Partisan Murders
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 08:47PM Today in Arkansas, Democratic Party Chairman, Bill Gwatney was gunned down in his office. The suspect 55 year-old Timothy D. Johnson, lead police on a 20 mile chase which ended with Johnson’s death.
We will, doubtlessly, discover that Johnson was a staunch right wing republican.
Jim Atkisson, 58, walks into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church where the children are putting on a presentation of the musical, Annie. He proceeds to fire his gun into the audience killing two and wounding seven.
Police later said of Atkisson, “It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement,”
This is the inevitable result of the hate and vitriol spewn by people like Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly. They speak as though left-wing, liberal people were destroying America. They speak with a fervor usually reserved for a holy war.
Their speech goes right into the ears and hearts of the Johnson’s and Atkisson’s of the world. They and many like them aren’t able to distinguish rhetoric from reality. They actually believe that the things that O’Reilly and Co. are saying are true. They actually believe that, for the betterment of society, they must destroy that which Pat Roberton says is destroying America.
This is what is wrong with partisan politics, this is what is wrong with religious zealotry, and this is what is wrong with allowing people like Bill O’Reilly to have air time. Innocent people are going to die.
Pat Robertson
Ann Coulter
Bill O’Reilly
Sean Hannity
Rush Limbaugh
Any other hate-spewing pundit…
Their blood is on your hands. Change the way you do business.
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Reader Comments (1)
I am a Unitarian Universalist and have visited TVUUC, so I consider myself a stakeholder in this debate. Certainly this most recent slaying tends to confirm what many suspect about the effects of hate speech used by conservative political pundits. And every time someone like yourself even hints at what surely seems to be happening, instead of taking responsibility and setting a better example, conservatives cry foul and spew forth more hate - and so it goes. How many must die before the so-called shining lights of conservativism bring intellectual honesty and human decency to the discussion?
Even our local sheriff (Prince George's County, Maryland) is taking this seriously - for the first time ever there was a patrol car in the parking lot when we left church this past Sunday. When we asked the officer about her presence, she said her captain had asked that all UU churchs in the county be covered during the hours around Sunday services because they need extra protection. In one way it's comforting, but in another, it's frightening to think that this is what it's come to to be religiously liberal in this country.