"Right-wing enablers of hate have blood on their hands"

Joel Connelly (Seattle P-I):

Hearing denunciations of Islamic jihadism and its bombings by right-thinking pundits, it's curious that acts of extremist terrorism in America explode in places of worship, community celebration, and care for children.

Dr. George Tiller, the Wichita physician who provided abortion services, was shot to death in the Lutheran church where he was serving as an usher while his wife was singing in the choir.

A guy named Jim David Atkinson drove last July to a Unitarian church in Tennessee that sought to open a coffee shop for gays and lesbians. He shot to death a 61-year-old grandmother and retired schoolteacher, and a 60-year-old foster father who rose to shield others from the attack.

Terrorist Eric Rudolph exploded a lethal bomb in a park where thousands were attending a concert and celebrating the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

The largest casualty list in Timothy McVeigh's 1994 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building came in the building's child-care center: 19 little kids died.

We remember the Civil Rights-era multiple church bombings in the Deep South, most famously the blast that killed four little girls at Sunday school in a Birmingham church.

Bitter, obsessed guys are, alas, part of our political culture. So are armed, paranoid outfits like the Montana Freemen, the bomb-builders of the Washington State Militia and The Order. So are tracts like "The Turner Diaries."

In recent years, however, enablers on the airwaves have emboldened those who would strike outside the law. They host or guest on cable news programs, and broadcast on radio stations across the country.

"What does yet another random 'lone wolf' shooting spree in a public venue have to do with election year rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail?" asks Seattle-based author David Niewert in his book "The Eliminators."

"What connects them is that they are both manifestations of one of the most troubling aspects of modern American politics: the impulse to demonize our political adversaries, and the consequences of that demonization on our discourse and our body politic."

Frequent Fox News guest Ann Coulter once bolstered her book sales by declaring: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."

And, in a post 9/11 National Review column about Muslims, she concluded: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

According to a subsequent Wall Street Journal op-ed, we should all be slapping our knees at Ms. Coulter's joke.

"Why would anybody even pretend to believe that Ms. Coulter wishes any real harm to the New York Times or wishes to convert all Muslims forcibly to Christianity?" it asked.

The question is answered in a manifesto left behind in Jim David Adkisson's home.

"This was a symbolic killing," he wrote, anticipating the church murders. "Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. "

Goldberg, once a CBS News correspondent, has found a second career as right-wing writer and Fox News contributor. He penned a book called "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America." The list runs from ex-President Jimmy Carter to Barbara Walters to Rep. Jim McDermott to Eminem.

The highest rated hater on cable TV, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, screeched at Dr. Tiller. He accused Tiller of running a "death mill," declared that Tiller had "blood on his hands," called him "Tiller the Baby Killer", and seemed to invite violence -- but with the usual fanny-covering disclaimer:

"If I could get my hands on Tiller -- Well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech."

A civil society should be civil. Our country's foundation is the rule of law.

It's worth noting that the mainstream right-to-life movement is non-violent, its main tactics the kind of peaceful, prayerful witness recently staged outside Planned Parenthood in Seattle.

But decent-minded Americans, across the political spectrum, should condemn the enablers. They create a climate conducive to political killings, every bit as much as those arming suicide bombers. You need not sympathize with late-term abortions to be revolted at the assassination of Dr. Tiller.

O'Reilly regularly sends forth a "producer" to harass political figures and journalists that he dislikes, confronting people outside their homes and even stalking targets on vacation.

A local target was Roger Oglesby, publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer until March 18th.

I'd invite O'Reilly's stalker to visit Madrona. As with Bill Ayers, I will put on a pot of tea -- and then take him for a walk.

We'll stroll down a block, and then south so I can show him a house on 36th Avenue.

Here, on Christmas Eve 1985, Seattle attorney Chuck Goldmark, his wife and two little boys were stabbed to death. The first news of the assault came at midnight eucharist at Epiphany Parish.

The killer, David Louis Rice, was part of the Christian Identity movement who believed -- erroneously -- that Goldmark was "the top Jew" and "top Communist" in Washington -- and that he was acting as a soldier defending American Christianity.

The mission from God meant multiple murders, in a peaceful Seattle neighborhood, at the Feast of the Nativity.

Here's a message to O'Reilly, his fellow enablers, and Fox News overlord Rupert Murdoch. Show some decency and respect for the ideals of faith and country. The blood of Dr. Tiller, and far less controversial folk, is on your hands.