Posted on 12/24/2014 2:46:45 AM PST by servo1969
Going by objective standards of reason and fairness, Al Sharpton is not to blame for the assassination of two New York City cops over the weekend. Nor are New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama or any of the protesters and activists they supported, encouraged and allied themselves with. Going by what we know, the only person to blame is the man police identified as the killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley.
This is the standard I've upheld in this space for years, when one madman after another has killed and maimed in the name of one cause or another. It's also been necessary to uphold this standard when madmen have killed for no political cause whatsoever, but politicians and journalists have been determined to claim otherwise.
The most glaring example of this was the horrible 2011 shooting spree in Tucson that claimed six lives and horribly wounded then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The shooting occurred during a period of maximum liberal paranoia about the tea party movement. And in a riot of groupthink, much of the elite media convinced itself -- absent any evidence -- that the killer, Jared Loughner, was inspired by, variously, Sarah Palin's Facebook map of congressional races (there were targets over various districts where Palin wanted Democrats defeated), Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann's overheated speeches and other forms of what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called "eliminationist rhetoric."
Indeed, Krugman's response to the Tucson shooting was indicative of this thinking. In a column titled "Climate of Hate," Krugman began: "When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen? Put me in the latter category."
In other words, Krugman, like countless others, had his explanation ready before the event even transpired.
This has become something of a cottage industry for some left-wing activist groups, eager to implicate their political opponents in murder. No doubt this knee-jerk reaction is often sincere. When a radical Islamic terrorist left a bomb in Times Square, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg no doubt meant it when he speculated that the culprit was an opponent of Obamacare.
And some claim conservatives do the same thing when it comes to terrorist attacks from Muslims. But that strikes me as something categorically different. Radical Islamic mass murders, both attempted and successful, in recent years were done in the name of an international movement, often with material, technical or spiritual assistance from abroad.
The 2009 Fort Hood shooter was in contact with al-Qaeda and later admitted his murder rampage was on its behalf. And, unlike the tea party crowd, al-Qaeda actually uses "eliminationist rhetoric" -- and not just rhetorically.
And yet, in such cases, the knee-jerk response of the Obama administration and many liberals is to counsel the very restraint they deny to their domestic political opponents. They try to minimize the event as an "isolated incident." Amazingly, the administration designated the Fort Hood killing "workplace violence." (Congress just passed legislation, overruling the administration, that would make victims of the attack eligible for Purple Hearts).
Now we have two New York City policemen dead. The killer's postings on social media make it abundantly clear he was motivated in part by the intense furor over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. One of Sharpton's "Million Marchers" mobs reportedly even chanted, "What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!"
Going by the standards liberals established, Sharpton clearly has blood on his hands (for this cop-slaying and other hate crimes from his earliest days as a race hustler). And the blame hardly ends there if you go by the rules that were applied to Palin and others.
But here's the problem: Those rules stink.
Sharpton is a special case; he should have been pelted from the public stage decades ago. But it would be ridiculous to believe that De Blasio or Holder -- or Obama -- wanted this tragedy.
Double standards are seductive. If you've been demonized unfairly, it is only human to turn the tables at the first opportunity. Giving in to that temptation, however, leads to madness. Conservatives should take the high road -- and liberals should join them -- the next time a madman gives them an opportunity to take the low road.
Aiding and abettting, inciting, encouraging,and supporting was not in this article. The players involved have resposibility in this. If someone yells fire in a crowded theater and people die because of this irresponsible act this is ok?
Murders of the two officers in NYC can’t be blamed on Sarah Palin — so suddenly the left discovers the “lone insane gunman” theory.
There IS a complete double-standard, and it is a double-standard on the part of liberals.
And I do believe he is wrong as well when he states "...But it would be ridiculous to believe that De Blasio or Holder -- or Obama -- wanted this tragedy..." because even though Obama or Holder may not have scripted that dead cops were part of the plan, they are clearly operating in a community organizer mindset, and also in a Marxist mindset.
They have openly professed their admiration for and are acolytes of Alinsky, who states: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
And when things like this happen, they have also openly made statements that are clearly inspired by the need to break a few eggs to make omelettes, which was supposedly said by Lenin, and was clearly and unequivocally a sentiment by ideological allies to Obama and Holder like Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dorhn, and others. Sometimes innocent people are in the way and have to become victims. It is often unavoidable, and sometimes, necessary, in their minds.
And lastly, let us not neglect their mindset of "Never let a crisis go to waste." All of these things apply to the left, and do NOT apply to conservatives in general. It is, in my opinion, a fundamental cleavage point between liberals and conservatives, because conservatives value individuals, where liberals only value the collective, unless it involves them and their personal matters directly.
So, I think Jonah Goldberg is a little off base with this article, which can be summarized as "It's really bad, both sides do it equally, and we have to stop on our side, even if we can't stop them from doing it."
