In the hours after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the first Jewish Congresswoman from Arizona, the New York Times visited her synagogue. After all, in 2006 Giffords explained, "My Jewish heritage has really instilled in me the importance of education and caring for the community." That must have come as a surprise to CNN regular and Red State web site editor Erick Erickson. As it turns out, Erickson, the same man who called a Supreme Court Justice a "goat f**king child molester" and joked about shooting Census workers, now suggests the lesson of Tucson should be the "saving faith in Jesus Christ."
As Media Matters noted, Erickson's Red State testimony came after declaring "I am tired of talking about the Arizona shooting," apparently because "the left has done its best to try to pin it on the right." After charging that "Barack Obama's advisors are urging him to seize the moment and join the left in blaming the right for this violence," CNN's controversial right-wing flame thrower declared where those praying for the Jewish Giffords should look for answers:

Through it all though, well meaning people on both sides of the ideological and partisan divide are not talking about the one thing that should be talked about -- a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

After acknowledging, "This is not intended to be a sermon," Erickson continued:

The topic of faith in Christ makes people cringe. But whether you believe it or not, here is the reality: beyond us is a world we cannot see with our eyes. It impacts us on a daily basis. It is a world of very real angels and very real demons. It is a world of a very real God and a very real Satan, a very real Heaven and a very real Hell.

The back and forth and accusations and lies surrounding Jared Loughner should be a constant reminder to us that there is more at play in our world than what we see. And, frankly, at times like this I am more and more mindful of the great chasm in this world between the saved and damned.

To his credit, Erickson admits, "I am no saint. And I am no preacher." That's a step forward for the Georgia lawyer and church deacon, given his past slanders and threats.
Slanders directed at, among others, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. With the departure of David Souter from the bench, Erick Erickson took to Twitter, where he could hardly contain his joy:

"The nation loses the only goat f**king child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter's retirement."

After declaring of the Obama administration's health care reform spokesperson, "Linda Douglass is really the Joseph Goebbels of the health care shop," even Erickson admitted to his CNN colleague Howard Kurtz, "I probably shouldn't have said that."
The not-so Christ-like Erickson also told Kurtz that "I've definitely evolved" since smearing Barack and Michelle Obama. As Kurtz recalled for him in March:

The first lady, you wrote the following -- the headline was, "Is Obama shagging hookers behind the media's back?" And you write, "I assume not. I assume that Obama's Marxist harpy wife would go Lorena Bobbit on him should he even think about it."

And before protesting today about "all of the media handwringing over the 'tone' in the country," Erickson was among the leading conservative voices of the conservative movement casually turning to the language of violence. As Politico reported in April:

Erickson -- the founder of the conservative blog RedState -- said on his Macon, Ga.-area radio show Thursday that if a census worker carrying a longer American Community Survey form came by his house, he would "pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door."

Lawmakers in Washington State, too, came in for a rhetorical blast from Erickson for, of all things, regulating the phosphate context of dishwashing detergent:

"I'd be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation."

Back in Tucson, Gabrielle Giffords' Rabbi Stephanie Aaron explained, "In Jewish practice, we have an idea of repairing the world," adding that Giffords "was very active in doing that work and being a pursuer of justice."
Being a pursuer of justice and a repairer of the world - that's a lesson Erick Erickson might want to try to learn.