The culpability of the Right wing flamethrowers.

The Right continues to deny that anything they have said is inflammatory. During the health care debate and leading up to the elections death threats were received by numerous Democratic members of the House and Senate, more than a few of which were recorded on answering machines. Bricks were thrown through windows at campaign offices. The Tea Party erroneously publicized the address of Rep. Tom Perriello's (D-VA) brother instead of the intended target, his address. The gas lines to his brother's house were cut, creating a lethally dangerous situation. talk about inflammatory.

The Right's response.

Glenn Beck “It's almost as if the left is trumping all of this up just for the politics."

Rush Limbaugh “Our side doesn't do this kind of stuff. It's all made up -- 95 percent of it's made up and it's being done to divert everybody's attention."

Andrew Breitbart "We doubt these threats are actually real and, certainly wouldn't condone them."

The Tides Foundation is a frequent target of Beck. It's a progressive organization based in San Fransisco that raises money for a variety of environmental and social causes. To Beck, Tides is at the nexus of a conspiracy to bring down everything he loves about America. He claims their ultimate goal is to seize power and create a socialist regime in America, along with George Soros et al. He has called them "thugs" and "bullies", the "nasty of the nastiest" by indoctrinating children and creating a "mass organization to seize power."

Byron Williams decided to take matters into his own hands. He set off with body armor and a pickup truck stocked with guns and ammunition to invade Tides' office and start killing it's employees hoping to start a revolution. Fortunately he was pulled over for drunk driving on the Interstate. Williams opened fire, wounding two higway partol officers before being captured after a lngthy shootout.

In a subsequent interview he admitted to being motivated by Beck's paranoid warnings about Tides. For the naive, conspiratorial minded people like Williams Beck's words are the truth and they honestly believe Tides represents a clear danger to the country. Thankfully, Williams forgot the golden rule of politically random shooting sprees. Don't get drunk and drive on your way to committing mayhem.

Three police officers in Pittsburgh weren't so lucky. Richard Poplawski, a white supremacist, shot and killed 3 police officers. The incident was precipitated by an with his mother about his dog pissing on the carpet. When the police got there they found Poplawaski in full body armor, lying in wait to ambush them. His friends say that Poplawaski was convinced that Obama was going to take his guns away. This is a popular meme that has been repeated in the media by Ann Coulter and others that Obama intends to confiscate all guns despite absolutely zero evidence to support such a claim.

A couple of days later Beck said "Before they found out about the dog-peeing story, the press, the blogs, everybody immediately went to, 'This guy's a conservative with guns that says Obama's coming.' " on his radio show. In Beck's twisted mind the the police officers died because a dog pissed on a carpet. End of story.

The flamethrowers on the Right refuse to take any responsibility for such incidents. Mentally unbalanced people like Byron Williams, Poplawaski and now Jared Loughner will swallow these conspiratorial, paranoid rants, believe them utterly and take action. Then the Becks and the Limbaughs turn around and blame the left and the liberal media. They will continue with their vitriol, believing that no sane person, no matter what their political leanings will go. or try to go on a killing spree. What they ignore is that there are many others, not so sane, for whom something as trivial as a dog pissing on a carpet will release a pent up anger that has been stoked, over and over again by the flamethrowers on the Right.