Nancy Pelosi, (D) for Disgrace

If Nancy Pelosi (D) is concerned about the lack of civility in the current national conversation, she ought to consider leading by example. Her latest tirade, as Wesley J. Smith points out, is both shameless and historically dishonest.

Nancy Pelosi has now darkly warned that the agitated current political mood–which, if anything, she unloosed by likening Town Hall Obamacare protesters to Nazis and thugs–could result in violence. Her allusion is to the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. From the story:

I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.

Here’s the thing: Moscone and Milk weren’t murdered because Dan White was set off by a poisonous political atmosphere. Rather, they were murdered because Moscone refused to reappoint White to the Board of Supervisors after he quit in a fit of pique. He murdered Milk–not because he was gay, as the legend now has it–but because he had been White’s friend, and then–overheard by White–strongly advised Moscone to refuse the reappointment request because of White’s instability. In other words, White murdered Milk because White felt personally betrayed, not because of the political atmosphere.

There is, of course, nothing unusual about left-wing politicians revising history in order to create heroes and martyrs for their pet causes. But Pelosi has taken this dubious tactic to a new level, exploiting a tragedy from another era in a not so subtle attempt to silence debate in the present day. Her conduct is beneath contempt and demonstrates yet again that the Speaker of the House is a national disgrace.