an isolated incident. I'm from Nevada. Here's what the woman, Sharron Angle, who ran against Harry Reid, the United States Senate Majority Leader from our state, said:
Isolated incident?You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.
I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.
Well, here's another prominent conservative, this one a radio host in Florida, talking about the same crap during a rally from the 2010 elections.
She says, in the event her party loses the election:
After she says (about 6 minutes in),"I'm going to go up into the hills of Kentucky, I'm going to go out to the Midwest, I'm going to go up into the Vermont and New Hampshire outreaches and I'm going to gather men and women who understand that some things are worth fightiing for and some things are worth dying for."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB7g3y597fs"If ballots don't work, bullets will!"
Isolated crazy? Well... she's got a radio show, where she presumably feeds this shit to her conservative listeners. And after the election she was offered a job as the CHIEF OF STAFF (as in... the highest-ranking staffer) of Congressman-elect Allen West, who was swept in on the 2010 Republican Wave. So, clearly not only are Republicans NOT telling their frothing-at-the-mouth crackpots to tone it down a bit, they are ACTIVELY REWARDING their insanity. Show me ONE prominent left-winger who has stated that their supporters should go on killing sprees if they LOST A FUCKING ELECTION.
There was a federal judge killed in the shooting, as well, and in fact, he may have been the target.
What did he do? He allowed a 30+ million dollar lawsuit to go forth filed by immigrants against an Arizona rancher, causing an outrage amongst local right-wing radio personalities in the area.
He had death threats and even needed a security detail for a month (or... I guess he needed it permanently and only got it for a month), as had this congresswoman. (who had also had her office vandalized after she had voted for health care reform)
The sad truth is that the radical right has been, for years, actively subverting the United States Government and Constitution. For you to gloss over these treasonous and PURPOSEFUL actions is not only factually incorrect, it's disgusting and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
As I'll state for the THIRD time... we don't know what sent this guy over the edge, but to ignore that there has been a purposeful and concerted effort by the American Right, and SOLELY by the American Right to undermine the legitimacy of our President and our nation, is not only false, it's dangerous. Even if this event wasn't the result of those activities, eventually someone on the right IS going to take this shit seriously and try their, "Second amendment remedies." And then you folks won't be able to hide from your own hideousness anymore. And you sure won't be able to hide from the fact that it was your faults for not keeping your crazies in check.
We'll see you right wing TeaTards in 2012. Ballots WILL work then.