The tragic events of today involving the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the deaths of six others including a nine-year-old child is a chilling reminder of collateral damage of the Tea Party movement.
The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, may not have had ties to the extreme right wing who helped turn the U.S. Congress upside down, but then again, Timothy McVeigh did not have ties to Newt Gingrich's Contract With America political overhaul either which led to the Oklahoma City bombing.
But what is chilling to me as someone who teaches English Composition at two community colleges, I got a hold of Loughner's reading list off of his MySpace page.
Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland , Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha , The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno
A part of me should be happy that someone Jared's age has quite an eclectic mix of classical books; however, his favorite books show the schizophrenic mind of someone both well read and horribly confused. Mind you, I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but this reading list includes political paranoia novels such as "Animal Farm," "Brave New World," and "Fahrenheit 451." Even more disturbing are two books in which he considers his favorites: "The Communist Manufesto" and "Mein Kampf," yet he listed "To Kill a Mockingbird," book regarding injustice as well.
Loughner has also read books many have analyzed regarding fantasy such as "Peter Pan," "Alice in Wonderland," and "Phantom Toll Booth." A good analyst can peel through the layers of Loughner's inner being through these books.
Ironically, the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, Sean Hannitys, and Sarah Palins of this world show disdain for anyone showing intellectual fortitude and call them elitists yet Mr. Loughner's love of reading and classic novels provide an oxymoron that will have many talking about for quite sometime. I try to tell my students to read more, but what to read maybe just as important as reading itself or perhaps to like at both sides of the story. It makes one wonder how my fellow educators will approach this in the future.
In conclusion, did any of these books inspire Lougher to commit a horrendous crime or was it just a coincidence?