Rabbi: Jared Lee Loughner isn’t anti-Semitic, just crazy.

Rabbi Dov Fischer of Young Israel of Orange County is tired of hearing the Tucson rampage blamed on anti-Semitism.

Jared Lee Loughner is a nut.  He has earned by dint of his own merit the privilege of being deemed a 100% crackpot.  Yes, he may have had an interface with a hate group whose name I choose not to publicize further, possibly because that group hates Latinos or African Americans or perhaps even people from a distant planet where Loughner perhaps thinks he once lived.  (For that matter, perhaps his anger stems from a perception that he has friends living on Pluto, which has been stripped of its planet identity without its input.)  Regardless, the search for truth and understanding is not helped by searching endlessly for a Jewish angle in every cockamamie and outlier news event.

Rep. Giffords is a Jew?  Well, besides that, she apparently once encountered Loughner at a similar public function, where he asked her an irrational question, and she answered him by speaking in Spanish.  Observers suggest that he may have hated her ever since.  Irrespective of her religion, her politics, and how she voted on ObamaCare.

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In the pursuit of finding the Jewish angle, we next are told that this maniac loved Mein Kampf.  But he also loved Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Aesop’s Fables and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan.  My mind can be persuaded otherwise, but I am not yet convinced that this tragedy is about any of the various media interest groups that fascinate journalists seeking a greater consciousness in the face of madness.  It is not about the Tea Party any more than John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan because of frenzied Democrat rhetoric at the time demonizing Mr. Reagan.  Rather, Hinckley wanted to impress a fictional movie character whom actress Jodi Foster portrayed in Taxi Driver.

Sometimes, a madman is just a madman. 

Author

  • Brian Saint-Paul

    Brian Saint-Paul was the editor and publisher of Crisis Magazine. He has a BA in Philosophy and an MA in Religious Studies from the Catholic University of America, in Washington. D.C. In addition to various positions in journalism and publishing, he has served as the associate director of a health research institute, a missionary, and a private school teacher. He lives with his wife in a historic Baltimore neighborhood, where he obsesses over Late Antiquity.

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