Some More Thoughts

We said it when JFK was killed. And when Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were killed. We said it again when George Wallace and Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were targeted.

And now we say it again with the tragedy in Tucson.

None of these by themselves actually cause these tragedies...

• Not loose gun control
• Not inflammatory rhetoric
• Not crazy political ideology
• Not extreme political divisions....

They all do it.

And you and I do it as we stand by and do nothing or get ourselves caught up in the uncivil discourse..

And our country's love affair with violence.

We will never have strict enough gun control to keep these from happening.
We will never quiet the extreme voices of our political insanity
We will never prevent the crazies from doing what they think is their right, whether it is the Unabomber, Squeaky Fromm, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, John Hinckley Jr, or Jared Loughner. Their particular ideologies will never be explainable or easily

But we can and should tone down the rhetoric. When the rhetoric and ideological extremism takes center stage it feeds on itself. Then the crazies get excited and they boil over. Most will use words and anger.

But some will take the matters into their own well-armed hands.

Sad, tragic, and perhaps, in the end unpreventable. But we can at least work to reduce the possibilities by making our nation what we like to say it is- a place of hope, and promise, and free speech done civilly.

For that may we all be in prayer.