The fresh church shootings in Knoxville, Tennessee is full of perplexing ironies.  All of the amp'ed up political rhetoric since the 1970s that has increasingly divided the country into liberal and conservative camps seems to have finally spilled over into a hate crime that is exclusively based on political ideologies. 

Bloggers, talk radio hosts, and other commentators on the right who have been suggesting with great regularity that the blame for America's problems can be singularly placed on a group called "liberals"  seems to have finally led to a war of words becoming a terrorist attack.  Is it natural that such passionate verbal attacks would eventually move someone to action and translate into a terrorist attack? 

Some may say calling this a terrorist attack is a bit hyperbolic.  But, at its essense; that's what it was.  The people who were shot were singled out because of political beliefs and their identity as belonging to a particular group.  The goal was to avenge or intimidate a group because of what they represented to the agrieved shooter.  The irony is that the right reviles the same behavior  in places such as Palestine where leaders frequently are drumming up hate against Israel. 

Now, no one on the right has advocated violence and there are plenty of folks on the left who have drummed up equally divisive and incendiary language.  But I think the church shootings suggest that commentators from all sides should be more careful about the way in which they arouse passions. But again, the irony is that the right sees whipping up passions and moving people to violence in the Middle East a short-coming and deficiency.  Referring to liberals as treasonous and sub-human will naturally have implications.

The other ironnies associated with this tragic event lie in the details.  The shooter, Jim D. Adkisson, was out of work and living off of food stamps.  He blamed gays and liberals for his inability to find work based on a note police found.  His dependency on largely liberal programs to get by didn't seem to buy any compassion from him toward those he attacked.  How gays impacted his ability to find work is also very unclear.  Some how Mr. Adkisson made a lot of tenuous links that led him to the Unitarian church.  No doubt, others influenced his thinking and helped him connect dots that likely cannot be easily connected.

The result, I would hope, is a wake up call on understanding that what we say matters.