This post is a direct response to Phib’s post at his place.
When I get this project over-I am going to do a long post on why the argument that heated political rhetoric does not beget violence is wrong-and forcefully attack those who think they get some sort of a free pass from the ridiculous analogies told again and again to us by our Tri Corner hat wearing friends and all their blogger buddies.
For the record-it is perfectly legitimate to discuss whether the anti-government rhetoric has created a problem for this country, regardless of whatever the particulars of the Tucson shooter turn out to be.
Get over it-the right has gone too far, just as the left did 30+ years ago. Just because both sides did it-does not make it right.
Read:
On Debating Our Debate.
As we debate what kind of rhetoric is and isn’t objectionable, it would help if we could make some specific distinctions and keep some important things in mind. To that end:
Every gun metaphor is not created equal. Military metaphors infuse our talk about politics; the only thing that comes close is sports. The word “campaign” only relatively recently began to be used to refer to politics; its original use referred to military endeavors. But there is a difference between using metaphors that invoke violence (“We’re going to fight this battle to the end!”) and using rhetoric that invokes violence specifically directed at your opponents (like this), or even speaks literally of people arming to take on your opponents or the government (like Sharron Angle‘s infamous discussion of “Second Amendment remedies” to not getting the result you want at the ballot box). One is perfectly ordinary; the other ought to be condemned.
The fact that someone criticizes your rhetoric doesn’t mean they’re “blaming” you for the Arizona shooting. Right now, Sarah Palin‘s defenders are angrily denouncing people for “blaming” her for the shooting, because people have pointed to her now famous crosshair map of candidates she was targeting for defeat in 2010, including Gabrielle Giffords. But no one is saying this guy committed his massacre because he looked at this map. What people are saying is that this kind of thing goes too far. Certain things contribute to an atmosphere in which violence becomes more likely; criticizing those things doesn’t mean you’ve said that in the absence of one particular statement or Web posting this event wouldn’t have occurred.
If you think your rhetoric is above reproach, you have an obligation to defend it on its merits. Naturally, many on the right are going to attempt to turn the criticism of them around on the left: See how they’re playing politics! But if you think it’s perfectly fine for you to say what you’ve been saying, explain why. Attacking the motives of those criticizing you doesn’t qualify.
Asking you to tone it down is not censorship. Over at Slate, Jack Shafer defends inflammatory political speech by saying, in part, that “any call to cool ‘inflammatory’ speech is a call to police all speech.” As someone who has spent many years tangling with conservatives over their rhetoric, I’ve heard this argument a million times. When you criticize some talk-show host for something he said, he inevitably responds, “You can’t censor me!” The First Amendment guarantees your freedom to say whatever idiotic thing you want, but it doesn’t keep me from calling you out for it. No one is talking about throwing anyone in jail for extreme rhetoric, but we are talking about whether people should be condemned for certain kinds of rhetoric.
The rhetoric of violence is not the only kind of rhetoric that encourages violence. The apocalyptic rhetoric we’ve seen from some on the right, most notably Glenn Beck, should be part of this discussion too. When Beck portrays Barack Obama as the head of a socialist/communist/Nazi conspiracy whose goal is the literal destruction of America, he is implicitly encouraging violence. If that really were the nature of the administration, and our liberty really were on the verge of being snuffed out, violence would be justified.
If you’re going to say “Liberals do it too” then you ought to provide some evidence. No one disputes that there has been a tide of extreme and violent rhetoric from some quarters of the right in the last couple of years. But any journalist who characterizes this as a bipartisan problem ought to be able to show examples, from people equal in prominence to those on the right (i.e. members of Congress, incredibly popular radio hosts, etc.) who have said equally violent and incendiary things. ( Skippy note-this is key, finding some mean posters from an anti-war rally does not count. The protests of 2003 are not the same as those of 2009-period)“Harry Reid once called George W. Bush a liar” doesn’t qualify, nor does a nasty comment some anonymous person once left on a blog.
UPDATE!
Clive Crook over at the Atlantic has some good words too:
“What? Surely we can manage subtler distinctions than that. You know, “persuade” is not the same as “command”–that kind of thing. Still, he is right that you cannot legislate civility, and that it would be wrong (as well as plainly unconstitutional) to try. His big mistake, I think, is to see ceaseless anger and contempt as the formula for a healthy polity. Spirited, he calls it.
The problem with anger is that it makes it harder to think clearly. It’s just bad practice. You might not want to outlaw it, but it can’t hurt to understand the drawbacks. Also, in the end, we have to get on with people whose views we do not share. If we work ourselves up into mutual loathing, or antagonize the other guy to the point of incoherence, then we are unable to communicate. We cripple our ability to govern ourselves or live together happily. Even if the result is not physical violence, it is exaggerated political turbulence and discontent. Shafer seems to want as much of these as we can get, without actually coming to blows. Those African countries riven by tribe? They’re so spirited! Basically, aim for civil war, then pull it back just a notch.
