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An undated photograph of Jared Lee Loughner released by the Pima County Sheriff's Office.

The Left's History Of Violence
By Daniel J. Flynn

The surest way to become a folk hero on the Hard Left is to kill a human being.

As Mumia Abu-Jamal, Joe Hill and Huey Newton could have attested, murder trumps even treason for establishing radical credentials. You certainly don’t get invitations to deliver commencement addresses, become the subject of folk songs, or hang with the likes of Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda by protesting a traffic ticket. Taking the life of another person elevates a radical to cause celebre status like nothing else can.

So why all the carping about “violent rhetoric” from people wearing “Che” T-shirts and imploring us to “Free Leonard Peltier”?

“Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from?” Paul Krugman asks in the New York Times. “Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the Right.” Michael Tomasky writes in the Manchester Guardian that violent rhetoric is “too encoded in conservative DNA” and “central to Republican electoral strategy” to go away. Tomasky posits a connection between “violent rhetoric that emanates from the Right wing of American society” and “what happened in Arizona on Saturday.”

What constitutes violent political rhetoric is subjective; what constitutes political violence is more clear-cut. One can debate whether the American Right currently has the market cornered on the former, as Krugman and Tomasky suggest. But the latter, at least as assaults upon high-profile American politicians are concerned, overwhelmingly stems from the Left. And let’s face it: Violence, not “violent rhetoric,” kills people.

Four men have murdered U.S. presidents. Three of them have been communists.

Charles Guiteau, the troubled Bible Communist who lived for more than five years in John Humphrey Noyes’ Oneida Community, murdered President James Garfield. Leon Czolgosz, an anarcho-communist follower of Emma Goldman, murdered President William McKinley. Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marxist enthusiast of Fidel Castro who lived briefly in the Soviet Union, murdered President John F. Kennedy.

Rather than confront this troubled history, Leftists downplay the radicalism of these [HARD-LEFT] assassins, or invent wild conspiracy theories to cast blame on political enemies rather than the politically inconvenient villain.

Even most of the failed presidential assassins have cited Left-wing motivations. Giuseppe Zangara, would-be murderer of Franklin D, Roosevelt, confessed: “I kill kings and presidents first, and next all capitalists.” Manson follower Squeaky Fromme claimed her desire “to be a voice for the Earth” sparked her decision to approach President Gerald Ford with a loaded gun. She maintained that “before class and race and gender, the Earth needs to be seen and heard and fought for.” Sarah Jane Moore, who worked for the Symbionese Liberation Army-inspired People In Need, tried to kill the 38th president 17 days later. “The government had declared war on the Left,” she later explained of her motives. “Nixon’s appointment of Ford as vice president and his resignation making Ford president seemed to be a continuing assault on America.”

It’s important to note that for several of the gunmen — cultists Charles Guiteau and Squeaky Fromme, to name two — their political views were incidental; their mental instability, crucial. This seems the case with Jared Lee Loughner, which makes the effort to score political points off the tragedy he induced so puzzling. This puzzlement increases after learning that the killer’s political disposition doesn’t resemble any of the talk-show hosts or politicians lambasted for allegedly contributing to a climate that gave rise to Saturday’s tragedy.

Loughner, a registered independent, didn’t even vote in November. Rather than spurred to violence by the Tea Parties, the killer became obsessed with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords back in 2007 — two years before the first Tea Party rally.

One classmate described him as “Left-wing, quite liberal,” while another remembered him being frustrated by George W. Bush. His favorite books prove especially instructive, as he listed offerings by Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, and Ayn Rand. Jared Lee Loughner was all over the place.

There is a tradition of political violence on the Right as there is on the Left. The anarchist bomber Timothy McVeigh, and anti-abortion bomber Eric Richard Rudolph, certainly can be said to vaguely share views with parts of the American Right. Both sides have their share of violent extremists. But both sides differ greatly in how they treat such violent extremists.

Weathermen get tenure. The Unabomber gets offered a book deal. John Brown gets a hagiographic song. Right-wing terrorists get ostracized. There’s no romanticism of political violence on the Right as there is on the Left. Where is the Right’s Sacco and Vanzetti, Tom Mooney, or H. Rap Brown?

