Is America growing politically unstable?

Reuters | January 10th, 2011 at 12:27 pm

Is America becoming less politically stable? A glance at some foreign newspapers would
certainly give that impression. This is an important economic question. The global primacy of
Treasury bonds and the dollar stems mostly from the nation’s massive economic might. But
confidence in U.S. political stability also plays a role. The shooting of Arizona Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords, though tragic, shouldn’t alter those perceptions — unless freedom of speech
suffers.

Amateur criminal psychologists in the Democratic Party and liberal punditocracy have been
quick to blame conservative political rhetoric for helping nudge an unbalanced 22-year-old into
acting on his murderous impulses. Pointed charges have been flung at the Tea Party movement
and at Sarah Palin. In 2008, her political team created an online map that featured 20 targeted
Democratic congressional districts identified by crosshairs, including that of Giffords.

There’s no evidence at this stage that the shooter — whose bizarre anti-government rants
centered on the use of grammar as mind control — ever saw the Palin map or even favored right-
wing punditry. And Democratic operatives created similar midterm maps targeting Republicans.
Within reason, though, even hard-hitting imagery is not necessarily sinister: political contests,
like sports, are steeped in martial metaphors. Bids for election, for instance, are referred to as
campaigns.

Yet political violence has been rare in the United States in recent years. That’s despite the
disputed 2000 presidential election, the unpopular Iraq war and the election of the first black
president.  Indeed, the World Bank ranks America above the UK when it comes to “political
stability and absence of violence.” And the U.S. rank has actually been on the rise in recent
years.