Aparentheid

This past week, Obama ordered the State Department to change passports and the passport applications. The amended passports will list, instead of “Mother” and “Father,” “Parent One” and “Parent Two.”  In his efforts to appease legal guardians, Heather’s two mommies and Hector’s two daddies, and Liberals in general, he ordered this short-sighted change without considering the future consequences.

Enumerating parents will inevitably cause conflict within America’s already beleaguered institution of marriage. Which parent is going to be listed as “Parent Number One”? Which parent is going to be relegated to the secondary parent status? Divorce courts, already overloaded with petty bickering over child custody rights, will now have one more challenge to sort out.

With our headlong advance towards a Muslim theocracy, this new bureaucratic ruling will add one more log onto the Islamic fire. Muslim countries favor the father over the mother. America’s enumerating listing will allow Muslim men to discriminate against their wives, granting them automatic evidence of legal custody.

And what will we do on Mother’s and Father’s Day? Will these holidays now be designated “Parent One” and “Parent Two” Days? Is this another effort to undermine paternal authority in American families? Happy Parent One Day?

All this to appease a minority of Americans who are trying to cheat nature, or can’t get around nature, because the truth is they’re the wrong sex to be a mother or a father. These people can adopt children or “parent” children through surrogates. But in the end, you are what you are. You’re either an adoptive mother or father, or you’re a legal guardian.

What are children supposed to call their parents now? “Parent One, may I have a drink of water?” “Parent Two, would you play catch with me?” “Waaaah! I want my Parent One!!!!!” “I’m going to tell my Parent Two on you!!!”  

I can just imagine the religious invocations: “Holy Mary, Parent One of God….” “Our Parent Two, who art in heaven.” “Faith of our Parent Twos, living still.” And let us not forget our “Founding Parent Twos.”

Being designated Parent Ones will appeal to feminist women, who always imagine they’re the better parent. Lawyers will be able to point to this status in divorce court as evidence of their better fitness to gain custody.

Raising kids in this day and age of the Nanny State is difficult enough already, without throwing yet another impediment in the way of struggling parents, reducing them to units rather than adult human beings.

Something to Obsess Over

Psychiatrists spend entire careers – and get very rich – trying to find out what makes crazy people tick differently from the rest of us. Pharmaceutical companies spend years trying to find remedies to make crazy people semi-normal. The rest of us go crazy just trying to make sense of crazy people.

There would be many more crazy people running around, only they find something positive on which to focus their compulsive tendencies. Women knit and crochet when their kids drive them nuts. More athletic types take up running. Others go to yoga classes. The truly incurable compulsives either take up golf or music.

Golfers are maniacs. Like smokers, the first time they pick up that golf club, they’re hooked for life. They just can’t quit and they’re doing the world a favor focusing their manic tendencies on a little golf ball. They usually choose a spouse and friends who share the habit because they would drive anyone else out of their minds with their endless obsession with finding the perfect swing.

Musicians start early. Learning to play the piano, in particular, is exceedingly monotonous. The piano keyboard is one set of keys multiplied eight or nine times. The variations come in the scales. Scales are essential to becoming proficient, but you have to have the patience for the monotony of it. You can’t play even the simplest tune confidently and correctly without knowing your scales. But you have to “scale” the monotony of it all before you even get to those “five easy pieces” and most normal kids give up long before that point.

But this is a good thing for the mind that needs to learn discipline and not scatter itself over a lifetime. Once a musician, particularly a pianist, gets the hang of playing, there’s no stopping them. They become obsessed with playing. The better you are, the more obsessed you become with perfection. So, professional musicians would actually be crazy people, locked away in some rubber room, only they discovered the saving grace of music. Conductors are even worse because they know better how to play every instrument, but they have to direct, which isn’t the same as playing your instrument. Most find some other group to play with to play their chosen instrument and save their sanity.

Loughner was said to be a good musician in high school, and a football player. But apparently he wasn’t interested in that kind of music after high school, or perhaps no groups were available, and he formed a punk garage band instead. The reports haven’t stated whether or how long he continued his music, but I gather that he abandoned it. That, along with breaking up with the high school sweetheart and experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, may have contributed his downward spiral towards madness.

