As the media and left-wingers spin the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords as an act of Tea Party violence, perhaps even they have a nagging little voice telling them they are overlooking the factors that really led to this tragedy, which claimed the lives of six people — including three septuagenarians and a nine-year-old girl. While the Left has predictably tried to use this attack to smear its political opponents, conservatives have countered that the would-be assassin, Jared Lee Loughner, showed signs of mental illness. Both miss a vital aspect: the perpetrator was raised by permissive parents and joined a subculture of fellow teenagers who abused drugs, questioned authority, and tried to expand their consciousness.
This was the last assassination of the 1960s.
Although Loughner was almost certainly unbalanced, the role illegal drugs may have played in his descent has been ignored. Everyone agrees he was a long-standing, habitual drug abuser. Raised by hippies who let him do what he wanted, he guzzled pharmaceuticals — allegedly including hallucinogens. He partied, lived in a world of his own, and wove trippy conspiracy theories like the hippies the media constantly idolize. Loughner appears to have lived, suffered, and possibly killed by the ideology of the Sixties counterculture.
According to those who knew him, Loughner imbibed this ideology from his parents, who had an aversion to discipline. The Independent quotes an acquaintance:
“His parents were very laid-back, like hippies,” said Jesse Martinez, 17. “They were live-and-let-live people, but not exactly in a good way, and so he grew up doing more or less what he liked.”
By the time he was 14, that involved living the countercultural lifestyle: hanging out, skipping school, and doing drugs with his “friends”:
The crew smoked marijuana every day, and when they weren’t going to concerts or watching movies they talked about the meaning of life and dabbled in conspiracy theories.
For a time, Loughner drank heavily, to the point of poisoning himself, the friends said. Once, during school lunch break as a junior, he downed so much tequila that he came back to class, within five minutes passed out cold, had to be rushed to the hospital and “almost died,” one friend said.
His political views were also stereotypical of the ’60s. Caitie Parker, a classmate of Loughner’s at Tuscon’s Mountain View High School and Pima Community College, describes him as “a political radical,” “left-wing, quite liberal” and “Anti-Flag.” Parker tweeted, “he was a pot head & into rock like Hendrix, The Doors.” His painful internet ramblings have all the hallmarks of the “deep” pseudophilosophers of the era.
Jared Lee Loughner was Steven Hyde from That ’70s Show without the laugh track.
Whether substance abuse or mental illness led to his breakdown, Loughner dropped out of high school. Soon, he became a known entity with local law enforcement. He was cited for drug paraphernalia in 2007 and had unspecified run-ins with the law. A year later, the Army refused his application to join after he admitted he was a drug user.
He began tuning in other destructive forces, as well. The Associated Press described him as an “ardent atheist,” and in one of his internet postings he wrote, “No! I won’t trust in God!” A friend said his atheist led him to sink into a “nihilistic rut” — the usual trajectory of a hopeless ideology. Perhaps seeking some other power, he erected an occultic altar with a mock human skull in a tent in his backyard.
After high school, he reportedly “sampled” LSD. The New York Times reported his Pima Community College classmates “wondered if he might be on hallucinogens.”
All of the signs of Saturday’s rampage were there — and went unheeded. A 52-year-old classmate, Lynda Sorenson, described Loughner as “mentally unbalanced,” “seriously disturbed,” and possibly “on drugs.” The situation got so bad the college stationed a policeman outside his classroom, but his outbursts and confrontations with students and faculty only escalated. The Wall Street Journal reports PCC suspended Loughner last September; the Associated Press reported he withdrew voluntarily. Both agree the college administration refused to allow him to return without a mental health evaluation.
By then, it was too late. No one had cared enough to reach out to him, get him the psychiatric help he needed, or send him to detox.
All of the destructive personal factors in his personality were a part of the 1960s counterculture the media constantly praise and hold up as a utopian ideal. The media have praised the joys of free narcotics use, elevated demented ramblings to the level of Shakespearean poetry, and refused to report on the lifelong damage this destructive lifestyle inflicts on its practitioners and everyone they effect.
The idea that parents, the shaping force of children’s personalities, should not stifle their unruly sires’ creativity with baggage and rules came to the fore in the 1960s. The father of permissive parenting, Dr. Benjamin Spock, led the antiwar movement and ran for president in 1972 as the nominee of the socialist Peace and Freedom Party.
