Two down for the price of one!
I should have seen that he was a lefty from the fact he made no effort to escape. A rightist assassin would have attempted to cover his own ass.
He seems to have been an antisemite of Jewish descent – classic left wing crazy.
Right wing rhetoric probably contributed. The left’s self hating identity crisis certainly contributed. But the root cause of rising tensions is the approaching Cloward–Piven crisis.
The root cause of the approaching Cloward–Piven crisis is that the government has purchased itself a left wing electorate, which electorate daily gets more expensive, and purchased left wing unity, which daily gets more expensive. A shakeout approaches. During that shakeout, some part of the left will be thrown overboard. The Cloward Piven strategy is that there will be a violent self coup in which that part of the left which is deemed insufficiently left wing will be thrown overboard – thus as little of the left as possible will be thrown overboard.
I would, of course, prefer a solution in which the established left was purged from government and quasi governmental institutions in the way that Germany was denazified. Check the resumes sent to every institution that is governmental or government backed. If some substantial proportion of the resumes give left wing credentials, then the institution should be suspected of being government sponsored leftism. If hiring practices favor those with left wing credentials, as for example the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the NEA, the State Department, and so on and so forth, then the institution is a government sponsored leftist wing organization. The organization should be abolished, and membership of that organization should be treated the way membership of a Nazi organization was treated in postwar Germany.
The British government is trying something moderate, something in the middle between these revolutionary extremes, muddling through. It does not appear to be working, though early days yet, to soon to tell what the outcome will be.
To avoid or resolve the Cloward Piven crisis by normal constitutional and democratic means is going to look at least a little bit like the revolutionary de-leftification strategy I outlined above, modeled on de-nazification, for the basic problem is that a left wing electorate, and left wing unity, costs too much. Even the ultra leftist Cloward–Piven strategy, of resolving the crisis with a left wing self coup, has a little bit of de-leftification in it.  After the Cloward–Piven self coup, some leftists who are at present the recipients of large amounts of government largess, are going to find themselves re-defined as rightists and cease being recipients of government largess.
I should have seen that he was a lefty
Loughner was paranoid schizophrenic, but otherwise he was one of yours. No leftist, and least of all extreme leftist, cares whether currency is paper, gold or seashells, whether it is countywide or worldwide. No leftist either cares whether federal law prevails over state one or vice versa.
A rightist assassin would have attempted to cover his own ass.
Just like McVeigh, who could not make even the trivial compromise of getting proper license plate.
Loughner fought to the last bullet, unlike McVeigh, who let himself to be caught like rabbit by ordinary traffic cop. Was Mc Veigh also a leftist? ;-P
I would, of course, prefer a solution in which the established left was purged from government and quasi governmental institutions in the way that Germany was denazified.
So you want world war that ends with defeat of your country. Once a Leninist, always a Leninist ;-(
Leftists do care: Rightists often propose gold, leftists often propose global fiat currency, or local currencies based on labor value, or some mixture of both with local labor value script for the proles on the collective, global fiat currency for the planners. Total replacement of money with a new form of money was a part of the Khmer Rouge platform – they wanted to deny ordinary people access to or use of money. They abolished paper money, attempted to enforce a purely book entry system. Leftists have frequently issued labor value scrip that was good only within the collective.
Loughner did not propose gold, therefore a left wing monetary reform.
McVeigh got away, and ran for it, was caught later. Loughner stuck around.
You don’t win by dying for your country. You win by making some other poor bastard die for his country.