The left-wing Climate of Hate

In response to Denver Post: Arapahoe High School Shooter Held ‘Strong Political Beliefs’:

Let me preface this by reiterating that I don’t think the actions of any crazed individual discredit the philosophy and principles of sane, law-abiding people, whether I disagree with those principles or not.

But shall we dust off all that “Climate of Hate” toxic smog the Left was pumping out of every single media smokestack within minutes of the Tucson shootings?  How about that hypocritical leftist nincompoop Paul Krugman dashing off a column about how the Liberal Climate of Hate clearly inspired this shooting rampage, according to the rules he laid down after Tucson?  This is a textbook example of what he was nattering on about.  This kid was obviously tapped into the current of vicious liberal rage at their opponents, who in some precincts are routinely depicted as subhuman monsters motivated primarily by heartless greed, racism, and ghoulish joy at watching the least fortunate among us suffer.  And by “some precincts” I don’t mean a few obscure Facebook pages, I mean MSNBC.

We could dust off just about any feverish liberal editorial from post-Tucson and use this incident to beat the author senseless.  Pull your favorite liberal hate screed from early 2011 out of the archives, swap out Sarah Palin for Alan Grayson, substitute neo-Keynesian socialism for the Tea Party, and see what kind of mileage you get.  I’ll bet you can drive that baby cross-country on a single tank of gas.

But of course, the mainstream media has no memory when it comes to writings inconvenient to the Left.  We all know how Karl Pierson’s “strong political beliefs” would be described – not just in Paragraph 1 of the story, but in every single headline in the country – if he were right-leaning.  But because he’s a radical leftist, his views get buried in Paragraph 27, which is then scrubbed.  

Once again, I don’t have any desire to construct a “Liberal Climate of Hate” mythology and do what I excoriated Paul Krugman and his ilk for doing, back in the day.  No honest liberal is responsible for this act of violence, not even those prone to especially lively rhetoric.  But it’s hilarious to think our friends on the Left will assume nobody remembers what they were saying three years ago… and given the way our public is misinformed by biased liberal media, they’re probably right.  My guess is that Pierson might be briefly presented as a victim of bullying – slotted into a cause the MSM approves of – and of course, a pawn in gun control arguments, before he goes down the Memory Hole.

I can’t say I think much of his supposedly prodigious debating skills, based on the quotes from the Denver Post:

“I was wondering to all the neoclassicals and neoliberals, why isn’t the market correcting itself?” he wrote. “If the invisible hand is so strong, shouldn’t it be able to overpower regulations?”

For starters, because the people enforcing the regulations have guns.