Rush to judgment in Tucson

As everyone knows by now, a lone gunman on Saturday earned his place in the annals of infamy by killing six innocent people and wounding many more, including an Arizona congresswoman.

Our hearts go out to the victims and their families, and we thank the heroes who risked their own lives to stop the alleged gunman, Jared Loughner, who is now known to have a history of mental illness.

What was so appalling about the reaction to the shooting was the instant speculation that the shooter was motivated by right-wing political rhetoric with absolutely no evidence to support that theory. What made it worse was the willingness of high-profile pundits to exploit the atrocity for political gain.

Perhaps their initial assumptions were based on the fact that Loughner’s main target was Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Because she is a Democrat, naturally Loughner had to be a crazed, right-winger. At least, that’s how cable news and the Internet pumped the story all day on Saturday and throughout the weekend.

Shockingly, it was Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, also a Democrat, who appeared to get the national attack machine primed by engaging in political commentary rather than leading an investigation.

First he blamed “the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government.” Later, he got specific:

“The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh — in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information,” Dupnik said. “[Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences.”

That opened the floodgates for a wave of online bloggers and leftist media types to ghoulishly assign blame for the shooting to Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party movement, heck, anybody who resists the progressive agenda. And at the time, no one really knew anything about Loughner.

“You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc., and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead,” wrote Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New York Times. “But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate.”

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson pronounced on a Saturday news show that “today I think we can say incontrovertibly that violent political rhetoric and the threat of political violence comes exclusively from the right.”

Really now? “Incontrovertibly?” “Exclusively?” These pronouncements are mind-boggling in their presumptuousness. Unfortunately for Robinson, Krugman and Dupnik, the facts that unfolded did not fit the narrative they had developed.

Loughner, it turns out, clearly has severe mental-health problems and in no way was linked to the Tea Party or driven by politics in any fashion. Actually, some who knew him described him as a pot-smoking, atheist liberal.

Predictably and understandably, the pundit class on the right responded in force by Monday, pointing to quote after quote after quote from the left that could arguably be described as “violent political rhetoric.” The hypocrisy and the double-standard media treatment were obvious.

We agree that the country could sure use a lot more level-headedness, and far less personal vilification in the political arena.

But Limbaugh and his brethren plainly stated that their full-throated resistance has been necessary precisely because “calming” political rhetoric is not the objective of their opposition; the goal, as they see it, is to silence dissent from the right.

Sure enough, it did not take long for South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat, to say that the shooting was cause for the country “to rethink parameters on free speech” and reinstate the controversial Fairness Doctrine, an outdated tool to regulate political speech on radio and television.

Perhaps it is appropriate for politicians to come up with better ways to respond to direct threats against public officials, but creating a speech police to enforce new parameters on free speech cannot be allowed as long as we intend to remain a free country.

What matters more than how madmen react to free speech is how a free country with free speech reacts to madmen. The Jared Loughners of the world must never be allowed to shape the debate.