Actor George Sanders (of The Saint fame) suffered a couple of strokes near the end of his life. He had always been an accomplished pianist and even a singer. When he found he could no longer play his beloved piano, he took it out into the yard and smashed it with an axe. A short time later, he took his own life.

Another actor, Dudley Moore, was also a trained, classical pianist. In the 1990s, he developed a fatal neurological disease that caused him to stumble about as though he were drunk. Eventually, he was completely paralyzed. Moore, also a movie score composer, was heartbroken when he could no longer play his piano. He was also going through a divorce, and spent his remaining days at the home of a friend in Plainfield, N.J. According to reports, the last thing his friend told him before dying was, “I can hear music all around me.”

In the film, Five Easy Pieces (referring to a beginner’s piano book), the Jack Nicholson character, Robert Dupea gives up his promising career as a concert pianist because he finds the routine of daily practice boring. A restless, angry individual, he takes to the road, wanting to see the world and find something or someone to quell his inner turmoil. Finding work as an oil rigger, his life is even more limited to his love interest, a waitress named Rayette and bowling with his best buddy.

When Robert hears from his sister (his whole family are professional musicians) that their father has suffered two strokes, he drives up to Washington to see him, taking Rayette with him. Dumping her at a motel because he’s ashamed of her background, he goes on to Seattle where he’s confronted by the rich, cultured family that he had left behind. There, he falls for his brother’s fiancée but when Rayette shows up unexpectedly, the family insults her. Bobby defends her and they depart, but then he abandons her at a truck stop and gets onto a truck and leaves everything behind.

My grandmother was an excellent pianist. She could play anything by ear on one hearing. She and my grandfather had a horrible relationship. When they moved to their final home, she bought a Kimball piano with the softest, tinkliest tone she could buy so that he couldn’t fume about her playing, even though he was so hard of hearing that he had to blast the television until you could hear it plainly out on the street, with the doors and windows closed.

She bought my piano for me when I was about ten. But I suffered a similar fate, in a small house with an intolerant family of brothers. I learned what it was like for my grandmother, to want to be able to play and yet not be able to. Now, I live in a condo apartment where there are fairly lax rules about the hours (no playing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. – I would have made it 9 a.m. especially on weekend mornings).

Grandma finally came to live us, where she played the piano she bought for me. Finally, she went back to live with my grandfather. I think she had opportunities to play when he would go out to town hall meetings to harass the politicians (who begged my mother to find a way to keep him home).

Other people have a passion for cars and spend their lives restoring antique cars. We have guys at work who do that. Every year at the annual picnic, they display their antique cars. One man completely restored a 1962 Porsche to showroom condition. People actually begged to have their photos taken in this car.

There’s something for everyone to do, besides going out and shooting other people up. Those who can’t find something and are intent on mayhem need to be locked up. They’re so locked up inside themselves that it takes years of therapy to unlock that door and restore them to sanity, if they can be restored. But for those on the edge: Get help from someone in the real world. Find something positive to do. Don’t drink or do drugs. Don't take things so seriously.  And have faith that you can rejoin the real world and find peace. You’re not alone.

The Pep Rally Memorial

The Pep Rally Memorial was on last night.  Or was it the Memorial for Pep Rallies? After last night’s shocking and highly inappropriate Pep Rally Carnival in Tucson, starring President Obama, the Liberals should hang their heads in shame and never hold another political pep rally ever again.

Two minutes into the show, I shut it off. As Fox News segued from Shep Smith to the Memorial Service at the University of Arizona, the first appalling thing I noted was that it was being held in a stadium. I knew right away that this didn’t bode well. Dignity was sinking faster than the Titanic.

Then I seem to recall seeing people in group tee shirts, cheering and clapping. People on the podium were yukking it up, laughing and hee-hawing. Next some clown came up to the microphone and made some announcement that I couldn’t hear for all the screaming.

Then President Obama came up on to the dais. The stadium erupted in even more screaming and yelling. The people in the front rows stood up. I noticed that some of the people on the dais started looking a little uncomfortable. They carried on and carried on.

