Words carry great weight

Like the rest of the nation, we have watched with sadness the events surrounding Saturday’s apparent attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.

A 22-year-old man, Jared Loughner, was arrested for shooting Giffords and 19 other people, six of whom, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge, lost their lives.

What little we know so far seems to indicate Loughner’s motives were political. He disagreed with Giffords politically and chose to express his disagreement with extreme, horrific violence.

As students of American history, we know full well that such incidents of violence are not limited to this period in our history. Nor are incidents of violence perpetrated solely by any one political party. And certainly, no single person should be asked to solely shoulder the blame.

Both sides need to spend some time in the penalty box.

Perhaps Pima County Sherrif Clarence Dupnik, who knew Giffords and the slain judge, John McCarthy Roll, said it best.

“All the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that — that may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences,” he told national media outlets assembled for a press conference Saturday.

We know there are those who will argue that if a madman hears a politician’s rhetoric and chooses to react with violence, only the madman is to blame.

But to borrow a metaphor we have heard commentators use as they dissect what happened in Arizona, this kind of rhetoric is like an infectious disease. When a pandemic tears through a community, it is the weak and the infirm who succumb first.

Likewise, it is the mentally infirm who are the first to act when people stoke the flames of fear and hatred in the name of politics.

We know first-hand the weight of words.

As a commenter on our Facebook page was quick to point out when we passed along Sheriff Dupnik’s words Saturday, we made national news last year with our own careless use of inflammatory words.

Words we used in an editorial invoking Alaska’s self-defense laws where meant in jest, but readers didn’t see it that way. Your reaction to our blunder was swift, loud and lasting. The editorial went viral and we could only watch in dismay as commentators on radio, television and the Internet threw our words back at us in condemnation.

Red-faced, we apologized repeatedly for our carelessness. And we repeat our previous apology. We were wrong. Such a blithe statement may have passed as innocuous in the company of friends, but it had no place in public discourse.

Among the many lessons we took away from this mistake was that our megaphone, in this age of the Internet, is larger than at any time in this paper’s history. And now, in the aftermath of Saturday’s tragic events, the world’s eyes are again upon us.

During this solemn time of national mourning and reflection we are reminded again of the weight that all words carry. We are reminded especially of the weight our words carry.

Perhaps Saturday’s sad events are no more than the actions of one man in need of mental health care. But if there is even the slightest chance that words and political divisions fueled his rage, this is our opportunity as a nation to change tack.

We pray for peace and healing for the families whose lives changed forever this day. Our prayer is the same for our beloved nation and this slice of heaven on earth we call home.

Sometimes from great tragedy, something beautiful is born. Like the 9-year-old girl who died Saturday who was born Sept. 11, 2001.

In honor of her memory, and all who lost so much this day, we challenge our friends, neighbors, family members and countrymen to take a step back, reflect and put a swift end to the heated rhetoric that has come to define our political discourse.

While the eyes of the world are again upon us, will you stand with us and share our prayer for peace and healing for our nation?