Democratic congressman: "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

Rep. Michael Capuano was speaking at the Boston rally in "solidarity" with the Wisconsin protests. Last month, after the Tucson rally, he said: "There's always some degree of tension in politics; everybody knows the last couple of years there's been an intentional increase in the degree of heat in political discourse. . . . If nothing else good comes out of this, I'm hoping it causes people to reconsider how they deal with things."

James Taranto cries hypocrisy, but it's not all that hypocritical. Capuano said there would always be "tension" in politics, that people are intentionally increasing that tension (or "heat"), and that people should think about "how they deal with things." You can read that a lot of ways!

Firing a tenured law professor because he used the dean's name in hypotheticals?

It's hard to guess what the full story is here. (Via Taxprof.) The professor, Lawrence Connell, has, according to this report, authorized his lawyer, Thomas Neuberger, to talk to the press, and the school, Widener, has a confidentiality policy in personnel matters, so we're seeing Connell's version for the most part.

Lawprofs use hypotheticals all the time, and Connell put the name of the dean, Linda Ammons, in "at least 10" hypotheticals depicting her getting shot. Supposedly, "at least two students filed complaints with administrators, calling it violent, racist and sexist." Connell is white; Ammons is black. A letter from the vice dean refers to "an 'outgoing pattern' of misconduct,"* including "cursing and coarse behavior, 'racist and sexist statements' and 'violent, personal scenarios that demean and threaten your colleagues.'"

The linked article has this quote from Gregory F. Scholtz, associate secretary and director of the American Association of University Professors:

"Education is all about pushing the boundaries, and it's all about controversial ideas, but the question always is when does it cross the line... Given our modern culture and the violence that exists, you're really asking for trouble when you talk about killing people."

It looks like Scholtz is channeling some of the unscientific blather that surrounded the Tucson massacre: There's bad speech out there and then bad people do bad things and that's bad.

Look, if you're teaching criminal law, you use hypos that have people doing criminal things. Putting real names in the hypos might be funny or attention-getting or just stupid, but let's not get hysterical. Was the professor advocating that somebody shoot the dean? Obviously, not. Are the students so confused they don't get that? Impossible.

But I can understand how law school bureaucrats feel compelled to make a showing of caring deeply when students — even only 2 students — complain that a professor seems racist. I have seen that happen. It can be hard for the administration to negotiate its way through the maze of academic freedom and student opinion even when it is trying to do everything right and cares only about the appropriate values like intellectual excellence and a favorable "climate" for learning. But who knows what is really going on here? Are the students oversensitive, vindictive, or pursuing an ideological agenda? Is there some distorted notion that any criticism or making fun of the dean is a racial matter?

Neuberger said Kelly and Ammons offered to allow Connell to return to campus if he recanted statements students found offensive and underwent psychiatric evaluation.

That reminds me of the fallout over NPR's firing of Juan Williams — after he said something that made sensitive people feel he might be insufficiently tolerant. Maybe he should talk to his psychiatrist, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said. It's a distancing move, undercutting serious inquiry into the statements that are being questioned. The statements are no longer anything to engage with, but evidence of the speaker's mental disorder. There are insiders and outsiders, and suddenly the speaker is the outsider, to be talked about, not talked with.

As for "recant[ing] statements students found offensive" — how do you recant a hypothetical? I know how I would recant a hypothetical: with great sarcasm. You know, these little stories I tell in class — vignettes, if you will — they are inventions — sheer flights of fancy. I like to call them hy-po-THET-ick-uhls... 

But Connell refused to recant, "believing it would amount to admitting racism, among other things." This is what happens. It's such a big deal to be accused of racism that it forces a hard-line denial. There's also a political angle here. Connell's lawyer is saying that Dean Ammons "wanted to get rid of a conservative professor." And now the story is out in the legal blogosphere. Instapundit says:

PROFESSOR MAY LOSE TENURE FOR “A pattern of inappropriate speech and behavior.” Wait, I thought that was what tenure was supposed to protect. Of course, it’s at Widener. But with tenure already under attack from education reformers, an object case that it doesn’t actually protect controversial speech would seem to be either valuable, or a dreadful mistake, depending on your perspective.

