Gabrielle Giffords and political civility

By now you've all heard of the tragic shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (among others) in Tuscon yesterday. So many thoughts come to mind. I'll try to put down a few.

First of all, I don't know what to think of Giffords. She is described as pro-gun and as a motorcycle rider (I saw pictures of her on a BMW). She successfully ran her family's tire business (El Campo Tire Warehouses, founded by her grandfather). I saw film clips of her saying that our excessive spending is the main problem we are facing. She didn't vote for Pelosi for speaker this year. So far so good.

But when you look deeper you find that she has "a D+ rating from the NRA and a D- from the GOA" according to Wikipedia. So she's not really pro-gun. Amazing how the media report the lie that she is pro-gun over and over, just because that's how she erroneously describes herself.

She "voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (again from Wikipedia). So she doesn't give a damn about wasting money. Blue Dogs are hypocrites of the highest order, in my opinion. I have never seen a shred of evidence that they are any more fiscally conservative than any other flaming left wing liberal.

Although she didn't vote for Pelosi, she voted for the corrupt John Lewis to be speaker of the house. That's like telling your Packer-fan friends that you're a good person because you don't root for the Bears--without mentioning that you actually root for the Vikings! She wanted to be able to tell her constituents that she didn't vote for Pelosi, without mentioning that she voted for someone just as bad. It was a gimmick, which most sheeple won't notice. They'll just hear "didn't vote for Pelosi" and be satisfied.

She also has a 100% NARAL rating, which shows what little character she has.

And she voted for the recent health care reform bill.

In short, she's a ... politician. With all the negative connotations of that despicable word.

None of which means that she should have been shot, of course. In fact, you're probably wondering why I would mention all of this here.

I apologize for speaking ill of her here, but I do it to lead into a larger topic: political civility. There has been a lot of talk generated by this event, about how we need to have more respect for each other. As if this will magically happen somehow. Which, of course, it won't. Because NOBODY, none of the supposedly intelligent commentators, even bothers to discuss the root cause of the the anger an incivility. Nobody.

So WHY is there more anger? Why so little respect? I'll tell you why, two reasons: Because the stakes are too high. And because politicians show us no respect.

So much power is concentrated in Washington that politics has become a blood sport (I don't mean this literally, despite what happened to Giffords, but the usual metaphors all seem offensive after an event like this). People fight so hard because so much is at stake. The debt we are building, the way we are eroding what made this country great

One of the ways the politicians are doing this is by greatly overstepping their constitutional bounds. When government needs money they just raise taxes and take it. They don't really consider reducing their spending. They take money because they can (death tax, anyone?) without any justification for it in terms of the services they are providing for confiscating that money. And they impose unconstitutional mandates on U.S. citizens, the health care bill, for example. Can anyone find the justification for this in the Constitution?

We do need to have more respect for each other, of course. But it needs to go both ways. The politicians cannot keep growing government, at the point of a gun (try not paying your taxes and resisting as long as you can). Without this government power grab, if government did only what it was chartered to do, there would be much less to argue about. In short, it is the unconstitutional growth of government has has led to this incivility and lack of respect that we now face.


Meanwhile, here is a profile of another victim that saddens me more than Giffords being shot. Christina-Taylor Green was 9 years old with an extremely bright future, by all accounts. Born on 9/11/01. I think this affects me because my girls are 9 years old.

"With a Birthday on 9/11, She Was Patriotic, Interested in Politics"
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_28c8e686-1ca6-5b3e-ab85-965bd22c68c0.html