Thoughts Aloud

I have several confessions to make. First and foremost, I have long stressed the idea that our government must again be bound by the confines defined in our Constitution if we are to continue as free and prosperous individuals. To this end, I have been active in what is called the Tea Party movement, I am a dues-paying member of the Libertarian Party, I contribute to blogs such as this one, I watch Fox News and Fox Business on television and I occasionally watch/listen to conservative commentary.

Now I find that, according to the yapping heads on television, my activities have directly contributed to a senseless massacre in Arizona this past Saturday, where at least 6 were killed and a sitting congresswoman, among others, was critically injured. How can I have done such a thing?

For sure, the Constitution I revere so much does allow its citizens to possess firearms. And, it allows each of us the right to say what we think, particularly about the actions of our government and the politicians who run it. But, nowhere in that document can I find anything about the right or responsibility to commit mayhem. So, I hope I might be forgiven for being ignorant of the fact that my “extreme” political views were being taken by the mentally deranged as defacto instructions to go forth and murder.

Obviously, I write this with tongue firmly in cheek and, NO, I do not think there is anything funny about what happened in Arizona. It was, by any measure or description, a senseless tragedy.

However, the obvious fact that people in positions of responsibility could leverage such a horrible event for political ends is almost as shocking as the event itself.

All the evidence made public to date indicates this was the work of a lone person with a history of questionable behavior. A person who is undoubtedly mentally and socially deficient. But, was he “inspired” to this action by his understanding of the world around him? And, if this is possibly true, to what degree might he have been influenced by a political system that proposes to relieve him of any and all responsibility for his conduct of his own life?

If, as suggested by the Pima County Sheriff, the killer was influenced by “hate speech”, might this not have included a blog on the Daily Kos from a few days earlier where a long-time supporter pronounced congresswoman Giffords “dead to me” because she did not vote for Nancy Pelosi to be the new minority leader in the House? No, this is not what Sheriff Dupnik was referring to in his nationally televised diatribe. Instead, he was suggesting that such vile language as calling someone a “socialist” was the problem.

The simple truth is that progressive-ism is itself a form of insanity because most of what it consistently proposes defies rational thought. By this, I mean such things as assuming common agreement on topics for which a large diverse population will NEVER agree. Such as proposing to freely distribute more resources than can possibly exist. Such as proposing that individual humans can actually relieved of all personal responsibility without chaos being the result.

While I have an opinion, I truly don’t really KNOW how all this is going to end. But I do know that it WILL END. The question is whether all that we value in life will end with it.

Troy L Robinson

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