Glenn Beck

Glenn’s let­ter to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, politi­cians, and media

Mon­day, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:48 AM EST

While Amer­i­cans are grap­pling to under­stand the Ari­zona tragedy, the absolute vac­u­um of lead­er­ship on both sides is stag­ger­ing.

We live in a coun­try that has been struck by John Hinck­ley Jr. and Sirhan Sirhan, Lee Har­vey Oswald and Mark David Chap­man. And one that’s been hit by ter­ror­ists like Tim­o­thy McVeigh, the DC Sniper John Allen Muham­mad, the Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan, and 19 high­jack­ers all claim­ing to be free­dom fight­ers. You’d think we’d under­stand the dif­fer­ence between mad­men and ter­ror­ists.

All evi­dence points to the fact that the assailant from this week­end was severe­ly men­tal­ly dis­turbed. His belief sys­tem was not ratio­nal by any mod­ern polit­i­cal stan­dard. He was an athe­ist, believed George W. Bush was respon­si­ble for 9/11, feared a glob­al cur­ren­cy, cit­ed the Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo as one of his favorite books and thought the Mars rover land­ing was staged. These are not the opin­ions of a coher­ent indi­vid­ual.

Far too often, we have seen in our schools and in our post offices, acts of vio­lence from mis­fits of soci­ety. While we can look for the warn­ing signs, these hor­rif­ic events will always be with every nation.

Though vio­lence is a human prob­lem, every Amer­i­can cit­i­zen can make a per­son­al choice today. Do you believe that Amer­i­cans, from any walk of life, can con­vince them­selves they are free­dom fight­ers and car­ry out acts of vio­lence? My answer is yes. If you agree then you must take a clear stand.

Turn­ing these hor­rif­ic events into an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a polit­i­cal attack is a very child­ish response to a very grown-up prob­lem. This is not about win­ning a polit­i­cal blame game. Athe­ists are not to blame. Those who hate George W. Bush are not to blame. Those who don’t believe in space trav­el are not to blame. Jared Lee Lough­n­er is to blame. Peri­od.

This tragedy should not be used as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to try and bend real­i­ty to retroac­tive­ly place a mad­man on the oth­er side of the aisle. It should be a time to pray for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, a time that we can all come togeth­er and state that vio­lence is off lim­its for all sides in a Repub­lic. It’s a time for us to state with a uni­fied pas­sion that we won’t accept any­one who threat­ens or actu­al­ly car­ries out vio­lence.

Denounc­ing vio­lence from all sides includ­ing your own does not make your move­ment any less just. To quote Mar­tin Luther King:

* I denounce vio­lence, regard­less of ide­o­log­i­cal moti­va­tion.
* I denounce any­one, from the Left, the Right or mid­dle, who believes phys­i­cal vio­lence is the answer to what­ev­er they feel is wrong with our coun­try.
* I denounce those who wish to tear down our sys­tem and rebuild it in their own image, what­ev­er that image may be.
* I denounce those from the Left, the Right or mid­dle, who call for riots and vio­lence as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring down and recon­struct our sys­tem.
* I denounce vio­lent threats and calls for the destruc­tion of our sys­tem – regard­less of their under­ly­ing ide­ol­o­gy – whether they come from the Huta­ree Mili­tia or Frances Fox Piv­en.
* I hold those respon­si­ble for the vio­lence, respon­si­ble for the vio­lence. I denounce those who attempt to blame polit­i­cal oppo­nents for the acts of mad­men.
* I denounce those from the Left, the Right or mid­dle that sees vio­lence as a viable alter­na­tive to our long estab­lished sys­tem of change made with­in the con­straints of our con­sti­tu­tion­al Repub­lic.