In that era, drug use transformed from the act of social degenerates to an act of “consciousness-raising.” The media wink at dopers and present them as innocuous fonts of far-out wisdom. Apart from the “Just Say No” decade of the ’80s, Hollywood films about drugs have ranged from scatological to adulatory. The media do not report that LSD — which Loughner may have used — can cause long-term psychosis, including hallucinations and paranoia. Drug abuse experts state “unpredictable mood swings, paranoia and violent behavior” can “set in with just a single use of LSD, and can last for years, even if the person they are affecting has no prior history of psychological problems or disorders.” Loughner’s description of “conscience dreaming” [sic.] may refer to lucid dreaming, but it seems as likely to refer to schizophrenic hallucinations or an LSD flashback.
Either way, the back-story seems to be the media’s praise for “expanding consciousness” through drugs.
Conspiracy theories seem to have taken on a life of their own since left-wingers refused to believe a lone, Castroite Communist named Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F. Kennedy. Suddenly, conspiracies enveloped their field of vision.
The occult seems to have displaced the Almighty as the most popular element in popular culture during the eight years between Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Omen (1976). Images of skulls and inverted crosses cropped up in popular music. The father of the LSD movement, Dr. Timothy Leary, had an abiding interest in Aleister Crowley. (This video, although somewhat breathless, has the details.)
The shooter’s love of hippie music, drug use, left-wing politics, anti-Americanism, rejection of God, conspiracy mongering, occultism, and quest for “deep” meaning all see their antecedents in the media’s favorite decade.
The Left has praised the counterculture lifestyle they once led, glossing over the destructive movement as an “era of peace, love, and music.” Sadly, destroying lives is what the counterculture does best. The media glorify the Haight-Ashbury counterculture of 1967 San Francisco the “Summer of Love.” But even sympathetic reporters and participants describe the homelessness, STDs, burned out minds, and hunger the movement created. A Look magazine reporter wrote of his night in a “filthy, litter-strewn dope fortress,” with “half-a-dozen hippies lying in various stages of drug stupor.” San Francisco Chronicle columnist Joel Selvin spoke of how the situation deteriorated within months from naive idealism to “squalid. The utopian moment had been and gone.” The iconic event of the decade, Woodstock, was hardly a “free love-in and concert”; hippies who had not purchased tickets crowded onto the property, had bad trips on LSD, and ran through their provisions until they had to rely on the National Guard to feed them. Today, these are remembered as the great cultural moments of all time.
The permissive culture, anything-goes lifestyle, and glowing media coverage of a sick era are surely more responsible for Saturday’s tragedy than anything Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann have ever said or done. The greatest tragedy is that no one in Jared Lee Loughner’s life introduced him to their values or their God.
Amen. I agree that the 60's have been romanticized. I find it strange that the MSM has not said a word about the perpetrators parents. Also, I believe that Sheriff Dupnik is trying to detract the spotlight from himself. Why wasn't the perpetrator on the radar? If the Sheriff believed the political climate was so vitriolic, why wasn't there law enforcement at the event? This will hopefully come out in the days ahead. This will not end well for the Sheriff.
Ben Johnson hits the nail right on the head! What's even worse is that we have an Illegl Alien, America Hating Radical in the White House with many of the same beliefs as this sick sob. He calls himself a "community organizer" but in the 60's they were called Communist Agitators.
I remember when JFK was killed and a lot of people were holding Texas responsible for his death!!
Of course, then and still there are all kinds of conspiracy theories. I have seen all kinds of situations where young people have no discipline at home and get away with far too much at school which ends in people being killed. I'm surprised this killer didn't turn the gun on himself. The media is having a field day and he is getting what he never got at home growing up……. ATTENTION! Will we never learn?
Give us news on the congresswoman and the other victims- stop all the focus on this sicko psycho!
Lock him up and keep him off the streets. t
Aren't you interested in why he did it so it might be prevented in the future? This guy is a case study in the effects of prolonged drug use. You think that doesn't effect you? Think again. It's all around you in various stages of deterioration. Jihadists are not the only threat we live with, this one just doesn't get talked about.
Mr. Johnson, this is the ONLY example I've seen of genuine investigative reportage and I've been following the event since it happened. I knew from the crazy contents of the video released early on that this guy was drug-addled. Subsequent details only verified it BUT NOBODY WAS WRITING ABOUT IT!!! So THANK YOU for your common sense and your courage in telling the real story. And do PLEASE increase your security measures – these guys are mean.
