The Westboro Left, Calculated Lies, and Wellstone II

Matthew Sheffield has a very interesting post up at the Washington Examiner:

Fred Phelps, the crazy leader of the Westboro Baptist Church cult, has become infamous for blaming any bad event on the evils of homosexuality. Earthquake in Haiti? Blame the gays. Combat troop deaths in Iraq? Ditto.

Phelps' logic works thusly: God literally hates people who engage in homosexual conduct and unless societies take the steps to ban and punish such action, God is going to destroy them. Any natural disaster or mass murder is, accordingly, the will of God being carried out on the "sinners" who refuse to listen.

If that type of "logic" sounds familiar, it should be. It's exactly the same as the explanations the far left is resorting to in its efforts to pin the recent Tucson, Arizona shooting onto conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Glenn Beck, and the right generally.

Rhetorically, there is very little difference between the ranting of the Westboro cult and rhetoric vomited forth on the pages of the New York Times and Newsweek in recent days. Facts are irrelevant to reporting on this massacre Leftists immediately seized upon as an opportunity to demonize conservatives and squelch free speech.

Eerily, liberal Democratic politicians and their allies in the leftist media seem to have once again coordinated a two-pronged assault against civil liberties, using deception and outright lies. Perhaps most disturbing of all is that they've given up all pretense of tying their efforts to facts or reality.

The 22-year-old that shot 20 people—killing six—has become an excuse for the left to blame the Tea Party in specific and conservatives in general for the massacre, attempting to tie the shooter and the slayings to the patriotic rhetoric used to capture the House in the 2010 mid-terms.

Actual reality is utterly irrelevant in liberal massaging on the tragedy. Jared Lee Loughner has been identified as being "very liberal" by a classmate who knew him in high school, in a band, and community college. His documented history of abusing marijuana, admiration of flag-burning, dislike of the Constitution, and anti-war views that held the Bush Administration as "war criminals" for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan closely coincide with the progressive liberal world view.

Despite this, most conservatives and moderates on both sides of the aisle recognize that Loughner's rampage is far more closely tied to mental illness than any political philosophy. Meanwhile, liberals hoping to find a way to turn this outburst of violence into a ghoulish opportunity—as evidenced in the Krugman editorial and alternate-reality Newsweek article linked above—are forging ahead with rhetoric to restrict free speech, while simultaneously promoting restrictions on civil rights and declaring intentions to further alienate and insulate themselves from the very people they are supposed to represent.

The always excellent James Taranto notes the authoritarian and repressive political putsch on display in an op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal:

To describe the Tucson massacre as an act of "political violence" is, quite simply, a lie. It is as if, two days after the Columbine massacre, a conservative newspaper of the Times's stature had described that atrocious crime as an act of "educational violence" and used it as an occasion to denounce teachers unions. Such an editorial would be shameful and indecent even if the arguments it made were meritorious.

The New York Times has seized on a madman's act of wanton violence as an excuse to instigate a witch hunt against those it regards as its domestic foes. "Instigate" is not too strong a word here: As we noted yesterday, one of the first to point an accusatory finger at the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin was the Times's star columnist, Paul Krugman. Less than two hours after the news of the shooting broke, he opined on the Times website: "We don't have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was."

Evidence indicates that Loughner's obsession with Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords years before the Tea Party formed, but leftists persist in constructing an alternate reality where the Tea Party and a handful of conservative politicians and pundits are is the root of all evil. Facts are utterly irrelevant in a worldview so skewed; Sheppard's likening of the radical left to the Westboro hate cult grows more apt with every dishonest attempt to draw false parallels between the Tea Party and conservatives and the maniacally-grinning, left-leaning madman.

Sadly there is reason to believe that this hateful rhetoric attempting to demonize and isolate the Tea Party comes straight from the White House itself, author's of the theory that you should never let a tragedy go to waste if it can be used to extract a political gain. Hence the false characterizations and outright lies in hopes of generating support for the draconian gun control laws that the Administration favors, but lacks the fortitude to openly champion.

And of course, we look with trepidation and sadness upon what may likely transpire later today, when President Obama is scheduled to speak in Tucson.

This is an opportunity for a real statesman to attempt to bridge the political divide and promote healing, but nothing in this President's past suggests he is capable of delivering a speech that isn't calculated and self-serving. It appears that we face the probability of another Wellstone funeral, as the memorial has taken the tone of a politicized union rally.

There are few things more shameful than using the corpse of of a child as a campaign stage, but we've long past the point of thinking that this radical Administration is capable of any decency at all.

Update: Sarah Palin labels the media/political smears as "blood libel," which is both controversial, and accurate, as Dan Riehl observes.