It doesn’t sound like “a more perfect union” to me.
Sorry Phib-somethings are just wrong and need to be acknowledged as such. Trying to say that the stupidity of our politics over the last two plus years is all “the left’s” fault-and that this is “exploiting” the situation, is just not right.
And if we need any further proof of the futility of the equivalence arguement– or why there is no passable reason to be “disgusted” with those who are raising our current level of discourse as a subject for discussion-I give you this little tidbit to chew on. ( Because now I have to go back to spreadsheets and try to find a way to allocate a whole boatload of hours……to keep real people from getting screwed).
I don’t really blame conservatives for being upset at liberals trying pin the blame for the Giffords shooting on them, but the furious defensiveness of their counterattack says all that needs to be said about how uncomfortable they are with their own recent history. The big difference between right and left, as I and others have noted repeatedly, isn’t just in the amount of violent rhetoric, but its source. On the liberal side, it only occasionally comes from movement leaders. On the right, it regularly does. It comes from opinion leaders, political leaders, and media leaders, and the more heated they get, the more popular they get. As David Corn says, “Republicans have institutionalized their side’s craziness.” This is the big difference between the two sides, and the right could really stand to engage in a wee bit of soul searching over this.
I accept your challenge and raise you,,more to come.
But then again who is as GREAT as Beck or Rush(TIC)
Here’s a few. There’s much more online.
“A spoiled child (Bush) is telling us our Social Security isn’t safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here’s your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little b*stard. [audio of gun being ******].” — A “humor bit” from the Randi Rhodes Show
“I want to go up to the closest white person and say: ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my mental health” — New York city councilman Charles Barron
“..And then there’s Rumsfeld who said of Iraq ‘We have our good days and our bad days.’ We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger.” — From a fundraising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club
“I believe in ecoterrorism.” — James Cameron
“…In an ideal world, American consumers could be convinced to do the right thing through an appeal to logic with public service messages like the ‘What Would Jesus Drive?’ TV campaign, but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can’t be reasoned with. They’re selfish and stupid. It’s unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing’s for sure: It couldn’t be happening to a more deserving group of people.” — Ted Rall winks at ecoterrorism
“F*** God D*mned Joe the God D*mned Motherf*cking plumber! I want Motherf*cking Joe the plumber dead.” — Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.
“Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” — The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places
(Rush Limbaugh)” just wants the country to fail. To me that’s treason. He’s not saying anything different than what Osama Bin Laden is saying. You might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight. … Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?” — Wanda Sykes
“You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch. I think he’s Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush?” — Chris Matthews
“I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow….I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Bill Maher
“If I got (Condi Rice) a— on camera, I would put my Mars Air Jordans so far up her butt that the Mayo Clinic would have to remove them.” — Spike Lee
Charlie – “you know F— it …. and George Bush wife? I’d F— that b*tch to death” — “Shock Jocks” Opie & Anthony talk rape & violence with their guest “Homeless Charlie.”
“For those of you who do, as a matter of principle, oppose war in any form, the idea of supporting a conscientious objector who’s already been inducted [and] in his combat service in Iraq might have a certain appeal. But let me ask you this: Would you render the same support to someone who hadn’t conscientiously objected, but rather instead rolled a grenade under their line officer in order to neutralize the combat capacity of their unit?” — University Professor Ward Churhill on supporting soldiers who frag their officers
“Drudge? Aw, Drudge, somebody ought to wrap a strong Republican entrail around his neck and hoist him up about six feet in the air and watch him bounce.” — Liberal radio host, Mike Malloy
“I know how the ‘tea party’ people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their ‘Obama Plan White Slavery’ signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” — The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy
Source(s):
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawki…
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Gray Wanderer
There was Al Gore and his violent rehtoric which inspired
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-shermer-arizona-shooting-20110111,0,3409038.story
a sane voice
The fact that it came from Town Hall-makes it very suspect. That’s the first thing.
Second-with the possible exception of Chris Matthews, NOT ONE of those people has the same kind of stature among the left as Limbaugh does on the right. Proof? How many right wingers have had to backtrack from things that pissed Rush off?
15 yards for delay of game.
Sure there is something going wrong there Shipmate in how people cannot disagree in a reasonable manner ( if I may be modest, in a way you and I have done for over half a decade ) – but it had nothing to do with Tucson. That was the act of insanity. Nothing more.
The facts back it up.
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Morals—the-servile-mind-5318
If you question the accuracy of the quotes as you should, then do a lexus nexus search or just drag and drop the quote on google.