And now, we'll all talk about it. That link on "Widener" is important, as Glenn connects some dots and puts the school's larger reputation on the line. There aren't too many conservative law professors, but they've got very well-connected power on the internet. Deal fairly with them.

*ADDED: What's an "outgoing pattern"? I've heard of ongoing patterns. Was Connell perky and sociable and racist and sexist all at the same time?

Some questions about the possible sexism of the way the NYT portrays Judy Clarke, the public defender in the Tucson massacre case.

Jared Loughner's lawyer has an "unassuming, almost motherly way," the NYT informs us. Judy Clarke, we're told, achieved an "essential act[] of lawyering... when she patted Mr. Loughner on the back in court last month, leaned in close and whispered in his ear."

Let's talk about the degree to which it's currently considered acceptable to ascribe lawyerly skills to gender.

Is the NYT being sexist? Is it okay because it's kind of subtle?  Is it okay because if there's a special goodness in femininity, it lends momentum to the progressive trend of including more and more women in the legal profession?

If the answer to the last question is yes, imagine a similar statement made about a male lawyer, suggesting that his maleness brought extra value to his lawyering: Would that not be okay? If not, is that because you can say (in so many words) that it's better to be female, but it's retrograde to say (subtly as well as unsubtly) that it's better to be male?

If you've bought into the notion that it is acceptable to say (with some subtlety) that it's better to be female, because that seems progressive, why is it progressive to promote women using the traditional stereotype of women as maternal and nurturing? Why isn't that precisely what is sexist?

Do you think, in the long run, it is helpful to the success of women in the legal profession to portray them as good at mothering and being sensitive to other people's feelings?

"History tells us" something that history doesn't tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven.

Here's the expression of "outrage" by the officers of the American Sociological Association:

Scholars of her caliber, intellectuals of her stature, and especially those who tackle social conflicts and contradictions, mass movements and political action, should stimulate equal levels of serious challenge and creative dialogue. Being called by Glenn Beck one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world,” and an “enemy of the Constitution” is not a credible challenge; it is plain demagoguery.

So vigorous debate about Piven's ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She's very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one.

Despite its lack of substance, Beck’s attacks have resulted in a flood of hate mail and internet postings attacking Professor Piven, including a series of death threats. While it is true that death threats are generally only a form of extremist rhetoric, they indicate an overheated emotional atmosphere that researchers on collective violence call “the hysteria zone.” It is a zone in which deranged individuals can be motivated to real violence against those targeted by demagoguery. History tells us that such things as the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords that resulted in six deaths in Tucson, Arizona can be examples of how abundant, polarizing rhetoric by political leaders and commentators can spur mass murder.

Does lofty, serious, intellectual sociology involve looking at evidence and analyzing it rationally? Linking the Tucson massacre to hot political rhetoric was a rash mistake made by demagogues — you want to talk about demagogues?! — demagogues who were slavering over the prospect of a right-wing massacre that would prove politically useful.

We call on Fox News to take steps to control the encouragement of violence that has run rampant in recent months. 

Fox News? And do you also call on The Nation, which published "Mobilizing the Jobless," by Frances Fox Piven, the article Glenn Beck brought to the attention of his large audience? Piven called for riots. She wrote:

An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees....

When did Glenn Beck call for violence?  Back to the sociologists' letter of outrage:

Serious and honest, undistorted disagreement and public debate on unemployment, economic crisis, the rights and tactics of welfare recipients, government intervention and the erosion of the American way of life should be supported. 

Undistorted? Okay, let's see you do it first. The "American way of life"? By that term, do you mean — in an undistorted sort of way — like Greece?

