Watch what you say…..

The recent shooting of U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords has prompted a number of questions about whether the inflated rhetoric of Tea Party members and people like Sarah Palin have contributed to the sort of violence that…. blah, blah, blah.

Do we really need to ask this question?

Sure, there are other factors, such as the economic disaster created by the Republicans that has led to rage and despair, as well as violence in our communities.  There's the general disrespect that ordinary Americans are subjected to by their politicians (Tom Delay has just been sentenced to three years for money laundering; money that was used to redistrict election constituencies to benefit the Republicans, who happened to win that national election) for example. And we could add to these.

I've no doubt that we will see in the coming days all sorts of posturings and counter posturings by the parties that attempt to show that someone or no one is to blame.

But here's the point: political speech does have an effect.  Hate speech does create more hate.  We know this. Yet corrupt actions are a form of political hatred, also, since they seek to hurt others. Is that what we deserve in this country? More hate? Delay was carried away by his own self-talk that said that he was allowed to break the rules because his party deserved that advantage, and the others didn't, and he's no different from that misguided young man with a Glock 9 mm who felt he was above the law, also. He was reloading to shoot another clip of 33 bullets when he was tackled, notice.

There's no such thing as 'empty rhetoric'. All those words can hurt. And they all produce an effect on the impressionable.