The above is a lengthy read but its a thought on democracy and the role of government and the responsibility of people within that democracy.
Perhaps there is even wisdom therin.
Jim: I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about people who read the Sun.
Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.
– A Conflict of Interest
On the media albeit the Brits…’Yes. Prime Minister”
Skippy..I thought you would ESPECIALLY like the last four words !!!!!
I’ll say this again-its not that the quotes exist, it is who they come from. ( See the new content to this post). Only on one side of the aisle is there a mainstream broadcast network actively spreading these positions as if they were gospel.
And Phib-to dismiss it as simply craziness, nothing here, move along-is to miss the fact that for every crazy who surfaces like this guy did there are 10 below the waterline. And that in fact there has been an escalating level of violence and threats of violence for the past couple of years. This country’s insane gun laws and fetish with owning guns helps that ( and I am not naive to believe we can change that) as well as the implicit arguments that are at the heart of the tea party : That there is an us and them -and that them are just freeloading off of us; and the idea that it is somehow Ok to call the government of the United States evil.
David Frum wrote yesterday: “This talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk. Better: This crime should summon us to a quiet collective resolution to cease this kind of talk and to cease to indulge those who engage in it.” That was the point.
I agree with Dilbert-san!
Rhetoric leads to violence is indisputable!!!!! Only a fool would miss out on the obvious.
Thomas Paine- Revolutionary War!
Thomas Jefferson- Revolutionary War!
Patrick Henry- Revolutionary War
Lincoln- Civil War
Lincoln- More Civil War
John Brown- Harper’s Ferry
Mao-Little Red Book-Cultural Revolution-Great Leap Forward
Adolph Hitler- well, you know
Good God! You want rhetoric and War read Thucydides and the History of the Peloponnesian War. Zarking Athenian dirtbag rabble rousers.
No no. Ole Dilbert-san has a point when he accuses the MEDIA of letting a 22 year old dead ender pot smoking total loser off the hook for being a weed on the body politic and denouncing him as a tool of the MEDIA!!!!!
Come on Skippy, you can do better than that.
Pretty picture on the mast head these days….Is that a P3 sort of thing landing in Vieques?
Its a C-130 flying over Victoria Harbour. In a real city, where people are too busy to argue about this nonsense. I was there when they filmed this scene for the Dark Knight.
Its a trend Curtis-and if this is the event that wakes people up to that trend ( fully 10 or so that I can count of politcally motivated murders since 2008) then that can be the only good that comes from it.
10 political murders in the US since 2008…????
Who?
I googled varients of the above and could find none in the US>>…please educate.
Considering all the guns in Arizona, isn’t it odd that no one in that crowd HAD a gun? and if someone did???
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/qa_professor_of_political_rhet.php?page=1
From the Columbian School of Journalism and the impact of violent rhetoric.
Dr George Tiller was murdered in 2009
The Pittsburgh Police shooting in 2009 three dead.
The guy who flew his plane into the government building in 2009.
Three incidents of violence connected to militia groups in 2009 and 2010.
The current murder in Tucson-which regardless of motive was political.
As with any tragic event, the speculation in the first 48 hours done by media, pundits and polititions does very little to advance what really was the effect and cause.
This guy was a whack job and many knew it and went whistling past the graveyard.
Tiller was murdered by a person with strong RELIGIOUS beliefs..
The Militias KILLED three people? who?
Please don’t say that census taker..there is NO evidence that THAT crime was politically motivated.
Here is the definition of a political murder.http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Political+murder
Cy Kirk is right…
One thing that I read today in CS Monitor…that we know he was rejected by the Army for smoking Marijuana…IF he was still a user then perhaps, the author of that article opines, drugs affected his brain/mind/ability to reason etc….
Religious beliefs or no- extremist rhetoric ( see Bill O shrieking about him)
As for the militias- they have a long record of bad things – see Michigan for example.
Do I believe that the famous crosshairs _caused_ this shooting? I do not.
More importantly, I find it incredible that anyone, anywhere is using _speech_ to argue that _speech_ (violent or not) can not and does not influence other people. Advocates of this position: do you really want to argue that Gov Palin’s speech influences exactly zero people? That no person in the history of humanity /ever/ influenced other people by way of speech?
How does one argue the futility of speech without using speech? (Speech being writing as well as verbal communication).
Buck,
there is a difference between “influencing” people and urging them on to violence and they then complying..
Please give me just one example of a person who listened to Sarah Palin and committed violence…
http://www.realclearpolitics.com has a plethora of viewpoints on this matter and I know I was shocked, shocked!!!, that the viewpoints fell along partisan lines…..
I was watching Bill Maher last night on Jay…usually a very liberal audience and even THEY were aghast at Bill for his comments.
Hes become quite the agent provacateur.
