We're heading into the alleged season of peace on earth and goodwill toward men (also women, children, and animals.)

But I'm having trouble getting my enthusiasm up, given recent news events, specifically the Nov. 27 killings at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, followed on Dec. 2 with the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.

My emotions have been jumping all over the place, to the point of struggling to narrow my rant to a coherent 500 words.

Should I focus on the effect of an extremely inflammatory gotcha video that was heavily edited to show what the proponents wanted, as opposed to what actually transpired? America's gun culture? The threat posed by individuals sucked in by the death cult that is spreading its poison in the Middle East and Africa?

How about access to mental health care in the U.S.? Or responsibility for the direct and indirect consequences of one's actions?

The Planned Parenthood killer was your usual weird angry male loner. The people he killed were not women looking for abortions. One was a campus policeman and assistant pastor. One was a military veteran. One was a mother of two children. They were just in the wrong place.

Then there were the others who were wounded. I haven't heard that any of them have died. I hope they all will recover completely.

Colorado Springs is a conservative Second Amendment loving town. So I had the thought that this is just the price of the freedom that they support. The people who were killed or wounded might not agree.

I do object that anyone who suggested a connection between the inflammatory heavily edited videos and these killings was condemned for "politicizing" this tragedy, as if it hadn't been politicized for months. Promoters of the videos disavow any connection, but actions and words have consequences.

Then within the week we had the mass shooting in California, committed by supporters of the Middle Eastern death cult. This raises all sorts of homeland security issues and tarnishes followers of Islam. I'd like to see the media and the politicians stop attaching any reference to Islam to the death cult, to eliminate any implication of religious legitimacy. Words have consequences.

But this week, one of our presidential wannabes (that I won't name because he gets way too much free media exposure as it is) has made demonizing and inflammatory comments about Muslims in or coming to the U.S. It's reminiscent of the way Jews were demonized in 1930s Germany, and by some in the U.S.

No doubt this presidential wannabee will disavow any connection when some other weird angry male loner blasts people at a mosque somewhere in the U.S., killing anyone who happens to be in the way.

Words and actions have consequences.

In what passes for political discourse these days, there's a lot of talk about freedom. The flip side of freedom is responsibility. I'd like to hear a lot more talk about that.