Talking Heads can talk people into revolution. The Revolutionary War, the French Revolution, the Civil War, etc. all started with influential people getting up in front of a crowd and calling them to arms.
However, that is a legally protected right. The Bill of Rights was written not all that much time after the Revolution had ended. It was written by a group of people who believed that the government needed to be afraid of its own people – that if they misbehaved, the people would rise up, armed, and kick them out again. That’s specifically why they wrote in the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
But rabble-rousers, like Thomas Paine and Maximilien Robespierre, don’t just kick off lone gunmen. Point in fact, the only case I can think of where an uprising was preceded by assassinations was the Meiji Restoration. But there, the assassins were honest-to-gosh assassins who were employed and in the service of the organizational structure which would go on to declare full-out war. There weren’t any lone killers who were simply inspired by the rhetoric of the day.
A lone gunman is not something that is really considered by the First and Second Amendments. They’re just crazies, not people at the forefront of civil unrest. And as such, you can be just as nice as you want in your language or as vociferous as can be and it won’t change a thing. Crazies will use the Bible, The Highlander, Mein Kampf, or whatever else as a source of inspiration. They don’t kill because of what they come into contact with, they just take whatever it is that they have at hand and take from it something which they can use as an internal justification because they’re crazy.
Ultimately, I’d rather my government be afraid of the possibility that the people can uprise if they try to install a tyranny. While sporadic public shootings are a tragedy to be certain, twenty years worth of lone gunmen can’t even come near to the sort of murder rate that a tyrannical government can accomplish in just one year. But even disregarding that, as said, a crazy person is a crazy person. Tiptoe around them or not, they’ll still go out and shoot people because they’re crazy.
I think the edgier rhetoric that Palin puts out there is classless and irresponsible. But I can’t believe there was some guy out there teetering on the edge of going on a killing spree, who was pushed over that edge by Sarah Palin. Possible, but highly unlikely. People like that find the inspiration wherever they can. Music, films, books, and of course anything you could ever want to see on YouTube these days.
Occam favors the most direct source.
Why look thru myriads of YouTube clips when you have Palin and Beck right out there in front of millions?
Do you have a legitimate reason for favoring the more complex hypothesis?
To the extent that Occam is relevant at this point, he tells us the shooter was a nut case, not inspired by any person in the popular spotlight. That’s the history of such shootings.
There have been prominent politicians in one party who consistently use metaphors of violence, war, and murder to describe what should be done to their opponents. There have been nutjobs who listen to those politicians who engage in actual violence against those opponents.
Now it appears that it may have escalated.
You don’t need to calibrate your speech for the nutjobs, no. But Sarah and Glen, if you could knock it off with the constant shoot-em-up imagery in your speech, I guarantee that won’t hurt the republic.
I love how this board is supposedly full of skeptics.
If a psychic, a Sylvia Browne type fraud, offered that prediction and this event as proof of her prowess, the skeptics of this board would be all over her, tearing the claim to shreds.
But although there’s a bit of attack here, there is sure not that same level of evisceration on this claim. Not remotely.
Maybe cuz we all saw how effective Republican hate talk was in getting us involved in conquering Iraq.
Everyone is aware of that game now, so it’s hard to take Sarah’s bullseyes as the work of a wide eyed innocent.
Well, except maybe for John, who prefers the ‘random shooting’ hypothesis.
Far less mature than I would expect out of you, but judging by your next post, it looks like you’re pissed for ideological reasons.
That’s because it’s not a Sylvia Browne-type claim. It’s a fact. An escalation in violence against Democratic politicians has been consistently predicted for a long time now, and it happened today.
If you are so partisan-blind that you cannot even see the possibility (which is all I’m asking to talk about; I agree that the facts are a long way from in and sorted) that something like this could be in any way related to what happened today, then it is completely useless to attempt discussion with you on this matter (not that you’re attempting discussion, but I honestly am).
Sure, I absolutely acknowledge that it’s possible that the two are related.
But that’s not what you said. you said you predicted this and now it’s happened. THAT is a claim of Sylvia Browne level absurdity, and you haven’t been subjected to nearly the sort of ridicule that the claim deserves.
If your claim was simply that at some point here would be violence against a Democratic politician… then I hereby predict violence against a Republican at some point in the future, and when it happens it will prove the left is unhinged.
Now, at some point, inevitably, there will be some sort of violence against a Republican. Somehow, I doubt you wll then accept my conclusion.
Show that there is a popular movement suggesting violence against Republicans, and that non-deadly force and threats have already been made, and then let it happen before that climate subsides, and yes, I will accept your conclusion. It’s not as if people said “oh, I bet a Democrat will get shot one day” in a vacuum. Stop pretending that that’s the case.
But that’s not what you said in the OP. You didn’t say people predicted an escalation in violence. You said, emphasis added, “How often was it discussed that someone could/probably would die from all the rabble rousing that Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, etc have been indulging in lately?” We just don’t know what the guy’s motivation was.
I have a question, John, and this should clear up any doubt about whether or not this is a worthy topic for discussion:
Say I make a list of very important people who have done something that pissed me off. Above the list I create a graphic that marks each person’s geographic location with a cross-hair symbol. Next to the graphic I write “IT’S TIME TO TAKE A STAND.” I post this list/graphic combination on the internet for millions of people to see. A short time later, one of the people on my list is at a public event, which was advertised in advance, and gets shot point-blank in the head.
Makes a little more sense after the edit, but that’s still a dishonest answer. I didn’t ask about Sarah Palin. I know she won’t be investigated or hassled whatsoever in any official way for this. I asked about me. Read the scenario above again and tell me if the police would knock on my door.
Edit for clarity: Before John Mace edited post #75 it said “the answer is never,” which is why I posted that it didn’t make sense.
Well, we were specifically discussing Sarah Palin, because you said in your OP that she was the cause of this violence. What the police would do to you is the non sequitur. You didn’t say anything about anonymous posters on the internet in your OP. I see why you would want to shift the discussion, but no thanks.
You keep shying away from what you said in the OP. If you want to retract it, please do. But don’t try to change the subject.
Actually, you’re among a few posters who seem determined to hijack this thread. The basis of your hijack is that my premise is bullshit, and I’m illustrating to you exactly why it’s not. Despite the fact that Sarah Palin will not be investigated for this, the average person would be if they’d done what she’s done, and you know it. That’s why the topic is valid.
And I haven’t shied away from the OP at all. You’re acting very strange in this thread, and that’s the nth statement of yours here that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Once again, I never said that Sarah Palin caused this. Please quote me saying that or stop saying I did.
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