I'm less charitable than JP is, however. While I agree that people like Jim David Adkisson as the exception rather than the rule, and that the entire conservative movement doesn't advocate killing liberals, there is such a thing as incitement to riot. Riot needn't take the form of mobs of people running in the streets. One person can be a riot, and in this case, a one-person riot set out to kill people because their religious and political beliefs differed from his own.
When Adkisson's house was searched, they found treatises by the Usual Suspects:
Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."
Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."
Adkisson told officers he left the house unlocked for them because "he expected to be killed during the assault."
Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.
The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of "the liberal movement," and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.
Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his "hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said. "Liberals in general, as well as gays."
Adkisson said he also was frustrated about not being able to obtain a job, Owen said.
I suspect that the last sentence is the real crux of Adkisson's problem, but in a season when the media drumbeat is relentless that only low-education, white working class males like Adkisson matter in the 2008 election, and equally relentless that the "presumptuous" (read: "uppity") Barack Obama can't possibly win over these voters, there is so much noise tapping into the reptilian brains of guys like Adkisson that it's hardly surpsising that one of them would decide to take his talk radio hosts literally and go out and kill him some lib'ruls.
Michael Reagan has called for his listeners to kill anyone who questions the official party line on the 9/11 attacks. Whether you agree with 9/11 conspiracy theorists or not, summary "justice" and execution is hardly the way to deal with them. But Michael Reagan is still on the air inciting violence in his listeners.
Michael Savage opines about liberals thusly: "To fight only the al-Qaeda scum is to miss the terrorist network operating within our own borders... Who are these traitors? Every rotten radical left-winger in this country, that's who." What do you think happens when a radio host such as Savage, who has been whipping his listeners into a frenzy about Islam since 9/11, when he lumps all liberals into that category? He implies that fighting them (read: killing) is a patriotic act. Savage is clearly a disturbed nut; arguably just as disturbed as Adkisson, except that Savage is paid millions of dollars to spew his bile on the air, which may keep him from shooting up a church in despair over not being able to find a job in George W. Bush's America.
For the most part, these guys whose screeds were treated as gospel by Adkisson are just blowhards. They're an arguably harmless way for the angry white working class males that Chris Matthews and David Gregory think are the only voters who matter to vent their bile at a country that is more and more leaving them behind. But when you combine the kind of scapegoating and stoking the fires of resentment that these guys do with someone who has nothing left to lose and enough guns to go out in a blaze of glory, you have what happened on a Sunday morning in a church in Tennessee, when a group of people who want nothing more than the freedom of speech and religion from which Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of their ilk are profiting so handsomely.
The next time someone tells you that George W. Bush and the Republicans have kept us safe because there have been no terrorist attacks in this country since 9/11/01, remind them about Jim Adkisson, who really did want to kill Americans because he hated their freedom. And as Melissa points out, remind them also of "anthrax and copycat mailings, bombings, beatings, church fires, and attacks on women's health clinics".
More from:
Richard Blair
Sara Robinson
PhysioProf (who NAILED it early on)
Driftglass
Warren Street (who says it all in one sentence)
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