So I did what I did, the first time I saw Obama on television, at some televised town hall meeting – I shut off the television. That time, I vacuumed. This time, I surfed the dial. When I saw there was absolutely nothing worth watching, I picked up the latest edition of National Review and resumed reading it.

I read the speech later. Actually, it was reasonably dignified and solemn. I thought the part at the end about tempering our discourse (or whatever he said) was unnecessary, at least for Conservatives. It sounded for all the world like he was chiding his own followers.

There should no longer any doubt that the Liberals have no sense of respect, decorum, discipline, propriety, common sense or manners. That’s to be expected, however, from irresponsible, overgrown, foul-mouthed adolescents. One person who must have been pleased at this mockery of a memorial – if he had access to this spectacle – was Loughner himself.

I watched the little girl’s funeral procession on Fox News when I got home from work. Such a sad thing, seeing that little casket being rolled out to the hearse. A little girl born on a day of unspeakable violence and murdered on a day of unspeakable violence. She looked like she was a little charmer, with those big, brown eyes.

I imagine her funeral service was much more dignified than the Pep Rally Memorial. The Westboro Baptist Church bunch stayed away from the funeral, but only after blackmailing some radio station into playing their message. They’re a terrible bunch. I was reading some of the information about them to my colleagues.

Not only do they disrupt military funerals, but desecrate the American flag. The church was formed in 1955. But in 1991, seeing homosexual activity at a nearby community park, they launched out on their anti-homosexual – and anti-just-about-everyone-else crusade.

Homosexuals needn’t feel too singled-out, though. The Westboro Wackos also hate Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Mormons, and Catholics. But if you think their plans to picket Christiana’s funeral was awful, you should read the account of the murder of Canadian Tim McLean.

Now, keep in mind, this is a Wikipedia account, but I did confirm the story on The Digital Journal and the London Globe and Mail. McLean, a carnival worker was on his way home from Edmonton to Winnipeg on a Greyhound bus. He frequently texted his ex-girlfriend along the trip, who was the mother of his three year-old daughter. In Erickson, Manitoba, a man named Weiguang Li boarded the bus, sitting in front. After a rest stop, he took a seat next to McLean, at the back of the bus.

Witnesses say he produced a large, Rambo-type knife and stabbed McLean. The bus stopped and the horrified passengers fled, with the driver locking the killer inside the bus. He tried to drive away, but the bus was equipped with an emergency immobilizer.  What the killer did next is unprintable, at least on my blog, and you’ll have to go to one of the news sites for the horrifying details. But the passengers, huddled on the roadside, were sickened.

At the last minute, fearing recriminations, Westboro called off its protest.

Although Li had no previous psychiatric history, a court psychiatrist testified at his trial that he was schizophrenic. Li himself testified that he killed McLean because God told him to do it. Westboro claimed they wanted to protest McLean’s funeral to speak out against Canada’s laws on abortion and adultery. There is no evidence that McLean was gay, although some psycho-bloggers maintain that he was. McLean sported a number of tattoos on his chest and torso. The killer had followed him into the rest stop. Perhaps he disapproved.

Other witnesses say this psycho was acting peculiar before he ever boarded the bus. He sat at the bus stop for hours, staring fixedly out into space. He had a laptop with him which he sold to a young boy, who turned it over to the Canadian Mounted Police.

McLean never said a word to this man. He didn’t know him. No politics were involved, no “violent rhetoric.” McLean’s only “mistake” was boarding that particular bus. Li was simply a psycho. He acted so suddenly, McLean would never have had a chance to escape him and bus stations don’t have metal detectors (yet).

Tim McLean has certainly not been forgotten by his family and friends. But the larger world has probably forgotten all about the incident, which happened in 2008. That’s the real trouble – we tend to forget. We forgot about the first World Trade Center bombing. Liberals would like us to forget about 9/11, but never forget about the Iraq War. It’s part of human nature to eventually screen out such horrible incidents (if you read the Greyhound bus story, you’ll know why – it’s something those passengers will never forget).

We mourn Christiana Taylor now. But once Congresswoman Giffords recovers (and doctors are optimistic that she will) will we be urged to forget about Christiana’s murder because the killer was just your everyday, run-of-the-mill psychotic, who leaned more to the left than to the right, depriving the Liberal Media of a month’s worth of finger-wagging stories about Conservatives? Will we be urged to forget the day this little girl died the way we’re urged to forget the day she was born?