We in no way advocate restricting the freedom of speech of political commentators.... Where we all should draw the line is at name-calling and invective rising to the level of inciting others to violence.

So Piven should not have called for "something like" Greek-style riots, and it was good of Glenn Beck to point out that Piven crossed the line, right? I mean, we're dedicating ourselves to serious, undistorted analysis here. That's what you said you wanted, didn't you?

"We Just Witnessed The Media's Test Run To Re-Elect Barack Obama."

Brilliant blog post by William A. Jacobson:

The ruthless efficiency with which the left-wing blogosphere tied Palin to the shooting, and the success of their efforts in equating Palin with mass murder, is a lesson we should not forget....

Having created a false narrative of Palin's responsibility for the shooting, the mainstream media tried to deprive Palin of the ability to defend herself against the charges. And unfortunately, some who supposedly are on our side have jumped on that bandwagon.

And all the while, Barack Obama stood back for days and let his supporters in the media rip Palin apart, much as he left it to his supporters to go after the Clintons during the primary, only then to proclaim that we don't really know why Jared Loughner did what he did. And the media narrative was how wonderful Obama was, how he helped heal the nation.

Any Republican or conservative or Tea Party supporter who dumps on Palin in any way over the Tucson shooting or her defense of herself should just stop talking now.

It does not matter whether you support Palin for President, whether you think she is electable, or even whether you like her. This is not about Palin, it is about the mainstream media's desire to have Barack Obama re-elected at any cost and to take down any Republican candidate who stands in the way.

Rush Limbaugh gave an excellent dramatic reading of this post yesterday, and Jacobson has the video. Here's the transcript, with this commentary from Rush:

If Republicans are gonna sit by and watch Palin savaged, they'd better be prepared to sit by and watch the next one get savaged and the next one. Because that's what's coming.  If the Republicans cannot defend themselves over this kind of scurrilous, baseless, libelous charge, they got no business running.

They'll not be able to elect anybody.  If we shut up and be silent on this -- if we've got Republicans like Frum who will agree with the left-wing blogosphere and the mainstream media that Palin should shut up, that she should stop defending herself and it's a horrible travesty of just what Palin did; if we're gonna have Republicans sit around and give Obama credit for sitting by for four days while his allies try to take her out, then give a speech and get credit for the wonderful things he said about it -- then we got more idiots in our party than we would want to know....

This call for "civility"? They don't want us to be civil.  They want us to be cowed.  They want all of us to become Frumized.

Go to the links and read the whole thing to see why David Frum is tagged as the exemplar of a useful idiot. Wouldn't you like to see Jacobson and Frum is a dialogue on Bloggingheads? Frum has been on many times. Based on segment headings, he's never talked about Sarah Palin, though. Kind of odd, considering how hard it is not to talk about Sarah Palin. I'm going to recommend a Jacobson/Frum pairing. I think that would be quite delicious.

The NYT picks up part of my diavlog with Glenn Loury...

... the gun control part.

"What is government if words have no meaning?" — Jared Loughner's question to Gabrielle Giffords is " the stuff, not just of right-wing suspicion of government, or of radical left-wing suspicion of same, but of scores of Hollywood movies."

Writes Lee Siegel:

... from Taxi Driver and Three Days of the Condor, to Guilty by Suspicion and Mercury Rising, to The Sentinel and Syriana, and, well, I can't keep up. For at least half a century, our movies, from simple to complex, have been driven by the idea that official words have no meaning and that government is either criminal or a sham.

If you haven't seen the movies:

...you have probably read the standard texts of advanced American attitudes. Thus you have absorbed throughout college, like any number of Hollywood screenwriters and American tastemakers, the idea — from Nietzsche to Wittgenstein to Foucault to Derrida to Chomsky to Stanley Fish — that the words used by any type of official, political entity, like a government, are nonsense. "What is government if words have no meaning?" That could be the motto of The Daily Show.

If we're soaking in a culture of nihilism, why are most of us holding up so well?

Sarah Palin talks about Tucson with Sean Hannity.

