I believe it was Emerson who said that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. The operative word is “foolish”, but that is often ignored. Among American conservatives, there are apparently no little minds, as they are comfortably inconsistent, whether foolishly or not.
They have of late been proving their minds are not little by their adherence to a quite different maxim: the best defense is a good offense, to which one might add “whether the defense (or offense) be consistent or not.
Sensing some vulnerability to the charge that their rhetoric may have spurred the Arizona assassin, they are, at one and the same time claiming that it was his mental illness alone that led him to kill and that the violent rhetoric that they spew has no effect and, by its nature, could have no effect on any unstable individual (because presumably no one is really listening, and, in any even, no one would ever take them seriously). At the same time it is the case that he was, against all the evidence, a left winger, and was driven to his deeds not by the violent rhetoric that they spew, but by dry and dusty tomes such as “The Communist Manifesto” (which does not, as it turns out, feature Congresspeople in crosshairs) or “Mein Kampf”, which the right has lately converted to a piece of communist propaganda. Thus, we are to believe that exposure to hate filled propaganda both did and did not drive the man to kill, and that his presumed mental illness was solely and not solely responsible for his decision to engage in what was, by any measure, a political act with quite specific political targets, both of whom had been marked out by hate radio.
In one thing they will prove to be consistent. They will, as always, succeed in getting most of the media to spread the blame for hate filled rhetoric evenly among those who spew it and those who don’t. Who knows, the media may even buy into Rush Limbaugh’s latest claim:
“What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He’s sitting there in jail; he knows what’s going on. He knows that a Democrat [sic] Party — the Democrat [sic] Party — is attempting to find anybody but him to blame.
“He knows if he plays his cards right that he’s just a ‘victim.’ He’s the latest in a never ending parade of victims brought about by the ‘unfairness of America.’ The ‘bigotry, racism, homophobia’ of America. The ‘mean-spiritedness of America.’ […]
“That smiling mugshot — this guy clearly understands he’s getting all the attention, and he understands he’s got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything they can to make sure he’s not convicted of murder.”
Certainly it’s not likely any Republican will disavow Rush. After all, they will probably agree with him. When convenient (e.g., when no Muslims are involved) it is impossible for them to understand that someone who encourages the mentally unstable to perform violent acts has a share of the responsibility when they do in fact go out and kill the targets chosen for them by the fomenters.
Speaking of inconsistency, isn’t it interesting that they also have no problem blaming his actions entirely on an assumed mental illness, when they are so very reluctant to agree that mental illness should be exculpatory in any other context.
Afterword: It is an inconvenient fact for the right that the assassin did not have the good grace to either kill himself or get himself killed in the process of the massacre. He will go on trial for his life, and his mental state will no doubt be in play. I don’t do criminal law, but my instincts tell me he might get more mileage blaming present day right wing rhetoric for his misdeeds than To Kill a Mockingbird. Could be wrong, though.
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