Is that why they turned a purported memorial for her and the other victims into a three-ring circus, complete with banners, tee shirts, and cheering crowds?  If this was the Liberals' idea of “civil discourse,” America is in more trouble than we thought.

Driving Us Crazy

Somebody knew that Jared Loughner was making death threats to Congresswoman Giffords, as well as local radio talk show hosts, bloggers, and college administrators. Someone knew that he’d broken up with his high school sweetheart. But that kind of thing happens all the time in high school. Only a nutcase would go berserk. No one followed the popular admonition, “If you see [or hear] something, say something.”

Instead we’re all supposed to zip our lips, lest the wrong phrase fall trippingly over our tongues. We might say something inadvertently violent. Or racist. Or sexist. Or anti-government. I predict a rise in sales of duct tape, for that is the only way we can hope to achieve true political correctness. As Muslim women must shroud themselves from head to toe to remain sinless, and not encourage their male counterparts to any sinful thoughts, we must permanently glue our lips together (cutting our tongues is too violent an image for our prissy media) in order not to offend anyone.

This morning, the very thought of going out onto New Jersey’s snow-covered roads left me paralyzed with terror for a good 45 minutes before I could convince myself that I was simply going to have to run the gauntlet in order to get to work. New Jersey’s drivers are certifiable maniacs. Giving New Jerseyans a license to drive is almost the same as giving a certifiable lunatic the right to carry a gun.  No traffic law exists that they believe they need to observe.  The rules don't apply to crazy people.

No road is too icy, no conditions are dangerous enough for them to obey the rules of the road or the speed limit. No matter how many pictures they’ve seen of cars buried in snow banks, they’re convinced that they’re better drivers and that they’ll never suffer that fate. They cause innumerable accidents and insurance claims (don’t worry, J.D., I won’t mention any names). It’s no wonder the Garden State has one of the highest auto insurance premium rates in the nation.

Yet no matter how high their premiums are raised, no matter how many tickets they receive, no matter how many injuries they cause, to themselves and others, they plow on ahead. What are normal New Jersey drivers to do? Stay home and be fired by their indifferent employers? Or drive on as best they can?

The best we can do is drive safely ourselves, don’t speed, don’t break the rules of the right, and keep an eye out for the crazies behind the wheel. Grandpa had a saying, “Just remember: every other driver on the road is a lunatic except you, and don’t be too sure of yourself, either.”

It’s a paranoid way to go through life. There are so many what-ifs, just in driving. What if a tree falls on my car? What if I hydroplane? What if I hit a patch of ice? What if the sun blinds me for a moment? What if some maniac cuts me off? What if there’s an earthquake and that overpass collapses on top of me? What if the parking garage suddenly lets go why’ll I’m parking? What if a tanker overturns on the exit ramp and I’m behind him or in front of him or below him?

No wonder so many people are on Prozac. Actually there’s now a warning against that drug and Paxil, that they can induce violence. Probably too many people are using it who don’t need it. Some of my co-workers came in a little late this morning because of the snow and noted how relaxed they felt because there were so few cars on the road. I felt the same relief.

You want to talk about political vitriol? That’s nothing compared to driving vitriol. Yet somehow, we manage not to kill each other. Well, actually, we do. It’s just that it’s called vehicular homicide, and only when you’ve been drinking and using drugs. And to think, they want to legalize marijuana. They’re out of their minds.

No one would think of outlawing driving, though. There are laws against driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. We tried, last century, to prohibit alcohol; that didn’t work out so well. Now someone wants to repeal the prohibition of using drugs (there’s nothing in the Constitution about it; it’s a state-by-state decision) but prohibit free speech in regards to political rhetoric.

That’s what the First Amendment was created for in the first place and it was Congresswoman Giffords who read that part of the Bill of Rights in the 112th Congress’ opening session. Liberals are now on a mission to have all violent-sounding language censored, prohibited, and outlawed. Shoot. Oh wait – we can’t use that word, which is a substitute for its cousin, the SH word. So we’re allowed to use the offensive and profane SH word, but not the shoot word. Except in Pennsylvania, where you won’t be able to say either word.

