Dawidziak: Cool the political hostility

Within hours of the horrific events in Tucson last Saturday, baseless theories about the motives for the shootings started to fly. With absolutely no evidence, some started pointing fingers at the hostile political climate - especially the type of rhetoric heard on talk radio and all-news television stations - for encouraging this terrible act.

Those who would try to fix the blame for the homicidal intentions of criminals on our partisan attack style of debate only exacerbate the problem by trying to attach responsibility where it doesn't belong. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take a close look at how we engage in political discourse.

First, though, we must remember that, unfortunately, violence has long been a part of the American political scene. In our 240-year history, four presidents have been assassinated - Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy - and there have been attempts on the lives of many others, including Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

And there have been non-presidential assassinations, too, notably Sens. Huey Long and Robert F. Kennedy. In 1954, four gunmen opened fire from the gallery of the House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen.

Rarely, if ever, was the blame for these bloody deeds fixed on the politics of left vs. right or Democrat vs. Republican. But if the Arizona shootings lead to some introspection now, instead of just damaging recriminations, that could help us make some very needed adjustments.

The raging culture war has us doing unending battle with each other rather than uniting for the common good. We've become so intolerant of other political leanings and beliefs that we've settled into armed camps, suspicious and sometimes downright hateful of each other's tribe, as defined by party registration.

We shouldn't consider a fellow American with a different political ideology an enemy. You can walk into any major bookstore these days and find dozens of books written by conservative writers warning us about the dangers that liberals pose to our society, and dozens of others written by left-leaning writers with dire warnings about the right-wing conspiracy.

Rest assured, America has real enemies, but it's not each other. This sad state of affairs reminds you of the wisdom found in the famous Pogo cartoon of yesteryear: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Political ideology today is too often defined by radio and television personalities rather than lawmakers. Forty to 50 years ago, if you were to ask who the leaders of the left and the right in America were, or who defined conservative and liberal ideology, you would probably have heard Barry Goldwater for the right and Hubert Humphrey for the left. These two gentlemen worked for years together, side by side in the U.S. Senate, and had great respect for each other. Despite their very different political leanings, one would never have accused the other of being un-American. They could recognize in each other an active intellect and a great mutual love of their country and its citizens - they just came at the solutions for the great problems facing the country from different angles.

This made them friends and colleagues, not enemies. And when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, rather than engage in finger-pointing, they were united in their grief and their condemnation of a violent criminal act.

There's a lesson there for those on either side of the political spectrum today.