THE SELECTIVE ARGUMENT THAT POLITICAL RHETORIC LEADS TO VIOLENCE: Jim Geraghty lists “The On-Again, Off-Again Arguments About ‘Dangerous Rhetoric’ Leading to Violence,” before concluding:

Do I have all that right? And does that make sense to anyone?

Wouldn’t Occam’s Razor suggest that those already driven by a desire or compulsion to kill other people are going to do so, and will merely latch on to whatever “reason”, justification or excuse is at hand or is most convenient? Isn’t it ridiculous to expect sane people to watch what they say and restrict what thoughts they express in order to prevent a rampage by someone with an inherently illogical, literally unreasonable, not-sane thinking process?

Isn’t “don’t say what you think, because it might set off a crazy person” the most insidious form of censorship, because none of us can really know what prompts a crazy person to go on a violent rampage?

Ace of Spades adds:

The Colorado governor says that the Planned Parenthood shooting is due to the rhetoric of “talk radio” and “bloggers.”

Ed Morrissey catches the Washington Post saying the same thing.

He notes an example where the left does not find its own hot rhetoric linked to a murderer’s rampage — the Family Research Council shooter. I can name another one — the Discover Channel Shooter, a shooter the left seized upon initially because they assumed he was rightwing, then discarded quickly when his manifesto indicated that he was so left-wing on climate change he thought the Discovery Channel was too soft in its climate change propaganda.

Gabriel Malor has documented the left’s “incurable” disease of blaming shootings on right-wing speech.

But never, ever on leftwing speech — obviously! Leftwing speech never inspires violence. Except when it does. And there’s an interesting argument to explain why, and that argument is complete media silence.

I find this part of the left’s broader mission of shutting down any thought of which they don’t approve. The left routinely — reflexively — links any sort of political thought they don’t like into a dire real-world consequence or crime.

If you deny the fake 1-in-5 claim, you’re encouraging rape.

If you publicize the fact that baby organs are in fact being harvested at Planned Parenthood, you’re encouraging shooting.

If you call a woman “bossy,” you’re both fostering an anti-woman “atmosphere” and encouraging violent crimes against women.

And so on. As I say, the left’s own hot rhetoric — that we need to reduce the human population to save us from global warming; that anyone who disagrees with this is a “denier” like a Holocaust denier; etc., etc. — is never, apparently, linked to any violence.

Well, that doesn’t help advance the DNC-MSM narrative; when it comes to their coverage of the other side of the aisle, as Andrew Klavan noted in 2009, all of their memes can be boiled down to two words:

Related: “These are some astounding facts about violence this year in Chicago,” Betsy Newmark notes:

As of November 23, there had been 2703 shootings which resulted in 440 deaths year-to date in heavily gun-controlled Chicago.

That is an increase of approximately 400 shootings over the same time last year.

And remember that Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control measures in the nation in a city that has been under totally Democratic control for decades.

Doesn’t fit the narrative; makes Obama and Rahm look bad. Thus memory holed in order to continue “defining deviancy downward,” to coin a phrase.