Conspiracy theories? You mean like 9-11? There is plenty of proof the gov't was involved in both. Your a little late with your conspiracy theory additive, we have seen the proof about JFK and 9-11 and we will find out who paid Jared Lee Loughner. Notice the three words in his name. Watch for another Oswald type knockoff.
When parents fail to teach kids respect for 'righteous authority' , the first of which would be respect for discipline from parents, they deny the kids so much. Kids don't grow up with respect for other forms of 'righteous authority, ie. teachers, police, etc . And they usually never develop a relationship / faith in God. It sounds to me, if these are true facts, Jared's parents did not fulfill their duties to their child. They didn't PARENT. They will have the rest of their lives to figure out what went wrong — Jared's victim's won't.
That does NOT suggest conspiracy, it suggests bad parenting. And it sounds like he devolved into mental illness. PUT the blame where it belongs.
I believe some of the problem starts in the classroom where these radical, communist, progressive high school teachers and college professors are teaching our kids what they believe in, while NOT teaching, American history, and about our founders, the Constitution and patriotism in the classroom. Instead they are teaching our young people communism, fascism, and terrorism. Just look at all the people who surround Obama, who were themselves radical nut jobs and are now professors teaching their beliefs to our students. These teachers and professors need to be removed from the classrooms before they do anymore harm.
Liberalism defined: Innate ignorance firmly supported through willful stupidity!
So now we get to watch the dog and pony show all over again. The republicans are the stars this time around. They will spend months trying to pick threw and mess with all this fraud Oblunder has delivered to America, not getting to the point of the matter. The one thing that will call null and void to all of it. the fact that Oblunder is in fact null and void
This is one of the few articles that make any sense as far as what is going on with all that is happening. My parents were quite "liberal" with my upbringing to (though I do not doubt their love for me), and I did a lot of drugs in my teenage years. I was blessed to come across a person who knew of a detention home for boys, and got my parents to agree to send me there. It was much more strict than the drug programs I had been through, and the Lord has helped me to stay dry ever since (I am 41 now). There is hope for kids if they are caught in time. I probably would have gone down the same road as this person had someone not cared; either killing someone else, or myself.
When Islamic terrorists massacred 186 children and 148 other non-Muslims on the morning of September 3rd, 2004 at a schoolhouse in Beslan, Russia, many muslims celebrated the high-profile event.
While rumors of a Quran desecration or a Muhammad cartoon bring out deadly protests, riots, arson and effigy-burnings, the mass murder of non-Muslims generally evokes yawns. In the six years following 9/11 more than 10,000 acts of deadly Islamic terrorism were perpetrated, yet all of them together fail to provoke the sort of outrage on the part of most Muslims that the mere mention of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo inspires.
This critical absence of moral perspective puzzles many Westerners, particularly those trying to reconcile this reality with the politically-correct assumption that Islam is like other religion. The Judeo-Christian tradition preaches universal love and unselfishness, so it is expected that the more devout Muslims would be the most peaceful and least dangerous… provided that Islam is based on the same principles.
But beneath the rosy assurances from Muslim apologists that Islam is about peace and tolerance lies a much darker reality that better explains the violence and deeply-rooted indifference. Quite simply, the Quran teaches supremacy, hate and hostility.
The book of Islam (61% of which is about non-Muslims) draws the sharpest of distinctions between Muslims and non-believers, lavishing praise on the former while condemning the latter with scorching generalizations. Far from teaching universal love, the Quran incessantly preaches the inferiority of non-Muslims, even comparing them to vile animals and gloating over Allah's hatred of them and his dark plans for their eternal torture. Naturally, the harsh treatment of non-believers by Muslims is encouraged as well.
So, what does the Quran, believed by Muslims to be the literal and eternal word of Allah, really say about non-Muslims?
The Quran Distinguishes Muslims from Non-Muslims
and Establishes a Hierarchy of Relative Worth
How fast the left forgets about the way they posted targets on Conservatives and when you have a sheriff who is the spoon who will stir the trouble of hate is something else.That Arizona sheriff looks like he should be in a retirement home or assissted living because he's senile or has alzhimer.If I lived in that county I'd be worried now the old bird is going into hiding because he should have had this nut job in his sights after all the complaints about him.
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