President Obama has called for a time of healing – a suggestion that will fall on deaf ears of the apologists on the extreme right. What we do hear from these people is that the Democrats are trying to take advantage of this tragedy. They have made no attempt to join with the president in the healing process. The extreme right could start by asking their candidates running for office to tone down their anarchistic rhetoric. A case in point is Michele Bachman, one of their favorite stars, who has urged her constituents “to be armed and dangerous.” Another example of this kind of gun ranting was Sharron Angle, who lost her bid to defeat Sen. Harry Reid in Arizona. She told her constituents, “The nation was arming because they will have to fight for their liberty in some Second Amendment way. If we don’t win at the ballot box what will be the next step?”

This kind implicit or explicit demagoguery should have no place in the lexicon of a person running for public office in our democracy. It only fosters disorder and dissension. One of the ways to heal the country is for us to lose our fixation on guns, perhaps then we can talk and debate, but not shoot each other even if we don’t come to an amicable solution during our discussion.

Bob Roffler
North Yarmouth