We will comply to. Now that our “awareness” has been “raised,” we will find ourselves becoming self-conscious when we use words like “shoot” and refrain from using them. Balderdash!

Oh wait, “balderdash” might not pass the breathalyzer test. “Balderdash” is a word that dates back to the 1590s and referred to a jumbled mix of liquors (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.). In the 1670’s, it took on a secondary meaning of “senseless jumble of words.” Purportedly, it is derived from the Latin, balductum, which if my high school Latin still serves me, means something along the lines of “foolish stammering.”

“Balderdash” is what we are hearing from the Liberals, then. A jumbled mixture of accusations and wishful thinking. Hypocrisy is a Greek word. We’re hearing a good deal of that from them. All to enforce exactly what this maniac either feared or wanted – it’s hard to tell with nutcases.

Someone named Clyburn charged that Sarah Palin didn’t have the intelligence to analyze this murderous lunatic’s motives, that she was intellectually incapable of delving into his rationale for a senseless murder. But he is. What does that make anyone who thinks they can make sense of a lunatic who writes gibberish? The guy took bits and pieces of everyone’s rhetoric and mixed them together until they were unrecognizable.

Try to understand Loughner? You might as well cook up a pan of scrambled eggs, throw them into a bowl and then try to analyze them. You’d have better luck than you would trying to divine the depths of this mess of a young man’s psyche.

There are people who are concerned about our currency system. But they’re not obsessed with it. There are people who are concerned about our porous borders. They’re not only concerned but rightfully angry about it. But they’re not obsessed about it. There are people concerned about illiteracy, illegal immigrants, and political correctness. The first two, no is obsessed about, though they are trying to do something constructive about it.

But political correctness, censoring speech. Judging by the blogs and newscasts, the Liberals appear to be every bit as obsessed with controlling speech, guided by paranoia, deluded by their own grandeur and intellectual superiority, flush with hatred for anyone who opposes them, and stubbornly deaf to voices of reason, as the guy sitting in the Tucson jail right now.

Nosce te ipsum.

A Moment of Silence

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."  Thomas Jefferson

Yesterday, Obama led the nation in a moment of silence for the victims of Saturday’s mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz. Last night, Fox News showed a candlelit vigil, with a peace sign prominently displayed in the center. Pundits are calling for Sarah Palin’s head; Palin who did nothing worse than any other politician using war rhetoric and symbols for the battle for our nation’s soul. For the first time, we also saw the lurid face of the obviously demented killer, grinning for the police station camera.

As Rush Limbaugh says of the Reagan assassination attempt: “I don't remember anybody suggesting that the relentless attacks on Reagan or conservatism by the then-media monopoly or the rest of the left had anything to do with John Hinckley's actions [and certainly not radical Left wingers]. They didn't rush to judgment. No, they waited to find out who he was. “Oh, the kid's disturbed. Oh, just a terribly disturbed kid.” Never once did they try to say the kid had done anything politically motivated. They didn't warn anybody to dial back the anti-conservatism that was all through the media. It didn't happen.”

The Liberals are quick to blame Loughner’s obsession with Giffords on Palin, while ignoring the log in their own eyes: their own virulent obsession with hating Sarah Palin. She’s no longer a candidate for vice president, or any other office. She’s no longer the mayor of Wasilla or the governor of Alaska. Her appearances on Fox News are sporadic and now appear doomed, given Rupert Murdoch’s spineless directive to his anchors to “tone it down.”

Liberal hackers displayed this same spite towards George Bush, a loathing so vicious that it produced a book and an award-winning film on his imagined assassination. I remember their heinous postings in AOL’s War on Terror chatroom in the early part of the last decade, just after 9/11. If any political force were to be blamed for this deranged young man’s act of violence, this would be the first place to focus the magnifying glass: the advocation of assassinating a political figure with whom you disagree.

They seem to have developed amnesia about the President of the United States’ thuggish comment that, “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” I don’t hear anyone holding President Obama responsible for the actions of this lunatic through his vitriolic imagery. Nor should they.

