Academic

ROGER SIMON: The Sixties Were Violent, Not Today. I bring it all back now for one reason ? to ?

By Glenn Reynolds

ROGER SIMON: The Sixties Were Violent, Not Today.

I bring it all back now for one reason ? to point out that what we are going through currently, this supposed period of extreme rhetoric bemoaned by so many pundits and politicians, is but a minute radar blip compared to that era. And some of these pundits and pols are old enough to remember. Apparently, they choose not to. But to remind them, we were in an era then of genuine political assassination ? RFK, MLK ? not faux political assassination (actually the purposeless, near random act of a paranoid schizophrenic.) But as I recall few were calling for us to dial down the rhetoric. The anti-government forces had tons of supporters in the media, silent partners cheering on all but their most violent acts (and who knows about those). Norman Mailer, among many others, made his life and reputation in such a manner on the ?steps of the Pentagon.? Hey, hey, LBJ, indeed. In a very real way the media were the secret sharers of the radical left. . . . This is one of the more clearcut demonstrations of mass projection I have seen in my lifetime.

The liberal intelligentsia of our society may not be as sick as Jared Loughner ? that would be hard ? but they are exhibiting a depth of neurosis that borders on a collective personality disorder. And, to play psychoanalyst, I think this disorder points straight back to unresolved issues related to the experiences of the sixties and seventies discussed above. The left?s confused and ambivalent attitude toward violence has never gone away and has now been projected out on their opponents.

Exacerbating the situation ? and increasing the left?s anger ? was their recent electoral defeat and the attendant failure of Keynesian economics to deal with the financial crisis. Their ideology is dissolving around them. The attempts to blame the behavior of a clinical paranoid schizophrenic on the words of right-wing politicians and pundits are the acts of desperate people.

“Desperate” being the key word.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse: If you really believed political rhetoric caused Jared Loughner’s killing spree, you wouldn’t dare to say it.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on January 12, 2011 (boomark / email).