And the debate goes on– who is culpable or not

Shooting raises question: It is safe to be a liberal

By Jack Lail (Contact)
Knoxville-News Sentinel August 2, 2008

National, and even international, coverage of the shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church turned late this week into a discussion into whether it’s safe in America to be a liberal. “One of the biggest contemporary ironies is that being liberal in the United States of America, home of history’s greatest democracy, has become dangerous. That danger is particularly acute for religious liberals, as the recent tragedy in Knoxville demonstrated,” Bill Maxwell wrote in the St. Petersburg Times. Ian Williams, writing in The Guardian in London, said “Jim Adkisson, a Tennessee aficionado of conservative talkshows, took their hosts’ invective all too literally and shot up a ‘liberal’ Unitarian Universalist congregation, killing two and wounding six congregants watching a children’s musical. Caught up in a world of conservative talk radio, he reportedly expected to be able to carry on shooting unimpeded by the spineless, gay-loving pacifists, and was surprised when they tackled him and brought him down.” The Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts: “No, conservatives did not cause this bloodbath. Jim Adkisson allegedly did. But in telling him ‘liberals’ were the source of his every disaffection and woe, conservatives certainly validated the hatred and madness that drove him. “It would be a fitting tribute to those who were lost in Knoxville if this tragedy gave the authors of the ongoing morality play cause for pause — and reflection. Or is accountability yet another lost conservative value?” For some posting videos on YouTube, the tragedy is much more personal. Here’s some links to recent coverage elsewhere of the shooting coverage at the TVUUC church and its aftermath, including blogs and YouTube videos:

bekabug on YouTube: TVUUC

TrueRedAngel on YouTube: In Memory: Greg McKendry

NathansPlanet on YouTube: The UU Church Shooting: My Thoughts

cozmikzen on YouTube: Knoxville Church Shooting

TheModernAgnostic on YouTube: Unitarian Church Shooting – The Wider Context

SSanf on YouTube: Deepest Sympathy to the Congregation of the TVUUC

omgCoreyLynxx on YouTube: Conservative Terrorist attack in Knoxville Tennessee

Crooks and Liars: Unitarian Forgiveness

HuffingtonPost: Unitarian Church Shooting is Terrorism

Popular Progressive: Unitarian Universalist Like Me

Jellybean’s Head: Attack in Unitarian Church

scraps book: I am a Unitarian Universalist

uuworld.org: Blogs respond to the Knoxville tragedy

Sid’s View: Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church Shooting

My Private Casbah: Hate Crime at Unitarian Universalist Church

Albany (NY) Times Union: Hate Crime against Unitarian Universalists in Knoxville

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: After rupture of “things of the spirit” comes healing

The Guardian (London): What Rush Limbaugh wrought

St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: The dangers of being religious and liberal

HuffingtonPost: A School Shooting in a Unitarian Church?

Washington Post: Unitarians Keep the Faith After Attack in Church

uuworld.org: ‘I’ve never been so proud to be a Knoxvillean’

uuworld.org: Knoxville stands with grieving UUs after shootings

Associated Press: Shooting victim reflects on church rampage

Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette : Pastor touched by compassion of Knoxville

San Mateo County (Calif.) Times: Churches trying to cope and find ways to prevent violence

WSFA, Montgomery Ala.: Do churches need heightened security?

(KSFX/OzarksFirst.com – Springfield Mo.: Local church reassessing security after shooting

Anniston (Ala.) Star: Hate speech on display: Lesson we must learn

Miami Herald: The liberals made him do it

Falls Church News-Press (Va.): Anything but straight: Messages that lead to murder

 Response to the above article by Sam Venable [editorial]

“..Write this down in bold letters.

Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly WERE NOT in Knoxville on Sunday morning and DID NOT pull the trigger during a shooting spree at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. According to police, this despicable act was committed by one person: Jim David Adkisson, 58, of Powell. He is charged with murder and faces a preliminary hearing next week. Immediately after the rampage, which resulted in two deaths and eight injuries, authorities found a note in Adkisson’s car. Over the course of four pages, authorities said, he railed against “the liberal movement.” Some hours later, in preparation of a search warrant for Adkisson’s home, Knoxville Police Department Investigator Steve Still wrote that Adkisson blamed the church’s “liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they are ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets.” Furthermore, Still wrote “that because (Adkisson) could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement, he would then target those who had voted them into office.” During their search, officers found brass knuckles, a .38-caliber pistol and three right-wing political books: “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder” by radio personality Michael Savage; “Let Freedom Ring” by political commentator Sean Hannity; and “The O’Reilly Factor” by TV commentator Bill O’Reilly. Does this mean Savage, Hannity and O’Reilly are criminally culpable? Not for a nanosecond. Go back and reread the second paragraph. Yet do they bear blame in an indirect way? That’s where the discussion gets interesting. Consider: Police say Adkisson drove to the church in a 2004 Ford Escape and wreaked his havoc with a Model 48 Remington shotgun. Does this implicate Ford and Remington? Again, not for a nanosecond. Neither the Ford Motor Co. nor the Remington Arms Co. designed, produced, promoted or advocated these products as tools for human destruction. But with their ceaseless, demonizing rants against anyone with whom they disagree (translation: liberals, Democrats, et al), venom-spitting commentators like Savage face the very real potential of having their words transformed into someone else’s actions. Should they be banned from the airwaves? One more time: not for a nanosecond. The First Amendment addresses this issue loudly, clearly, majestically. Yet there are matters of responsibility and cause-and-effect here. And they beg to be addressed. If the far right wants to blame violent video games for their criminal influence on unstable teenagers, it must bear the same burden for turning an unstable adult ideologue into a cold-blooded killer. You don’t have to specifically yell “Fire!” inside a crowded theater to cause a stampede…”