Victor Davis Hanson: The Bloomberg Syndrome
[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.]
After the recent Tucson shootings, Pima County sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, a Democrat, almost immediately and without evidence claimed that conservative anti-government speech had set off alleged killer Jared Lee Loughner.
Yet the more the unfolding details informed us that the Communist Manifesto — and Mein Kampf — reading Loughner was mentally unstable, apolitical, and without discernible interests in contemporary issues, the more the flamboyant Dupnik went on television to expand his cast of culpable characters. He finally ended up blaming everyone from Tea Party opponents of President Obama to talk-show host Rush Limbaugh — and became an instant celebrity and hero to left-wing partisans.
Just as disturbing as the incoherence of Dupnik’s demagoguery was his apparent professional incompetence. As the sheriff’s nationally televised blame narrative imploded, it was also disclosed that Loughner had a long record of aberrant behavior and substance abuse in Pima County — known to local law enforcement, including Dupnik’s own department.
More disturbing still, if Dupnik were right that a pre-existing climate of conservative-engendered hate was not only pervasive in Tucson, but might also prompt an unstable person to kill, why had he not dispatched at least one of his 500 officers to patrol the open-air public event sponsored by Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords?..
Read entire article at National Review
After the recent Tucson shootings, Pima County sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, a Democrat, almost immediately and without evidence claimed that conservative anti-government speech had set off alleged killer Jared Lee Loughner.
Yet the more the unfolding details informed us that the Communist Manifesto — and Mein Kampf — reading Loughner was mentally unstable, apolitical, and without discernible interests in contemporary issues, the more the flamboyant Dupnik went on television to expand his cast of culpable characters. He finally ended up blaming everyone from Tea Party opponents of President Obama to talk-show host Rush Limbaugh — and became an instant celebrity and hero to left-wing partisans.
Just as disturbing as the incoherence of Dupnik’s demagoguery was his apparent professional incompetence. As the sheriff’s nationally televised blame narrative imploded, it was also disclosed that Loughner had a long record of aberrant behavior and substance abuse in Pima County — known to local law enforcement, including Dupnik’s own department.
More disturbing still, if Dupnik were right that a pre-existing climate of conservative-engendered hate was not only pervasive in Tucson, but might also prompt an unstable person to kill, why had he not dispatched at least one of his 500 officers to patrol the open-air public event sponsored by Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords?..