Rachel Maddow's MSNBC special on Timothy McVeigh this past Monday night did not come a moment too soon. As Maddow explained in the introduction to her show: "Nine years after his execution, we are left worrying that Timothy McVeigh's voice from the grave echoes in the new rising tide of American anti-government extremism."
After months of hysterically warning viewers that cheerful, well-dressed tea partiers carrying "I Can See November From My House" signs could suddenly erupt into wanton violence, MSNBC finally had proof: Timothy McVeigh.
How about a special on the KGB to help us understand what makes Henry Waxman tick? We're just trying to seek answers ...
On her April 14 show, Maddow gave a "War of the Worlds" report on gun rights activists whom she claimed were planning tributes to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. "On the anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh," she said, "there will be two marches on Washington."
After reminding viewers that McVeigh was "an anti-government extremist with ties to the militia movement" (his only "ties" being that he tried to join the Michigan Militia, but was rejected Maddow said one of the groups, the Second Amendment March, had "been holding armed rallies at state capitols from Kentucky to Montana to Virginia -- anti-government marches and rallies at which participants are encouraged to wear and display their guns."
So if I have this straight, the pro-Second Amendment marchers were both armed ... AND displaying guns!
Having received an "A plus" from the Department of Redundancy Department, a deadly earnest Maddow continued: "Also on the occasion of the Oklahoma City bombing anniversary," there would be an Open Carry rally.
Participants, she said, "are being encouraged to bring guns" (you know, just like the guns Timothy McVeigh used to shoot up the federal building in Oklahoma City).
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True, April 19 is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. It's also the anniversary of Lexington and Concord.
Once upon a time, the skirmish that sparked the Revolutionary War was a date that every schoolchild knew. When British soldiers moved to seize the gunpowder and arms of voluntary militias, armed citizens defended themselves, firing upon the British in "the shot heard 'round the world" -- as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it in his "Concord Hymn."
Hmmm, I wonder if the gun rights activists chose April 19 for their rallies because it was the anniversary of Lexington and Concord -- or because it was the anniversary of Oklahoma City?
Unless the organizers of the Second Amendment March and the Open Carry rally specifically told Rachel, "Oh no, we picked April 19 to honor the bombing in Oklahoma City -- gosh, we had no idea it was date of Lexington and Concord!", I'm pretty sure they picked April 19 because that was the day armed patriots defended themselves from British troops.
Maddow's idiotic attempt to ascribe the date of the gun rights marches to Oklahoma City rather than Lexington and Concord is so Olbermanic that -- to paraphrase Truman Capote -- it is now apparent that you lose a point of your IQ for every day you spend at MSNBC.
We have enough U.S. history by now that there's not a day on the calendar that isn't the anniversary of something. In fact, the very day that Maddow was attacking gun rights groups on her show -- April 14 -- was the 235th anniversary of the founding of the first anti-slavery society in America!
It is also the anniversary of an anti-war actor's murder of a crusading, anti-slavery Republican president. (In addition -- like I have to tell any of you -- it was National Restless Leg Syndrome Awareness Day, but I don't think that had anything to do with Rachel's report.)
Oh sure, Rachel may claim she that she had no idea what April 14 was the anniversary of, and that the date of her attack on our constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms was just a coincidence. But given the long and ugly history of gun control laws in America being used to keep guns out of the hands of free blacks, it was a shockingly insensitive date for Maddow to engage in such extremist anti-gun rhetoric.
What's curious about the left's current obsession with Timothy McVeigh is that it proves that -- despite a frantic search for 15 years -- liberals have come across no better evidence of burgeoning "right-wing extremist" violence than a drug-taking, self-described "agnostic" who was thrown out of the Michigan Militia and who proclaimed, "Science is my religion."
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