Link: let us now speak bluntly and with candor about the assault upon gabrielle giffords and the murder of john roll ...

so it comes to pass that a murdering thug whose grievances and aims he may never articulate for our evaluation, ... , indeed, it may not be that he is capable of fully articulately them, ... , has felled the best we can produce and leaves us with the torn fabric of our civic and political lives.


president obama has said that we cannot tolerate this is a democracy.

in this, i think barack obama wrong.  we must tolerate events like this is our public life is to be open, free, and marked by candor and persuasion in the resolution of political dispute.

in point of fact, violence is endemic to, and has always been endemic to the way we have practiced political democracy in this country, and i expect that a long perspective of things confirms that it is salutary & salubrious to the way things are done.  it certainly involves short term disruption, hurt and tragedy but in the long run engenders a vibrancy and health in our social intercourse that has run on now for over 200 years: remember that this government, this regime if you will, at 200 plus years is the oldest political regime in the world.  that is remarkable, given all the upset and controversy we have endured.  but, it is a tolerance for this upset that guarantees that we consider all issues in open, public and unfettered debate, no matter how rancorous, how vitriolic, no matter how personal or scatological, now matter how low and vile & scabrous it may get.  and, the fact is, the closer to the bone we get with such debate, the closer we get to exposing the tensions that must be resolved in order to avoid the mass violence that societies are exposed to from time to time.

Go. RTWT.