Skippy,
I think we have agreed in the last post on this topic to disagree with each other. I am also not going to point out some of the hypocrits on both sides of the aisle since I would be wasting my time and yours. I did so over at Phib’s place and brought some discourse for that view from some of his regular contributiors.
Instead I am going to ask this question of you:
Can a station like Fox News not exsist and can not an option of folks to present a view of the world as they see it? Can not some of those on the “right” side of the political aisle have a chance to voice thier opinions and fight what they appear as attempts to destroy what they view as thier ideals by some of those on the other side of the aisle?
I watch Fox News from time to time. I enjoy catching John Stossel or Neal Cavouto myself, the same with Brett Bair/Brit Hume’s show, or when Tony Snow was on there, since they stick within thier SME fields. Or argued thier points without resorting to bomb throwing vitoril. If that makes me bad in your eyes, so be it. Just like I use to catch MacNeil/Lehrer news hour simply for the same reason that Fox admits they exist, to present both sides of an issue with a calm discussion or presentation of the represenative sides.
As I argued earlier. We shouldn’t restrict the voice of anyone. We should allow them to see the light of day. I also feel that we should argue with them in a logical, peaceful, and calm manner. I have been reading some of William Buckley recently, and honestly believe that those on the right should argue thier points the way he did in both his columns and on his show. I think that folks like Beck, Hannity, The View, Michelle Malkin, James Carville, Stephen Colbert, Olbermann, and others in the political punditry class in America. We should hold to task anyone whose commentary is over the top and vitoril completely destroys thier postion. No matter what side of the aisle they put themselves into.
“The big difference between right and left, as I and others have noted repeatedly, isn’t just in the amount of violent rhetoric, but its source. On the liberal side, it only occasionally comes from movement leaders…”
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night.
Game, Set, Match.
R/
Sluf
Ah Dilbert-san, if I cannot trust you to grasp and understand the first amendment or the second and I cannot trust you to comprehend that free speech means free speech I must question both of your other identifications above. Are you sure it is a C-130? Does it have positraction? Are you sure that is Victoria? Looks like Vancouver or some other city starting with V.
I was there-it is from the New Territories side of *****Heaven********.
Hi Richard,
The partisan alignment is quite pervasive. I’m not a knee-jerk anti-Palin. I don’t believe she as good as pulled the trigger. I don’t think anyone has made a convincing argument in that regard. Sure, there are people trying to, but I don’t think they’ve succeeded.
I’m not trying to make that argument. I’m not trying to attack her, or anyone else for that matter. Instead, I’m trying to understand her defenders. There are some who have essentially advanced the argument that her words can’t have influenced the Tucson killer (his name does not deserve mentioning.) The operative word for me is ‘can’t’, as if words themselves have no ability to influence.
Again, I’m not saying that she has a magic incantation that she used to force the killer to act. I’m not talking about her in particular, I’m talking about the assertion that words cannot influence people. I found it particularly funny that advocates of this position were using words to make it.
If we wish to talk about Gov Palin’s speech in the context of the current political climate, I believe the place to begin to to agree that words have meaning; that words can and do influence people. Once we’ve agreed on that point, we can begin to analyse her speech, her words. I find it unproductive to analyse her words by citing people who aren’t her.
If we wish to leave the governor’s words alone for the moment and instead discuss the reprehensible words spoken by others (liberals?) then I’d like to first try to come to some understanding of why Charles’ Baron and Bouley are thought to speak for liberals. I can accept the answer that this is simply a mechanical dance step in the partisan ball, and move on to a more… thoughtful discussion.
Buck…Hi…
“…Bouley are thought to speak for the liberals”
Ahhh. now you have hit on my pet peeve. When Skippy San and I go ’round and round on this, I asked WHO speaks for the Tea party or the “right”…
Because SS and MSNBC have PDS they say(shout!!) Sarah Palin OR Sharon Angles or Michele Bachman ’cause they always say stupid and outrageous things..just like the right.
when they pick the lefts version of the above.
So its becomes, of course, guilt by association.
What speech is reprehensible? Who makes that call?
What words/speech influences?
What will we need..speech police?
MSNBC, my own personal comedy channel , ran the video of the shoe thrower a gazillion times…one could argue, that such an image played again and again is demeaning to the office of the President and may “influence” weak minds to take some sort of violent action.
While not “violent” speech one could argue the sheer repetitiveness of it engenders disprespect..how will that influence people.
Or Moveon.org calling Gen. Petreaus a “traitor”..how devastating is that to a long serving soldier?
Indeed one could say that the true measure of a country’s commitment to democracy and free speech is allowing such “hate” speech to exist.
Who would you trust to decide what speech is persmissable or not?
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. ~Noam Chomsky
Not my fav author but