The video.

I talk with Glenn Loury about the Arizona massacre.

This goes for about 48 minutes. I think it's pretty good. I'll listen to it myself now and pick out some high spots.




ADDED: I reject the distraction that is Jared Lougher:



We talk about Jeremiah Wright as an exemplar of edgy speech on the left:



Glenn is rubbed the wrong way by news commentators, after the memorial, dwelling on the topic of "Obama's got his mojo back":



The use of Native American religion in the memorial — I call it patronizing:



Glenn pushes for gun control, I push back (a bit) and do a quick lecture on federalism and the Second Amendment at one point:

Arrested at a town hall meeting led by ABC News Anchor Christiane Amanpour: Eric Fuller, the survivor of the Tucson massacre who said "It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target."

We talked about him here, yesterday. Now, KGUN9 reports:

The theme of the event was "An American Conversation Continued"... When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that finally, Fuller took a picture of Humphries, and said, "You're dead."...

The event wrapped up a short time later. Deputies then escorted Fuller from the room. As he was being led off, Fuller shouted loudly to the room at large. Several witnesses said that what they thought they heard him shout was, "You're all whores!"

Fuller, age 63, is a political operative who specializes in gathering petitions for ballot initiatives. Before the program began, he passed out business cards to people sitting around him that read:

"Signatures
"Expediting Initiatives since 2006
"J. Eric Fuller
"Political Circulator."

Fuller has been charged with one count of threats and intimidation.

"In 1970, when I was 22 years old — the same age as Jared Loughner — I was a founder of the Weather Underground, an offshoot of the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society."

Writes Mark Rudd in the Washington Post:

My willingness to endorse and engage in violence had something to do with an exaggerated sense of my own importance. I wanted to prove myself as a man - a motive exploited by all armies and terrorist groups. I wanted to be a true revolutionary like my guerrilla hero, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. I wanted the chant we used at demonstrations defending the Black Panthers to be more than just words: "The revolution has come/Time to pick up the gun!"

As the Weather Underground believed in the absolute necessity of bombs to address actual moral grievances such as the Vietnam War and racism, Loughner might have believed in the absolute necessity of a Glock to answer his imagined moral grievances....

"This is my genocide school."

A Jared Loughner video.

If the student is unable to locate the external universe, the student is unable to locate the internal universe....

Insane? Or manufacturing evidence of insanity?

MORE: From WaPo:

Far from the undisciplined, semi-delusional dropout described by friends, Jared Loughner appeared to be a young man with laser focus when it came to planning and carrying out a shooting spree outside a strip-mall Safeway last week, local law enforcement authorities alleged Friday....

"Back in the 1960s, who'd have imagined that a septuagenarian white sheriff from Arizona with a hostility to free speech would one day become a hero to the left?"

Let's talk about Clarence Dupnik.

Dupnik made multiple statements drawing connections between conservative "rhetoric" and Saturday's crime.... At a time when most politicians were behaving responsibly, why was Sheriff Dupnik speaking with a reckless disregard for the truth...?...

The Arizona Republic reported Wednesday that Dupnik's department was "refusing to release a wide range of public documents about the man charged in Saturday's shooting rampage that left six dead and more than a dozen wounded." Later that day, the Republic reported, the department relented and released "12 sets of incident reports" about police calls to the Loughner home or Jared Loughner's high school....

It's quite possible that Dupnik simply enjoys shooting off his mouth. 

More likely he enjoys covering his ass. Shame on all the journalists who scurried forward with their big old newsrags to help him cover said ass.'

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene (who knows such things) says:

A juvenile point: the surname "Dupnik" derives from "Dupa," a word used in Slavic- and Baltic-speaking languages. The word "dupa" means "ass."

"Dupnik" can translate as "assman." There is a bawdy dance — usually done at vodka-infused weddings — called the "dupnik," during which the partiers "fist bump" their cheeks.

