The List

Richard Lawrence (1835 attempt on President Andrew Jackson)

John Wilkes Booth (1865 assassinated President Abraham Lincoln)

Charles J. Guiteau (1881 assassinated President James Garfield)

Leon Czolgosz (1901 assassinated President William McKinley)

John Schrank (1912 attempt on President Theodore Roosevelt)

Carl Weiss (1935 assassinated US Senator Huey Long)

Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola (1950 attempt on President Harry S. Truman)

Richard Paul Pavlick (December 12, 1960 attempt on President elect John F. Kennedy)

Lee Harvey Oswald (1963 assassinated President John F. Kennedy)

Norman Butler, Thomas Johnson and Talmadge Hayer (1965 assassinated Malcolm X)

James Earl Ray (1968 assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Sirhan Sirhan (1968 assassinated US Senator Robert F. Kennedy)

Arthur Bremer (1972 attempt on Presidential candidate George Wallace)

Samuel Byck (1974 attempt on President Richard Nixon, with hijacked plane to crash                into White House)

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme (1975 attempt on President Gerald Ford)

Sara Jane More (1975 attempt on President Gerald Ford)

Dan White (1978 assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk)

John Hinckley (1981 attempt on President Ronald Reagan)

Casey Brezik (2010 attempt on Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, with knife)

Jared Lee Loughner (2011 attempt on US Representative Gabrielle Giffords)

The list is long.  Our nation has a long history of violence against its elected leaders, not to mention threats of violence and intimidation which are a daily occurrence for many of them.   Whether motivated by politics or insanity the assassins are mostly male and almost always use a gun.  

The events on January 8th, 2011 with the murder of 6 and the wounding of 14 during Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' "meet and greet" at a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona will occasion lots of soul searching. There will be all sorts of theorizing and analysis of this violence and there should be.  Does it reflect something wrong in our nation or our times?  Is there something we can change to prevent such mindless violence in the future?   Is there something wrong with us, inherent in our system, in ourselves?

Yet "the list" would suggest such a tragedy is not unique to our times.  Expanding it across history and national boundaries "the list" would be much, much longer.   Compared to much of the rest of the world our political process in the USA is extraordinarily peaceful and just.   This is not to diminish this most recent attack, nor to suggest that our political system is perfect.

Which may be why the assault on Representative Giffords so grieves the vast majority of us.  This is not the way it’s supposed to be in America.  We are better than this.   We resolve our politics with debate and at the ballot.   We've learned from our past.  Right?

We may have a long way to go to reach the dream of America, "land of the free, home of the brave".  There is no excuse for political violence but the power-mad, greedy and twisted seem always to find one.  

Where is God in such a world? 

We find God in the commitment to service, the faith and the courage of the three strangers who wrestled Jared Lee Loughner to the ground as he reached for another magazine of bullets; in Christina-Taylor Green the nine year old killed at the scene who recently elected to her student council wanted to learn more about public service; in Dorwin Stoddard (76) an active church leader who died protecting his wife from the bullets; in the emergency first responders, police, paramedics and Emergency Room personnel who saved lives that day and are dedicated to doing it again and again, each and every day.

For those of us who follow the teachings of a crucified God....assassinated by the political processes of Empire and religion...we know that the violence inflicted by "the list" and the agents of power and greed who continue to use political violence will never get the last word.    There are 2.2 billion followers of Jesus today.  How many even remember Pontus Pilate?

In our grief and anger over the events in Tucson let's not forget the thousands of average citizens who serve this nation in elected office who put themselves out into the public they serve with the desire to make our communities a better place.   Their politics may be right or wrong.  We may agree or disagree with their ideology and goals.  If we don't like them we can always vote them out of office.   Regardless, every one of us needs to pray for their success, health and safety.