So Much for Civility

So much for civility and respectful dialogue.  So much for stopping the personal attacks.  So much for the promises of heated debate without personal ranker.  Members of Congress and the talking heads that cover their every word had all agreed on at least one thing.  They agreed that while the vitriol and hate speech that filled our airwaves had not caused the tragedy in Tucson, words do matter and the rhetoric needed to be toned down.

Apparently Glenn Beck didn’t get the memo.

On a recent show he referred to liberals, specifically Nancy Pelosi, as “radicals” and “Marxists” and “revolutionaries”.  “If you listen to them they will lead you toward a totalitarian state”. 

Mr. Beck was just warming up.  “You are going to have to shoot them in the head or they are going to shoot you.”  Continuing: “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before I will let you step into my house and tell me how to raise my children.  You will have to shoot me in the forehead before you will take away my gun.  You will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and become silent.”

Mr. Beck is not alone.  In the wake of the Tucson shooting there have been many, many more individuals who have expressed the need to include guns and violence in our political discourse.

Maybe we just can’t help ourselves. 

We are Americans!  We are three hundred million strong!  We are also a violent country.  We are the most heavily armed country in the world by far, well ahead of our closest competitor.  We have ninety guns for every one hundred citizens.   The internet and newspaper are filled with reports of hundreds of shootings and murders in our country each and every day.  At the risk of raising the ire of conservatives; Canada has thirty six million people.  They have ten million households and seven million guns.  That’s still a lot of guns per capita.  But somehow they only had two hundred murders last year.   

It is hard to understand why Mr. Beck and his ilk need to fill their commentary with gun references in order to make their point.  Maybe it’s an “American thing”.  Psychiatrists would have a field day finding the answer.