The Left lionize their murderers. The Right runs from theirs.

These very different reactions to political violence, and the very different histories of political violence (that leaves a preponderance of killing on one side), do much to explain the Hard Left’s desperate attempt to blame Saturday’s tragedy upon its political adversaries.
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Daniel J. Flynn is the author of A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), Intellectual Morons (Crown Forum, 2004), and Why the Left Hates America (Prima Forum, 2002). He has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, Sky News, PBS, CSPAN, and other broadcast networks. His articles have appeared in National Review, the Boston Globe, and City Journal. He blogs at www.flynnfiles.com. 

Jared Loughner

Leftist Lies and the Arizona Shooting
By Ann Coulter

After the monstrous shooting in Arizona last week, surely we can all agree that we’ve got to pass Obama’s agenda immediately and stop using metaphors.

At least I think that’s what the mainstream media are trying to tell me.

Liberals instantly leapt on the sickening massacre at a Tucson political event over the weekend to accuse tea partiers, Sarah Palin and all conservatives who talk out loud of being complicit in murder by inspiring the shooter, Jared Loughner.

Of course, to make their case, they first must demonstrate:

(a) Right-wingers have called for violence against anyone, especially conservative, pro-Second Amendment Democratic congresswomen;
(b) Loughner was listening to them; and
(c) Loughner was influenced by them.

They’ve proved none of this. In fact, it’s nearly the opposite.

Needless to say, no conservative has called for violence against anyone. Nor has any conservative engaged in any “rhetoric” that was likely to lead to violence. Every putative example of “violent rhetoric” these squeamish liberals produce keeps being matched by an identical example from the Democrats.

Sarah Palin, for example, had a chart of congressional districts being targeted by Republicans. So did the Democratic Leadership Committee. Indeed, Democratic consultant Bob Beckel went on Fox News and said he invented the bull’s-eye maps.

Similarly, every time liberals produce an example of military lingo from a Republican — “we’re going to target this district” — Republicans produce five more from the Democrats.

President “whose asses to kick” Obama predicted “hand-to-hand combat” with his political opponents and has made such remarks as “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” — making Obama the first American president to advocate gun fights since Andrew Jackson.

These are figures of speech known as “metaphors.” (Do liberals know where we got the word “campaign”?)

It’s not that both sides did something wrong; neither side did anything wrong. The drama queens need to settle down.

The winner of the most cretinous statement of 2011 — and the list is now closed, so please hold your submissions — is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who on Monday night recalled Palin’s statement, “We’re not retreating, we’re reloading,” and said, I quote, “THAT’S not a metaphor.”

Really, Chris? If that’s not a metaphor, who did she shoot?

By blaming a mass killing on figures of speech, liberals sound as crazy as Loughner with his complaints about people’s grammar. Maybe in lieu of dropping all metaphors, liberals should demand we ban metonyms so that tragedies like this will never happen again.

As for Loughner being influenced by tea partiers, Fox News and talk radio — oops, another dead-end. According to all available evidence, Loughner is a liberal.

Every friend of Loughner who has characterized his politics has described him as liberal. Not one called him a conservative.

One friend says Loughner never listened to talk radio or watched the TV news. Throw in “never read books” and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal.

According to voluminous Twitter postings on Saturday by one of Loughner’s friends since high school, Caitie Parker, he was “left wing,” “a political radical” “quite liberal” and “a pot head.”

If any public figure influenced this guy, my money’s on Bill Maher.

Liberals have been so determined to exploit this tragedy to geld conservatives, they have told calculated lies about Loughner’s politics.

In the most bald-faced lie I have ever read in The New York Times — which is saying something — that paper implied Loughner is a pro-life zealot. This is the precise opposite of the truth.

Only because numerous other news outlets, including ABC News and The Associated Press, reported the exact same shocking incident in much greater detail — and with direct quotes — do we know that the Times’ rendition was complete bunk.

ABC News reported: “One Pima Community College student, who had a poetry class with Loughner later in his college career, said he would often act ‘wildly inappropriate.’