Jared Loughner shot 35 mm film of himself "posing with a Glock 9mm pistol next to his naked buttocks and dressed in a bright red g-string."

He dropped the film off at Walgreens the day before the massacre.

Perhaps the most surprising part of that is the use of film. Don't most people use digital cameras now, and doesn't anyone taking naked/embarrassing pictures of himself go digital? It must be that Loughner wanted to involve real people in the process of discovering these photographs of the killer clowning with the gun at the very time he was using the gun on a murder spree. It was another way to inflict pain, and he went to some trouble to do it.

Isn't this evidence useful to the prosecution? It shows elaborate planning, I think, including perhaps a plan to appear crazy. Why go to the trouble and expense of using film? Did he not try to time the development of the photographs with the massacre? Or do you think posing with the gun like that makes him seem more crazy and is useful to the defense?

"How many other demented people are out there? It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target."

"Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled—senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even nine-year-old girls."

One of the survivors of the Tucson massacre, Eric Fuller, says that is what he wrote down after staying up "most of the night" in the hospital, trying to calm himself down and organize his thoughts, and writing out (from memory) the text of the Declaration of Independence.

ADDED: Patterico notes:

But you never hear them ask the obvious follow up question: do you still feel this way?  And if you look at the rest of the report, created today, it is obvious that these people are completely dishonest.  They have deliberately skewed every other piece of evidence to indict the right wing, leaving out every piece of evidence that might exonerate their targets.  Why should we think they presented this man’s entire statement?

The effort to drag down Sarah Palin for using the term "blood libel" has backfired.

The criticism had to do with wanting to restrict the term to its specific original context, a longstanding vicious lie about the Jewish people. The result of the criticism is that now when someone searches the term "blood libel," they see Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. If the intent of the criticism was to preserve the purity of the reference, it's had the opposite effect. (If the intent of the criticism was to take advantage of a perceived opportunity to take another shot at Sarah Palin, the hypocrisy is too nauseating to describe.)

Meanwhile, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says "Sarah Palin Is Right About 'Blood Libel.'"

"Right now, each side in that debate passionately believes that the other side is wrong."

"And it’s all right for them to say that. What’s not acceptable is the kind of violence and eliminationist rhetoric encouraging violence that has become all too common these past two years."

Writes Paul Krugman, manufacturing a phony problem.

It’s not enough to appeal to the better angels of our nature. We need to have leaders of both parties — or Mr. Obama alone if necessary — declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law.

If Krugman had a sharper, fairer eye for what is really needed, he would have walked back his last column — the one where he attributed the Tucson massacre to "toxic rhetoric" on the right.

As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line....

So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?

Advocating violence is terrible, but it is also terrible to try to delegitimize vibrant criticism of the government, to have a biased view of where the least valuable speech is coming from, and to connect speech to violence when there is no connection. The truth is we should dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual and go on as before. Why should we change because a madman shot people?

Ironically, saying that a massacre can change the course of American politics encourages massacres! Why would you put such a thought into the heads of madmen? Hell, sane men might put the pieces together and plan a massacre to disrupt the work of the politicians who won the last elections. We need to turn away from the bloody slaughter and go on as before.

Michelle Obama's lesson from the Tucson massacre: Teach your children "the value of tolerance – the practice of assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us."

"We can teach them to give others the benefit of the doubt, particularly those with whom they disagree."

Shouldn't we learn to be perceptive, analytical, and aware that some of the individuals among us are, in fact, mentally sick and need something other than tolerance and wishful thinking about how good they might be? So why is the First Lady telling us to teach kids the opposite?

We can also teach our children about the tremendous sacrifices made by the men and women who serve our country and by their families. We can explain to them that although we might not always agree with those who represent us, anyone who enters public life does so because they love their country and want to serve it.

But that's quite obviously untrue! Some people seek power for the wrong reasons or go astray after they've reached power. We need to observe the government with a clear, active, and critical eye. I can certainly understand how someone who holds power would love to turn off the criticism, but that is not the system we have, and it's self-serving for government officials to tell us to inculcate these false beliefs in children.