The unholy alliance of the usual suspects (pols, media, race baiters, leftists, gangs, etc) all unite under the false banner of racism (cause celeb). Their cause is self righteous and they hold no accountable blame while wrapped in that holy garment.
An emotional bender of lunacy is what it is and profitable for the pockets of the ring leaders——or so it seems.
II disagree with Goldberg. When LEADERS in office do as both bozo and decmmie have done ie fail to support the law They are culpable. Period.
Except that protestors explicitly called for the death of cops.
The big mistake that Mr.Goldberg makes is asking or expecting liberals to act rationally.
The difference is Palin and Bachmann weren’t lying about Gifford’s to get people to kill her.
If you claim police are committing ethnically biased killings, what do you expect? You’re pulling a Goebbels and feigning being MLK Jr.
It bother me that some conservatives are coming out, waging their index finger at us for double standard and engaging in group by association. There NO double standard, thank you very much on our side. Its a FALSE equivalence
Palin was NOT the one in the crowded cinema calling “FIRE” which lead to someone getting killed.
Obama, Sharpton WAS
group=guilt
In this case the vile Left from the President on down encouraged anti-cap violent rhetoric and assigned blame where none was due — from Obama to Holder to DeBlasio to Sharpton. This attempt at even-handedness by the author gives the Left too much credit in the case of Palin and not enough in the case of the assassination of two New York city police officers. Examine the facts.
Sharpton et al wanted and still want an angry crowd, but they also wanted that crowd to have victim status, and the killing of the two police takes that away from them. So in that sense it’s true that they didnt want it to happen.
What Sharpton is guilty of isn’t so much wanting it to happen but enabling it to happen. He helped create the climate of anger and vengeance-seeking (dressed up as “justice”) that motivated the killer. And unlike with Laughner where the linkage between the supposed climate and his actions was non-existent and where he truly was a mental case (schizophrenic), the police killer, who seems more criminal than crazy, said in his own words that he was killing out of revenge for the very things Sharpton had been hyping. Plus we know he wasn’t the only one feeling vengeful by all the tweets and shouts at funerals etc. that the cops deserved it. Was there a single expression of agreement from conservatives with what Laughner did? Nope.
So, it seems to me that there’s a real asymmetry here and that we’re letting the lefties off the hook a little too easily if we try to stay above it rather than acknowledging it.
Rules for Radicals
By Saul Alinsky
4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
The author above wants us to surrender
The Left, for months have created a rule, which is that battle/violent languages spoken by politicans leads to some crazy hearing it and committing violence. Almost every mass murder was blamed on Conservatives without evidence for MONTHS
Here is a case where we could pin it on the Left WITH EVIDENCE and the author want us to surrender and not use this line of argument against them. This is STUPID
Jonah’s response is too black and white. All these cases are individual.
There was no evidence whatsoever that the Tucson killer knew anything about Sarah Palin, let along the crosshairs ad.
But there is a mountain of evidence that the NY killer was motivated by the anti-cop rhetoric that has dominated the news in the past three months. He even attended a rally in NY.
When you stir up a hornet’s nest like Sharpton et al have done, don’t you share at least a bit of the blame when people get stung?
In this case, Holder, Sharpton, Obama were feeding the frenzy from the Michael Brown case to ferment hatred from the black community. It lead to the burning down of 2 dozen buildings in Ferguson, and as far as I know, nobody was arrested, and the National Guard was told to stand down.
Next up, you have protesters in NYC, supported by Mayor Deblasio. When protestors broke the law, by taking over bridges and tunnels, nobody was arrested. When protestors went up and down the streets shouting "What do we want? Dead Cops. When do we want it? Now." These protestors were also supported by the Mayor.
Fast forward to the piece of garbage that shot the two offices, he was lead to believe that Brown and Garner were MURDERED by cops. The media was complicit in their reporting, to continue the false narrative that they were murdered to the point where we have ignorant sports figures, congress-critters, and black leaders stupidly putting their hands in the air and saying "don't shoot".
Once again, the lies were created by the media, furthered by Holder, Obama and Sharpton, among others, all of which lead to the psycho killing these office based on a false pretense.
Okay Jonah, the psycho pulled the trigger and is ultimately responsible. But the others contributed. Although usually used by defendants to reduce a plaintiff's award, what happened here would make a interesting case for contributory negligence to make additional people partly responsible for the deaths of the officers.
No can do, Jonah. We don't play by Marquess of Queensbury rules as long as the libs are using Alinsky's rules.
Fire with fire.
Public officials need to be careful with their rhetoric.
While the rest of the article seems very sincere on Jonah's part, he had to be writing this tongue in cheek. This theory was a bogeyman created solely by Bloomberg.
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