There may be a politically active extremist serving as a sheriff in Arizona. But it’s not Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. On the day of the horrific shootings in Tucson that killed 6, critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and injured 13 others, Sheriff Dupnik, visibly shaken, decried the vicious tone that politics has taken recently, especially in his state. He blamed nobody for the murders but the murderer. But, he said, it was time for some national “soul searching.”

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

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Let me say one thing, because people tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.

Many on the Right saw these remarks and reacted not with an honest discussion of responsibility in political speech, but with a campaign to demonize the sheriff. People For’s Right Wing Watch blog has been reporting these reactions…from statements that Sheriff Dupnik was “politicizing” tragedy to implying that the sheriff wants the killer to go free.

People For’s president, Michael Keegan, responded to the smears on Sheriff Dupnik in the Huffington Post yesterday:

Unfortunately, "civil discourse" is exactly what’s lost when calls for honesty and responsibility are demonized and belittled. Nobody but Loughner can be blamed for Saturday’s violence. But that does not absolve any of us from the duty to consider the impact of our words and to approach political discourse with honesty and responsibility. Sheriff Dupnik deserves to be thanked, not demonized, for telling that uncomfortable truth.

Those who talk openly and honestly about the dangerous strains in our national political discourse and work to start a more responsible political debate aren’t politicizing tragedy–they’re working to prevent it. Political figures owe this to all of us who want to participate in democracy without fearing for our safety: those who denounce violence should also denounce the rhetoric that can incite it.

We’re asking those who want to stand in solidarity with the sheriff to sign this letter of support: http://site.pfaw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=sheriff