Obama Makes a Moving Call for Civility Before 14,000 Gathered for Tragic Arizona Shooting

On a day marked by vitriol after a weekend marked by unspeakable violence, President Barack Obama this Wednesday called Americans to the better angels of their nature at a memorial service in Tucson for the victims of a rampage that left six dead and 14 wounded when a gunman targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents outside an Arizona supermarket. Obama's speech to some 14,000 gathered in a stadium at the University of Arizona will likely be seen by historians as a defining moment in his presidency.

Early in his speech, the president said that Giffords, shortly after his visit to her hospital room earlier in the day, had opened her eyes for the first time. Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, sat with the First Lady and the president at the memorial service, and, said the president from the podium, gave Obama permission to share the news with the nation. "Gabby opened her eyes and she knows we’re here and she knows we love her and she knows that we will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey," he said. "We are there for her."

Then Obama got down to business, doing what he came to Arizona to do: tell everybody, from across the political spectrum, to tamp down the rhetoric.

There are no doubt those who chafe at the president's call to lay aside finger-pointing and his assertion that rhetoric did not cause the weekend's tragedy, especially in a political environment where calls to arms have become the new normal; an environment in which the president himself is often described by his opponents as a tyrant worthy of overthrow.

"But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -- at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do," Obama said, "it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

After quoting the Book of Job from the Hebrew Bible ("When I looked for light, I found darkness"), Obama continued: "For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind."

From 'Blood Libel' to 'Love Thy Neighbor'

The day in politics began with a video address from Sarah Palin, who finds herself incensed that liberals, in the wake of the shootings, keep citing a page on the Web site of her political action committee, as well as a pre-election tweet, as evidence of a poisoned political climate that appeared to affirm the violent impulses of Jared Loughner, the alleged mass murderer of the Tucson tragedy. At issue is a map posted on the SarahPAC Web site just before the midterm congressional elections that marked the PAC's targeted congressional districts, Gabrielle Giffords' district among them, with what appeared to be the crosshairs of a gun sight,  Then there was the tweet: "Don't retreat -- reload," came the directive from Palin's Twitter feed. In the video released by Palin on Wednesday, she accused her liberal critics of "blood libel," a term that evokes terrors suffered by European Jews in the Middle Ages.

Jewish leaders stepped forward to condemn Palin's comments. Right-wing pundits accused liberals of trying to outlaw metaphor and simile. Rhetorical mayhem ensued, just hours before Obama took the stage in Tucson.

It would have been gratifying to hear Obama condemn all the talk of "Second Amendment remedies" for uncooperative members of Congress, or of health care as tyranny, or of threats to the whites of Democrats' eyes. But at this moment when the country is rocked by an horrific act, that is not the president's job. His job is to calm the nation as a whole, to do his best to make it whole. So, he came not to praise our opprobrium, but to bury it. He came to praise the dead, and he did that and more, calling to mind the most appealing traits of each individual, traits in which we would like to see ourselves. He did the same for the wounded who are fighting for their lives.