The media is certainly not looking to ban whatever symbols Vester L. Flanagan held in respect as a cause of his murder. Nor are they looking at his ideology as a cause. (Tip to Instapundit.)
There is no debate about whether this is domestic terrorism or a crime.
Well, not unless they find a Rush Limbaugh book on his library card record. Then Katie bar the door.
While I sympathize with the complaints about the vast difference in how the media covers this crime compared to the Roanoke murders of 9 African Americans by Dylann Roof that Flanagan claims inspired him to kill, I am enough of an optimist to hope that this is a teachable moment, as our friends on the left like to say.
Flanagan claims that the church murders in Roanoke led him to kill two people he conveniently had a long-standing Bizarro World grudge against. Roanoke was the excuse to kill them and cloak the murders in a so-called higher cause--not the reason for their murder.
How could it be the cause when the Roanoke African American community refused to create that climate of hate as they coped with the murder of their church members?
It is a testament to their goodness as people that so many have expressed forgiveness to the accused murderer, Dylann Roof, for the cold-blooded killing of 9 African Americans as they studied the Bible. But that is not where this must end.
I can't imagine being this forgiving:
"May God have mercy on your soul," said the mother of the youngest victim, 26-year-old Tywanza Sanders, while Roof looked on, expressionless.
Just where is the climate of hate to "explain" Flanagan's motivation? Would you really dishonor that church community by claiming they created the climate?
They did the opposite. They created a climate of forgiveness and restraint. Flanagan spit on that climate of faith and killed for his own reasons and from his own mental health issues.
Absent specific incitement to kill, the fault with killers lies with the killers no matter how many times you ask "why do they hate us?" and conclude it is our fault.
So Democrats "own" this killer as the first link concludes? To the same degree that Republicans "own" any killer rightly or wrongly associated with them (and almost always wrongly, I'd say), they do.
What's it to be? A culture of guilt by (claimed) association? Or a culture where individuals are responsible for their actions?
UPDATE: This is what I'm talking about. The man who shot Representative Gifford and others was not a Tea Party supporter no matter how often that is claimed by the Left.
UPDATE: One last update:
Some newsrooms are pushing back hard on the notion that the recent spike in police officer deaths is tied somehow to the anti-cop rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement.
That's a sharp contrast from the press' more recent habit of tying Tea Party rhetoric to similarly deadly acts.
Indeed it is a sharp contrast.
