The Ends Justify the Means: The Day Emma Goldman Shot President McKinley

Normally, I don’t like to stray too far from the topic of today’s unions but, on Saturday, two horrific acts of evil took place in America that were both sad and infuriating:

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The first, most heinous act, occurred when six people were slaughtered (including a federal judge and a nine-year old little girl born on 9/11/01) and multiple others that were gunned down in Tuscon, AZ.

The second atrocity occurred within minutes after the violence in Tucson, when the nation’s hardcore Leftists and mainstream media tried—and failed—to convince America that Emma Goldman killed President William McKinley. By the logic of the Left, Emma Goldman, whose vitriolic rhetoric against the government, her opposition to Christianity, and general anarchist preachings was, from hundreds of miles away, somehow responsible for the death of President McKinley as surely as if her hand was on the gun and her finger pulled the trigger.

Flashback – 1901:

While extending in friendly greeting his hand of fellowship, in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition, William McKinley, President of the United States, was shot down at the hands of either an Anarchist or a lunatic, a few minutes after 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon.

[snip]

The assassin, in a confession made to the District Attorney, court officials and the police at midnight, said that his name was Leon Czolgosz, that he was 28 years old, a blacksmith, and that he had come to Buffalo from from his home in Cleveland three days ago with the express intention of assassinating the President. He said he had been a student of Emma Goldberg, the Anarchist, had approved her doctrines and did not believe in this form of government. He described with accuracy and with seeming pride the preparations he had made to kill the President, how he had practiced in folding the handkerchief about his hand so as to conceal the revolver, and described how he had shot the President.

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Despite the fact that Leon Czolgosz—and not Emma Goldman—assassinated President McKinley, by the Left’s logic on Saturday, it was as Emma Goldman, through her anarchist preaching that killed President McKinley. According to the Left’s logic, martial law should have been declared and Emma Goldman (and all anarchists) should have been rounded up*.

In other words, claims were made on Saturday, within minutes and before the facts had even been established, that the evil that occurred in Tuscon was directly associated with “right-wing rhetoric.” Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the whole Tea Party movement were all responsible for the actions of the gunman in Arizona.

As Erick Erickson pointed out, “the tea party movement won in November. Winners don’t go on shooting sprees.” The Left’s attack on Saturday, however, was not an impromptu misguided attempt to assign blame, it was nothing more and nothing less than an Alinsky-style lynching of the Right. The ends justify the means—even if those means are based on a lie.  The fact that the ‘guilt by association’ argument (a well-used propaganda technique) may have even been planned or coordinated, as the facts became more clear, the Left’s rush to judgment was not only evil, it was also flat-out wrong. Facts do not matter to the Left if it fits their narrative.

On Saturday, within minutes of the reports that Congresswoman Giffords had been shot in the head at point blank range, because she is a Democrat who was on Sarah Palin’s 2010 “Target List” for the mid-term elections, much of the Left on social media began accusing Sarah Palin and Tea Party activists of being responsible for the shooting. The Pima County Sheriff jumped into the blame game.  Markos Moulitsas, founder of the far-left Daily Kos, who had (himself) listed Congresswoman Giffords on his own “Target List” for the Democratic primaries was tweeting for hours on the topic.

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The use of Sarah Palin’s target list is made even more hypocritical in view of the DLC’s use of targets on their own “target list” [via Verum Serum]:

The Left-wing hate rhetoric even extended to Jane Fonda, who had this to say on her blog:

But today, my heart and mind is full of the horriffic news of the shooting in Arizona of Rep Gabrielle Giffords and others by, I am sure, right wing fanatics who have been repeatedly harassing and threatening Giffords, egged on by Sarah Palin and Glen Beck and Tea Party members.

We must stop this madness, this violent rhetoric which media exploits!!

Before information was even in on the actual shooter, Left-wing haters were shouting from the rooftops (from their keyboards, actually) that racist “Teabaggers” were responsible for the shooting. These are just a few of the Tweets:

The Left’s sheer hypocrisy at claiming the Right engages in vitriolic rhetoric is even more diabolical when all they have to do is look in the mirror (or listen to Barack Obama). However, one can only imagine how deeply disappointed they became when they learned that their accusations were wrong. You see, in their demented rush to heap blame on the Right, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, the hard-core Left and their sycophantic followers in the media forgot to do something really important…check the facts.

As in other cases, the facts don’t really matter to the vile and vitriolic Left because the ends justify the means. They were so certain that the shooter was going to turn out to be a Tea Party activist, some right-wing nut job, that their giddiness at being able to paint the brush could not contain itself long enough for the facts. [And, yes, the Leftists appeared giddy at the shooting and their ability to blame the Right at something so heinous.]

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Through the day on Saturday, as more information became known about the shooter, Jared Loughner, it turned out the killer appears to be, as are most assassins throughout history, just a plain whack-job loser. If anything, it could be made (with vitriolic rhetoric) that the killer is more aligned with the Left as his listing of Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Hitler’s Mein Kampf among his favorite books, as well as his flag-burning video are not something that any rational Lefty could associate with the beliefs of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh or most Tea Party activists.

Claiming that a Left-wing whack job is the one who killed a little girl and five others would be stooping to the gutter-level lows of the Left though. Instead, it appears that Jared Loughner has more in common with Leon Czolgosz, the whack-job loser who shot President McKinley in 1901.

* In 1901, Emma Goldman, was in fact arrested by police in Chicago who detained her believing she might be part of a conspiracy to kill the President. She was later released though as it became clear that she could not be blamed for the actions of a madman.

Just as anarchist Emma Goldman could not be held responsible for the actions of a madman, for the Left to try to destroy the Tea Party movement at all costs, including assigning Jared Loughman’s actions to Sarah Palin, Beck or anyone else’s rhetoric is insidiously evil.

Lastly, for all the hyperbole that will be heaped on by the Left over the coming days and weeks ahead about toning down the rhetoric, they need to clean out their own mouths first.

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_________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.”  Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

X-posted.

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