“‘One day (Loughner) started making comments about terrorism and laughing about killing the baby,’ classmate Don Coorough told ABC News, referring to a discussion about abortions. ‘The rest of us were looking at him in shock … I thought this young man was troubled.’“

Another classmate, Lydian Ali, recalled the incident as well.

“‘A girl had written a poem about an abortion. It was very emotional and she was teary eyed and he said something about strapping a bomb to the fetus and making a baby bomber,’ Ali said.”

Here’s the Times’ version: “After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a ‘terrorist for killing the baby.’”

So that’s how the Times transformed Loughner from a sicko laughing about a dead fetus to a deadly earnest pro-life fanatic. (Never believe a news story written by Eric Lipton, Charlie Savage or Scott Shane of The New York Times — or for simplicity, anything in the Times.)

I wouldn’t have mentioned Loughner’s far-left world view immediately after a tragedy like this, but now that liberals have opened the door by blaming Loughner’s politics, they better brace themselves.

When I say “brace themselves,” I don’t mean they need to actually strap themselves into a brace. That’s a metaphor, Chris.

FBI agents worked Wednesday at the parking lot where Mr. Loughner allegedly shot 20 people. Mr. Loughner had been suspended from college in September after repeated incidents that involved campus police.

Suspect's Downward Spiral
By LESLIE EATON, DANIEL GILBERT And ANN ZIMMERMAN
The Wall Street Journal

TUCSON, Ariz.—Students and faculty at Pima Community College feared for their safety as Jared Lee Loughner's increasingly erratic behavior led to a series of encounters with campus police in the eight months before he was suspended from school last fall, police reports show.

After he was accused of shooting 20 people last Saturday, school officials described his behavior while at Pima as odd and disruptive. But police reports show in chilling detail that the behavior frightened students and teachers.

In February, a rattled student told school officials she feared he had a knife, after Mr. Loughner upset his Advanced Poetry Writing class by making comments such as, "why don't we just strap bombs to babies."

In May, an instructor was so worried about physical violence on Mr. Loughner's part that she requested—and received—a police guard outside her class. By June, a dean told the police that students in Mr. Loughner's math class were "afraid of any repercussions that could exist from Loughner being unstable in his actions."

The school finally suspended Mr. Loughner in late September, after police officers who removed him from a biology class told the school they believed he had mental health problems. On the day of his suspension, the police were able to recognize his voice and his "reflection in the window" in a video posted on YouTube. In the video, according to the reports, he made statements such as, "We are examining the torture of students," and, "I haven't forgotten the teacher that gave me a B for freedom of speech."

There is no evidence that Mr. Loughner had been diagnosed with a mental illness, and it is unclear whether Mr. Loughner ever received psychiatric treatment.

The trove of records demonstrates more clearly than before how abruptly Mr. Loughner's life spiraled out of control. When his problems began in February, he had no disciplinary record, the school told police at the time.

By September, he was suspended, and later told he couldn't return to school without a mental-health clearance. In November, he bought a gun. Last Saturday, police say, Mr. Loughner opened fire at a supermarket here that left six dead and 14 wounded, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The documents also demonstrate the challenges facing campus police when students exhibit disturbing, even threatening, behavior—even when parents are notified. School administrators and counselors met repeatedly with Mr. Loughner, who twice appears to have been accompanied by his mother, according to the documents. Campus police talked to Mr. Loughner's father when they delivered the suspension letter to the family's home on Sept. 29.

Mr. Loughner's parents have declined to talk to reporters since the incident, but they did release a statement expressing their sorrow and regret for their son's actions, and saying, "we don't understand why this happened."

There are no laws that require colleges to disclose concerns about potentially dangerous students to off-campus authorities, apart from mental-health professionals who must alert law enforcement if a threat to an identifiable victim is imminent. Moreover, it is nearly impossible to predict whether any given individual is going to become violent, say psychiatrists.

"We will never be able to anticipate all acts of violence and perhaps not even most acts of violence," says Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry, medicine and law at Columbia University.

Before the police reports were released, Pima Community College's spokesman, Paul Schwalbach, told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Loughner was "a disruptive and an odd, strange sort of character," but not dangerous. Mr. Schwalbach didn't respond to a request for further comment Wednesday.

