Political Rhetoric

Why is it that Sarah Palin is the highlight of the debate about overblown political rhetoric? The now famous 'crosshairs' map which actually was employing surveyor's symbols?

Please. That is such a simplistic view as to be almost laughable. Yet more than that, where's the moral outrage of the left when George W. Bush is lampooned as Hitler? They sure were able to summon anger when their darling, Barack Hussein Obama, was portrayed as the German dictator.

What we in fact are dealing with is the selective rage of the liberal mentality. If the right employs what may be seen as extreme symbols, they're hate mongers. But the left, well, they're just telling it like it is.

Well, let's tell it in fact like it is: sticks and stones, folks. Rhetoric is merely that: talk. Portraits and placards mocking political leaders are nothing more than that: words or pictures on paper. What hurts our politics are not what is said but what is done, and what was done in Arizona is the result of a deluded individual. To attempt to fix blame on anyone other than the shooter denies what is perhaps the greatest responsibility of the individual: personal responsibility.

Blame the shooter, not the rest of the world. This is not to say that we may need to play a little nicer on the public stage (we could stand to do that, yes) but only that mere talk is cheap. So cheap, we might say, that there's no need to put too much emphasis on it as the cause of all our woes. The best thing we can do right now is to take the proverbial pill, a deep breath, and respond rationally to an extreme yet isolated event. That is how we would display our true colors.