It was widely predicted, with absolute accuracy, that political leaders and the national media would place equal blame for uncivil discourse on both sides of the political spectrum. And so we have heard conservative spokespersons equating Obama’s (unfortunate, but hardly terroristic!) paraphrased metaphor of "bringing a gun to a knife fight" with all of the - er - intemperate rhetoric of the right.
As progressives, we should be adamant in our defense of freedom of speech, including "symbolic language," no matter who is speaking or what they’re saying. This is NOT to say that any speech, however hateful, threatening, or potentially inciting of violence should be defended. But unfortunately, from what I’ve read thus far, progressives have, for the most part, been no better at drawing clear distinctions between the symbolic language, of either spectrum, and the violent and – yes, I’ll say it – anti-American vitriol coming from certain quarters including, most unforgivably, those who are political leaders and even elected officials.
A couple of days ago, Seneca Doane wrote in the outstanding diary entry So Why Wasn't This a Secondment Remedy: "My interest is: can they disavow his actions -- categorically? Is what he did fundamentally wrong, in their eyes? Or did he just choose the wrong target?.. If you want to keep a rifle in your house in case the oppressive government comes after you, then I think I understand what you mean by a "Second Amendment remedy." But we're not talking about home defense here; we're talking about guns in public, about shows of force." Excellent points!
When Al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn provides advice to American Muslims on choosing high-value targets for potential terrorist attacks in America and the West, I think anyone will agree that this is hate speech that could incite violence, and is a crime. Obama’s "gun and knife" metaphor is not. Nor are all the other "leftist" criticisms that I have heard lumped in as such.
Yesterday morning on an NPR program, I heard a conservative equate the left’s call for the arrest and trial of Dick Chaney as a war crime with the worst of conservative hate speech. Is he serious? He regards calling for the legal indictment and trial-by-jury of an official as in the same category as an Al-Qaeda call for jihad? It’s not, yet none of the other panelists on the NPR program seemed comfortable drawing the distinction. And that’s because we’re not doing a good job of explaining the difference!
Somehow, Sarah Palin’s use of telescopic sights over Congressional districts is also being excoriated as inciting violence. It’s not, and it shouldn’t have, and it almost certainly didn’t! Loughner is a nutcase who could just as easily have been stimulated to action by a Beatles album! There have been many, many such creatures in the past 130 years who acted in a manner similar to Loughner’s because of psychosis and some unforeseeable trigger:
- In 1881, itinerant minister Charles GuiteauCharles Guiteau thought that the whole reason that Garfield had been elected was the street corner speeches that he’d made on Garfield’s behalf. When Garfield refused to make him an ambassador, he shot him for his ingratitude.
- In 1912, John Schrank said he shot Teddy Roosevelt "as a warning to other third termers and that it was the ghost of William McKinley that told him to perform the act."
- In 1933, Giuseppe Zangara shot at FDR (and killed Mayor Cermak of Chicago) because he was a poor lonely man with severe gastric problems, and Hoover, whom he really wanted to shoot, was in the cold of Washington while FDR was coming to Florida. As he said, "Hoover and Roosevelt — everybody the same."
- In 1973, the addle-headed and erstwhile FBI informant Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate Ford for no particular reason. "I didn’t want to kill anybody, but there comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun."
- And, of course, in 1981, John Hinckley, Jr. shot Reagan to impress Jodie Foster.
One might be able to argue (with diminishing logic) that would-be Presidential assassins Torresola and Collazzo (HST), Oswald (JFK), Czolgosz (McKinley), and Squeaky Fromme were somehow politically motivated, but even then it’s not clear how much psychosis there was behind the crazy actions. Certainly any, all, or none might have been triggered by a Palin rifle sight or a Scorsese movie. But ANYTHING can trigger a nutcase.
No, what Americans need to focus on is not the symbolic language of Obama and Palin, but the REAL language of Sharon Angle and Michele Bachmann: calling for "Second Amendment Remedies", for followers to be "armed and dangerous," and to "refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots." Such language is far removed from the metaphors of Obama and even the despicable Palin. Such language is in the Adam Gadahn category. Surely any reasonable American can see it for what it is: a threat to overthrow, by force of arms, disliked laws and elections, a call for revolution, an act of sedition.
I really hope that we progressives will focus on these, and draw the distinctions between these and Silly Sarah’s Bill of Rights-protected symbolic speech.