One of Mr. Loughner's lawyers, Mark Fleming, declined to comment.

Instructors and school officials mentioned in the police reports couldn't be reached for comment or referred questions to the community college's public affairs office.

At first, police didn't see serious problems with Mr. Loughner's behavior. A dean, Patricia Houston, described him as having a "dark personality" and being "kind of 'creepy,'" when she told the campus police he had "reacted strangely" to the reading of a poem written by one of his classmates, linking it to "abortion, wars, killing people."

The police told Ms. Houston they would check Mr. Loughner's history and if there was cause for concern, they would talk to him.

After looking into Mr. Loughner's background and finding some "prior drug involvement but no warrants," the police decided not to take any action.

"For now, this report documents the faculty's concerns but does not in my opinion justify making contact with Loughner by police," wrote Officer D. Simmons.

Later, the police reports repeatedly describe Mr. Loughner as acting oddly and being unable to understand why the police had been called.

In September, after Mr. Loughner had an outburst over a biology grade that left his instructor "visibly upset," one officer wrote, Mr. Loughner's "head was constantly tilted to the left and his eyes were jittery and looking up and to the left."

Another officer called to the scene wrote, "By taking the extra time through repeated explanation I was eventually able to communicate with Mr. Loughner that his actions in the classroom were disruptive and not permitted," adding, "It was clear that he was unable to fully understand his actions."

The documents released by the college compare, but also contrast in some ways, with Mr. Loughner's own narrated version of events.

In videos posted on YouTube, his rambling statements displayed an obsession with grammar and a hatred of the educational system.

In postings on online forums associated with the game Earth Empires, which Mr. Loughner wrote during the same period as several of the incidents mentioned in the police reports, he repeatedly railed against the his college and displayed hatred for teachers.

At 10:30 p.m. on May 17, after one run-in, Mr. Loughner wrote that he "told this woman. That she was a Bully. And that if there was PIG in front of me....the pig would would call you a bully." He said he then said "Horses---! Bulls---!" You are a scam!"

On June 3rd, he described the incident in poetry class, "I mention about the BBC Jihad Teenager soccer bombs!" he said. "I then mention Incest in poetry!"

Ben McGahee, a math instructor at Pima who contacted school officials about Mr. Loughner's outbursts in class, said he thinks the school did everything it could.

"They are not required to give a psychological evaluation or counseling," he said. "It is Jared's responsibility to follow up. And his parents."

In Mr. McGahee's class, the instructor called a number 6 and Jared called it an 18 and asked, "How can you deny math?"

Told about Mr. Loughner's behavior in other classes, including talking about "strapping bombs to babies," Mr. McGahee said, "It seemed obvious to me that he had mental problems, that he was disconnected from the class, that he lived in his own mind. It was like he was playing a scene from a movie in his own mind. He was speaking language X and everyone else was speaking language Y."

In a written statement to The Wall Street Journal, the college said that it may notify external law enforcement authorities when a violation of its code of conduct "is also a violation of state or federal law."

Charlotte Fugett, an administrator at the school, said Pima doesn't offer mental-health counseling services. "We can suggest mental-health resources and we do," she said. "Absent that, and any imminent threat or violation of the law, that is what our options are," she said.

The school security department had one final interaction with Mr. Loughner, when two college police officers went to his house Sept. 29 to hand deliver the school's Notice of Immediate Suspension letter. Two additional officers were asked to remain in the area "as backup," according to a police report.

No one answered the door. They returned an hour later and met Mr. Loughner's father, who invited them into the garage, after securing the family dogs.

In the garage, the officers spoke with the younger Mr. Loughner, "who held a constant trance of staring," as one of the police officers narrated the events that had led up to the suspension and made him read back the letter of suspension.

Mr. Loughner responded: "I realize now that this was all a scam."

The officers talked briefly to his father and left.

"No further information is known," the report concluded.
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Ana Campoy, Alexandra Berzon and Shirley S. Wang contributed to this article.
Write to Leslie Eaton at leslie.eaton@wsj.com and Ann Zimmerman at ann.zimmerman@wsj.com