What was Obama’s “moment of silence” really a testament to or an indication of? Ostensibly, it was to mourn Congresswoman Giffords, who is still alive. Then the other victims, including the federal judge, were mentioned. Was it to mourn or to warn? If anyone needs to dial-down the rhetoric, it is the Liberals. They have a long history of vicious, even violent, speech and deeds. I was the one who told the Bush “haters” in AOL’s War on Terror room to knock it off with the hate-chanting, the Goebbels-like repetition of hate-posts, and their salacious profanity.

Their hypocritical, obsessive hatred of Sarah Palin trumps even their Bush hatred. Is it because she’s a Conservative woman? Is it because she’s courageous? Are they really afraid of her because she totes a gun (so did Giffords – one of the newsites, I forget which shows her with some sort of semi-automatic rifle. Too bad she didn’t have it with her on Saturday)? They’ve slandered and libeled Sarah in every way possible and forced her from her governorship through baseless lawsuits by Rahm Emmanuel that the GOP would not help her fight. They’ve mocked her on television and spread lies and misrepresentations about her character and her intelligence. A stalker took up residence next door to her home in Alaska, ostensibly to write a book about her, and not coincidentally, to intimidate her. Yet she still comes out fighting.

Yes, fighting. She’s not taking one of her hunting rifles to innocent victims. She’s fighting, metaphorically, against able-bodied and well-funded political opponents who are ruthless, treacherous, and underhanded. If the rhetoric seems belligerent, it’s because the stakes are so high. No one invited this lunatic Loughner to the battle. Nobody even knows which side he was really on, but judging by his ranting, his largely incoherent rhetoric, and his reading list, he was Left-wing, not a Tea Partier.

Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto on the same list? I’ve read the latter, with great displeasure, and avoided the former, on my late father’s advice. Both books are all about government control, albeit in different manners. The Liberals are all about control – gun control, speech control, smoking, automobiles, private property, education, and economic control. They’re control freaks.

The Conservatives – the Tea Parties – are about individual and economic freedom. Liberty. Prosperity. The pursuit of happiness. Limited government. Reducing spending (one of the signs of the manic side of manic depression is the tendency to go on spending sprees). The Liberals balk at the notion of controlling the government the way a lunatic strains at a strait jacket, frothing at the mouth with profanity, mockery, wild threats, and convulsions. They chant mantras and spew hatred at those trying to restrain them. We are fighting for our right to be free. They’re fighting for the freedom to tyrannize over us.

Sarah Palin doesn’t fear their threats. She keeps coming back. And that frightens the Liberals terribly. She hasn’t surrendered or succumb to corrupting influences the way other Republicans have. To the Liberals, that’s very disturbing behavior. She’s a threat and they need to eliminate her in any way they can, short of murder.

It’s not just Sarah the Libs want to silence; it’s anyone who disagrees with them. They want to turn that “moment of silence” into a permanent silence and are exploiting this insane tragedy to achieve their goals. They even want to “silence the Founding Fathers.” That’s why I buy books instead of depending on the library or even the Kindle devices, space-saving as they are.

The Liberals complain that we Conservatives are trying to “frighten” people with our prophecies of an endless, tyrannical bureaucracy in place of our federated republic. They charge us with painting them unfairly as traitors, that we’re demonizing bureaucrats, illegal immigrants, and welfare recipients. That we’re turning the American people against them and that such a revolution will lead to violence.

But that’s not true. If we adhere to the principles of the Founding Fathers, our revolution will lead to peace, prosperity, and happiness for everyone. Not a drop of blood need be shed, although I daresay there will be a hail of invectives, insults, maledictions, malisons, imprecations, anathemas, comminations, fulminations, proscriptions, vilifications, and vituperations will fly through the air before the verbal dust is settled.

The Liberals want to set themselves up as the new protectors of a new America. But, “quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” Listen carefully, for once the Liberals are in charge, the silence will be deafening.

The Tuscon Jabberwocky

“‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"  C.S. Lewis

While the pundits of the Liberal Left were using their imaginations to solve the despicable crime of who shot Congresswoman Giffords, and killed six other people (I don't understand why he's charged with only two counts of murder), including a 9 year-old girl who was born on Sept. 11th, and injured 19 others, the real journalists were methodically interviewing witnesses, checking the records, investigating the crime and uncovering the facts.

