Whatever you may think of her it's spot on...
Like millions of Americans I learned of the tragic events in Arizona on Saturday, and my heart broke for the innocent victims. No words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent, but we do mourn for the victims’ families as we express our sympathy.
I agree with the sentiments shared yesterday at the beautiful Catholic mass held in honor of the victims. The mass will hopefully help begin a healing process for the families touched by this tragedy and for our country.
Our exceptional nation, so vibrant with ideas and the passionate exchange and debate of ideas, is a light to the rest of the world. Congresswoman Giffords and her cons uents were exercising their right to exchange ideas that day, to celebrate our Republic’s core values and peacefully assemble to pe ion our government. It’s inexcusable and incomprehensible why a single evil man took the lives of peaceful citizens that day.
There is a bittersweet irony that the strength of the American spirit shines brightest in times of tragedy. We saw that in Arizona. We saw the tenacity of those clinging to life, the compassion of those who kept the victims alive, and the heroism of those who overpowered a deranged gunman.
Like many, I’ve spent the past few days reflecting on what happened and praying for guidance. After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.
President Reagan said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election.
The last election was all about taking responsibility for our country’s future. President Obama and I may not agree on everything, but I know he would join me in affirming the health of our democratic process. Two years ago his party was victorious. Last November, the other party won. In both elections the will of the American people was heard, and the peaceful transition of power proved yet again the enduring strength of our Republic.
Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.
There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the de able act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government. Our Founders’ genius was to design a system that helped settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So, we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure.
As I said while campaigning for others last March in Arizona during a very heated primary race, “We know violence isn’t the answer. When we ‘take up our arms’, we’re talking about our vote.” Yes, our debates are full of passion, but we settle our political differences respectfully at the ballot box – as we did just two months ago, and as our Republic enables us to do again in the next election, and the next. That’s who we are as Americans and how we were meant to be. Public discourse and debate isn’t a sign of crisis, but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional.
No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent, and we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good. And we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.
Just days before she was shot, Congresswoman Giffords read the First Amendment on the floor of the House. It was a beautiful moment and more than simply “symbolic,” as some claim, to have the Cons ution read by our Congress. I am confident she knew that reading our sacred charter of liberty was more than just “symbolic.” But less than a week after Congresswoman Giffords reaffirmed our protected freedoms, another member of Congress announced that he would propose a law that would criminalize speech he found offensive.
It is in the hour when our values are challenged that we must remain resolved to protect those values. Recall how the events of 9-11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to trade our freedoms for perceived security. And so it is today.
Let us honor those precious lives cut short in Tucson by praying for them and their families and by cherishing their memories. Let us pray for the full recovery of the wounded. And let us pray for our country. In times like this we need God’s guidance and the peace He provides. We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate.
America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country. May God bless America.
- Sarah Palin
She didn't write that.
"manufacture blood libel" ? GMAFB
From the lady who manufactured "death panels" and sorts of lies and slanders.
Does the stupid, ignorant even know what "blood libel" is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
Sounds to me like she thinks she's been be libelled, and therefore, There Will Be Blood.
That's how you troll you way to $14 million a year. Lovely Sarah will be getting more facetime on MSNBC today than Big Eddy.
who is sarah palin? who is she to lecture anyone about anything?
gods guidance lol
You guys crack me up. Such hate and vitriol...
i don't hate her. i've said over and over that i love her.
who is sarah palin? and why is her youtube the lead story on fox news? why do you care?You guys crack me up. Such hate and vitriol...
I wonder why she feels the need to 'respond' to anything?
Her first response was whiny and self-centered. Maybe she felt the need to cover her tracks.
pitbull is just another right-wing stain on American pop culture.
Is she running for something?
I don't quite get why she feels the need to do damage control, tbh
Discovery didn't pick up her reality show for a second season. Maybe she's getting nervous about the future of her brand.
Her first response was having her staffers completely remove all connecting rhetoric and imagery from the offending sites. Her next response was silence, as if she was hoping nobody saw. Her following response was a very general tweet/status update. This, her last response is just more of the same.Is she running for something?
I don't quite get why she feels the need to do damage control, tbh
For all those condemning us for making the connection, she made it as well. We espoused it. She hid it.
What a ing idiot . . .
Wow. Irony defined....we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.
^^^Still and all, it is overall a better statement than she made earlier, and it would have been particularly nice to hear her say this sort of thing on the campaign trail. Perhaps this will make a difference in her speech-making in the future. If it does, we will all be better off for it, as will the country.
She does influence people, and if her followers take some of this to heart and ease up the rhetoric, the nation will be well served.
"we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults."
classic straw man, not that any of her ignorant fan boyz would recognize a straw man.
"provisions put in place during the Bush Administration and maintained by the Obama White House have gutted fundamental rights guaranteed by more than one-half of the Bill of Rights - without the Tea Party and company raising a peep.
It is this that makes the entire situation so worrisome. This is not about reality or politics, it is something quite different. We are not seeing opponents of the President engage in rational debate. What they are doing is more akin to the “faithful” confronting the “infidels”. In this scenario, the “believers” have made religious dogma of their views, transformed them, in their own minds, into the one and true interpretation of the "American faith" and they are ready to denounce those who disagree as enemies of the Republic."
http://www.truth-out.org/james-zogby...ws+Politics%29
she may have had some fair points but they are watered down by her faux christian sentiments and tea party jargon. her insistence to refer to our current form of government as a 'republic' and references to the founding fathers suggests a deification of history that is both dysfunctional and revisionist. her rant is insincere and narcissistic or, in other words, pure palin
i doubt she wrote that
So what SPECIFICALLY did you guys disagree with?
The sentiment that she wrote that.
Too stupid to write that, huh?
She had help, but there are definitely some of her "ideas" in there.
i absolutely think that she wrote it. it smacks of palinisms all over. the tea party rhetoric, the reference to reagan, the over the top and misplaced religious tone....all suggest her hand at the pen to me.
Last edited by rjv; 01-12-2011 at 01:14 PM.
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