In 1995 when Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children and injuring hundreds more, President Bill Clinton blamed “promoters of paranoia,” which conservative talk radio hosts took as a slur against them.

At the time I wrote that while there were many examples of incendiary language coming from the left, as well as the right, people are responsible for their own behavior and that murders and violent acts against government and government officials were not unique to the modern era.

Which brings me to Sunday’s incident at Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach. Accused sniper Ryan Wesley Routh got within 300-500 yards of Trump after spending 12 hours hidden in vegetation just outside a fence. The Secret Service reportedly knew of the location and had warned Trump, who chose to play golf anyway. They said Trump was never in line of sight of the suspect, and Routh never fired a single round, but he might have had an agent not spotted him and shot at him.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Trump “wasn’t supposed to be there,” so he said, the Secret Service exercised their “emergency” plan. This raises the question about how the alleged sniper was able to spend 12 hours out of sight when Trump’s golf outing appeared to be spontaneous. How did he know to position himself where he did?

The Associated Press reported: “Routh previously wrote about Trump being killed in a self-published book in 2023 called Ukraine’s Unwinnable War. In the book, Routh reportedly called Trump a ‘buffoon’ and a ‘fool’ and suggested that Iran kill the former president. ‘You are free to assassinate Trump,’ he said of the country, per the AP.”

Did charges by Democrats and some Republicans that they consider Trump a “threat to democracy” partially motivate Routh? Someone will have to ask him, but the loose talk by Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance, as well as those on the left and right have contributed to the poisoning of our political atmosphere. Following Routh’s arrest, Vance called for a toning down of the rhetoric from the Democratic side, but then added this unhelpful statement: “Nobody has tried to kill Kamala Harris.” The toning down could start with him and his running mate.

Routh’s arrest record and erratic behavior were reported by several media outlets. CNN reported he had been arrested eight times for various offenses, one of them on a charge of possessing a “weapon of mass destruction” — a concealed gun in his vehicle — in his native Greensboro, North Carolina.

Then there’s the question of how he obtained the assault weapon in his possession, which was similar to the one used by Butler, Pennsylvania, shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks. Critics of America’s gun laws have a point that such weapons are made to be used in war and are not made for game hunting or sport shooting. They should be more difficult to obtain.

At the end of his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln said of the South, which had rebelled against the Union: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Today, our “better angels” seem to have been replaced by our worst devils. Will someone please lead by example as Lincoln did?

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