According to Fox News, “a high school friend of his has given a detailed account of his personality and background on her Twitter page over the past few days. According to Parker, Loughner had ‘a lot of friends until he got alcohol poisoning in ‘06’ and dropped out of high school.

“She described him as ‘left wing’ and ‘quite liberal’ and ‘oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy.’ Parker described him as a ‘pot head’ who was into rock music, though she hadn't seen him since 2007.

"I think he slowly descended in a psychotic break. Something in him snapped. He wasn't always like this," she wrote.

He went on to accuse the government of “controlling his mind.” His favorite books were “Mein Kampf” and “The Communist Manifesto.” He dropped out of Mountainview High School. At Pima Community College, the campus police were called five different times to break up disruptions he caused in class and in the library. His bizarred behaviour, laughing and talking to himself in rambling rants, so frightened his classmates and teachers, that one classmate sat near the door with her handbag in hand, just in case. One teacher was afraid to turn his back on Loughner to write on the blackboard for fear his student would pull out a gun.

Loughner had a long-standing grudge against Congresswoman Giffords that predates Sarah Palin and the Tea Parties. Allegedly, he sent her threatening notes and stalked her at her public appearances. His ramblings give no indication of any party preference; he’s officially registered as an independent.

In short, he was not a left-wing nut, necessarily, nor a right-wing nut at all. He was just a nut. Period. Instead of throwing accusations at Conservative radio talk show hosts, the Pima County Sheriff should launch an investigation into how such a person managed to legally acquire a gun.

While Congresswoman Giffords fights for her life, Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) is using this tragedy as a ploy to hatch an attack on freedom of speech. In the next few days, she promises Congress will have a bill ready outlawing threatening speech and symbols, such as the crosshairs Sarah Palin used to delineate the presidential campaign strategy.

If they’re going to outlaw any symbols, the very first symbol should be the extremely misleading “peace symbol.” Not to sound like a Jabberwocky nutcase, but if you only knew the truth…

Finally, hats off to columnist Michelle Malkin who posted on her website a veritable rogues’ gallery of Leftist hate-mongers, guilty of every kind of crime from threatening the opposition to actually beating up campaign workers to stealing and destroy campaign signs, physically attacking Conservative candidates, public officials and speakers, to slashing tires and engaging in libel, smearing, mudslinging. This, as opposed to Sarah Palin, guilty of the heinous crime of posting a crosshairs map.

Giffords is hardly the first elected official to be attacked. Abraham Lincoln comes to mind. William McKinley. John and Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King. George Wallace. Ronald Reagan. Abraham Lincoln, as president, was fond of walking around the city (probably to get away from Mary for awhile). His security staff was appalled and told him they couldn’t guarantee his safety if he took it into his head to do such things.

John Kennedy was told to put the bubbletop on his limousine. His wife, Jackie, wanted it; she didn’t want to muss her hairdo. But Kennedy wanted to be able to reach out to the people. He reasoned that if any killer was determined to get him, they would. And Oswald did because Kennedy made it easy for him.

Still, what is a public official to do? Send in a look-alike to represent them when among the people to answer their questions? Bobby Kennedy was a candidate when he was killed. I met Christie Whitman when she was governor of New Jersey; it was clear to me the poor woman was scared to death. And she had plenty of security.

No one can make any guarantees about crazy people. There’s no sense pontificating to them about the evils of violence. They’re listening to the static between the stations on the dial. We can’t let them get away with hamstringing us, though, interfering with the democratic process. A president, a Congresswoman, a mayor, a judge, a radio talk show host, an author, a business owner or his secretary, regardless of political persuasion, is guaranteed the right to freedom of assembly and of speech. We cannot allow madmen or tyrants rob us of our rights.

We can’t let the lunatics run the asylum – or the country.

Liberal Vitriol

It didn’t take long for the Liberals to politicize this tragedy, latching on to the accusations of “vitriol”, blaming so-called “anti-government” factions for setting of the mentally-deranged man who killed six people yesterday in Tuscon, including a 9 year-old girl born on Sept. 11, 2001.

