'...The madman who fired a bullet through the brain of a vibrant young member of Congress as she was conducting an informal outdoor meeting with constituents—and who kept pulling the trigger until the high-capacity magazine of his semiautomatic pistol was empty and six people (a federal judge, a young aide, three retirees, and a nine-year-old girl) lay dead or mortally wounded—chose a political figure and a political event as the targets of his murderous rage. He has “political” views, but they are incoherent to the point of incomprehensibility. He is not discernibly a member or follower of any sect or movement; he had no discernible political goal or grievance. No one applauded or took satisfaction in what he did. In these and other ways, this was not like Jerusalem (and for that we can be grimly grateful). It was not like Oklahoma City. It was not like the murder of Benazir Bhutto or, two weeks ago, of Salmaan Taseer, the secularist governor of the Punjab province of Pakistan. The crime in Tucson, it appears, had more in common with one of those all too frequent schoolhouse or workplace killing sprees than with a purposeful act of political violence. “The truth,” President Obama said, four days after the shootings, “is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.” That is indeed the truth. But it is also the truth that, when the news broke of the Tucson shootings, no one’s first thought was that some unhinged leftist was responsible.'