It would make more sense to teach creationism instead of evolution than to teach these wishful lies about government since children need to learn how to be effective citizens and lulling them into passive admiration of the government undermines the democratic process. Believing or not believing in creationism, by contrast, isn't going to change what happened in the grand expanse of evolutionary time.

What Obama said — after the Tucson massacre — about "human understanding" and the "old assumptions" we ought to challenge.

Following the advice in the Shaker hymn that followed the President's speech last night, I kept it simple. I highlighted the passage in the speech about how we should take "a good dose of humility" and not "use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another." But I'm not a Shaker, and I'm a little wary when the most powerful man in the world advises the masses to be humble and come together as one. So I want to look at what he said just before that:

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

But "there is evil in the world" is a simple explanation!

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. 

How about: Jared Loughner is a lunatic? Okay, Obama said "exactly." Yes, I agree with his very minor point that we cannot know the precise content and etiology of Loughner's madness. But as we try to understand the political landscape of the real world where non-insane people live, those details don't matter. We have a simple explanation and it's a damned good one. Yet the President tells me I ought to "guard against" thinking in such simple terms. Why? Sometimes it is simple! Jared Loughner is a lone crazy guy. There is evil in the world and it burst forth last Saturday. It's not like labeling al Qaeda "evil" and moving on, because Loughner wasn't part of a web of activity. I think what we need to "guard against" is using Loughner as an example of some larger problem that we need to solve.

Obama continued:

None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.

True. We can't know with certainty what his mental processes were, but we are justified in taking it as our working theory that the man was crazy in a way that doesn't relate to the real-world political issues that are worth putting our energy into trying to figure out — other than the real-world issue of identifying and restraining dangerously psychotic persons.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

That's what Obama said just before the passage I highlighted in last night. He goes on to push back those who've used the massacre as an occasion to make partisan political arguments — something he's strongly correct about. All right, then. What are we supposed to examine? We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future. Does he mean old assumptions about the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill? Does he mean gun control? Does he mean limits on free speech? Now, there are some details we need to hear about and debate. If freedom of speech is the "old assumption" we should be "willing to challenge," I'm going to fight.

"He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right."

Said one of Jared Loughner's friends.

For those of you who still want to argue, straining against the evidence, that the terrible political rhetoric pushed Loughner over the line, let me help you. I've studied law for 30 years, and I know how to extract an argument using what little is available.

Ready?

Here goes...

The overheated rhetoric in America was so repugnant that Jared Loughner couldn't bear to engage with it. Alienated and left to his own thoughts, he became mentally disordered, leading to the massacre. If only the political debate had been more gentle and inviting, he might have watched television and listened to the radio, and then his mind would have contained more conventional ideas, precluding the insane, murderous thoughts.

AND: I was just talking with Meade about my (deliberately strained) theory, and he said that a young guy like Loughner would not have been drawn in by more politely stated political commentary. A marginal individual — especially a person with a propensity toward violence — would probably be susceptible to more aggressive, more vivid commentary. What did Loughner consume instead of  politics? Wasn't it violent video games and movies? By contrast, the news — even the commentary pundits decry as vicious — would seem bland and insipid.

We've read that Loughner had a grudge against Gabrielle Giffords because she wouldn't answer the question "What is government if words have no meaning?" He seems to have decided she was stupid and fake. If that was his tendency, toned-down rhetoric wouldn't have been what would reincorporate him into the political community where he might be influenced by others and come to believe more normal things. He seems to have wanted to talk philosophically about what's really true, beneath the surface of things, beyond the platitudes.

Now, I think he was psychotic, in which case, none of this explanation applies, but let's assume you want to work with the idea that he was a marginal citizen who might have been normalized if the community socialized him more appropriately with debate and dialogue. What could have reached him? Probably not some namby-pamby paragon of niceness.