According to Fox News, the suspect is a 22 year-old man who attended community college. He posted rambling Youtube videos against the bureaucracy, intermixed with rants about “conscience dreaming” and incoherent mumblings about a new currency.

Liberal Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik scrupled not to blame the rampage by an “unstable” man with a “kind of troubled past. “When you look at the unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” he said. “And unfortunately, Arizona has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

Dupnik has had a career of fighting drug crimes, but his record is unclear on illegal immigration. Instead of indicting decent Americans for expecting their elected representatives to protect the country, he might want to investigate how someone with a drug conviction managed to obtain a license to carry a gun.

As for Jared Loughner, the shooter, according to his video, if he had no faith in the current U.S. government, he has as little faith in God.

“The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America's Constitution. You don't have to accept the federalist laws,” he says in his videos. “In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar. No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver! No! I won't trust in god!”

Records obtained from the Pima County, Ariz. criminal database show Loughner was arrested in 2007 for possessing drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor charge. The records suggest that Loughner paid a $20 fee and completed a court-ordered program for drug offenders.

Three months later, he was cited for running a stop sign, according to court documents.

Another record shows a 2008 arrest for what’s described as a “local charge” in Marana, Ariz., 20 miles northwest of Tucson. The non-criminal charge was dismissed. Loughner’s page states he attended Northwest Aztec College and Pima County Community College, and that he enlisted in the Army.

But an Army official told Fox News Loughner attempted to enlist in the Army in December 2008 but was denied.

Loughner, in other videos, calls the people of District 8, his Ariz. district, illiterate, although his own writing indicates his own skills were questionable. Supposedly, he subscribed to a white supremacist magazine called, “American Renaissance.”

In yet another rant verging on the paranoid, he says: “I know who’s listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don’t know this accurate information of a new currency, aren’t aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn’t have happen.”

Clearly, he was losing it. Fox News provided a list of his favorite books, including Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto (I’ve read it, too, although it’s certainly not my “favorite book.”), and “Brave New World.” Other books included “The Wizard of Oz,” which is said to be an allegory about currency, and Alice in Wonderland.

Fox News reports that “in a comment posted on MySpace three months ago in connection with a video about Pima Community College, Loughner wrote: ‘Hello, I know you’re illiterate! This is the greatest protest for exposure into a wrongful act. The school is breaking the constitution. If you watch the video then you’ll understand. The teachers are taking advantage of you in the first and Fifth Amendment. The United States Constitution, which is the law, can be broken at this school. Thank you and goodnight! Jared.’”

His last writing on his MySpace page was just hours before the shooting. “Goodbye, friends,” he wrote. “Please don't be mad at me.” However, it’s not good-bye just yet, as he will have to stand trial for the murder of six, including a child and a federal judge, and the attempted murder of a U.S. Congresswoman.

He was also said to be concerned about 2012 prophecies. He may not have to worry about, as he probably won’t live to see 2012, or he’ll only be witnessing 2012 from a padded jail cell.

Liberals love to blame such derangement on opposition to their bureaucratic policies. If only we would accept their ways and go quietly into that good night of socialism, peaceably. They never bother to acknowledge that their policies might just be part of the problem. If only “we” wouldn’t fight them, tragedies like this wouldn’t occur. If only we would let go of our hatred – and our devotion to “selfish” notions of “freedom” and “liberty.”

Clearly, Loughner was deranged, and thought the solution to America’s, and Arizona’s, problems was a Glock 9 semi-automatic gun. The Tea Parties believe the solution is peaceful rallies, education, and faith in the U.S. Constitution and God. We believe in law and order. Nor are we anti-government. Anti-Big Government perhaps, but we don’t believe in anarchy and people taking the law into their hands, as this gunman did. We just believe the wrong people are in charge right now, people who don’t love freedom. The solution isn’t to shoot them; it’s to vote into office people who do share our values – our love of independence, free markets, limited government, and the United States of America.

Corruption is what stands in the way of restoring America to her foundation. The remedy is patience and perseverance. People with itchy trigger fingers need not apply.