Rhetoric and the Tuscon killings

The critical issue is not the question of whether our polarized and often violent political rhetoric causes violent incidents; it is, rather, the fact that this rhetoric makes it almost impossible for us to respond to them as we should - as a community, as a polity bound together by a common set of principles and values that are far more important to us, both individually and collectively, than the principles and values that divide us into parties and factions.

If incendiary political rhetoric - or, for that matter, violent movies and video games - are causes of actual violence, then they are extremely inefficient.  As shocking and horrible as mass shootings are, they are actually rare in our country of more than 300 million people - the great majority of us are exposed to violent words and images everyday, and yet will never be personally involved in a violent incident.

The problem - and the great sadness - is that our politically polarized climate deprives us of a way to come together in the wake of tragedies such as the shootings in Tuscon.  In a healthy culture, the shock of catastrophe can be consoled by the collective experience of mourning - the community is in fact strengthened by such experiences (horrible as they are), since it calls upon the eternal and universal values that bind the society together.  E pluribus unum.

One of the hallmarks of leadership is the ability to find the perspective and the language to transcend the usual divisions of everyday politics, to calm the anger or fear or confusion of the moment, and to recall the people to their sense of shared values and common purpose.  Here is one of our history's great examples - from a moment and an era which seem, strangely, both much darker and much brighter than our own: