Politically Charged Violence - Who's Responsible?

rainintothesea · 01-10-2011, 12:17 AM

As loathsome as I find Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, I hesitate to assign them any more power and responsibility than they already so ineptly wield. The degree of ugliness of political rhetoric may ebb and flow, but it's politics. It has always been and is likely to remain ugly.

From where I stand, the best weapons we have against bad ideas are good ideas, better ideas. The best response to speech with which we disagree is MORE speech, not less… never less. If someone with repugnant ideas is spewing them all over the airwaves or from a rally stage, the way to take the power from those people is not to stand by silently, ignoring them, and hoping they go away… and it's definitely not to turn them into a political martyr by trying to silence them so they suddenly have the moral high ground. The way to take their power is by standing up and saying no, I don't agree with that, I won't support it or you and now I'm going to tell everyone else why. It's by challenging them to defend those ideas, to show their work, to produce the evidence, the data to back up the claims they make.

This discussion, on a national level, should be reframed to focus on the actual issues. If a political stance got Gifford shot (immigration?), then it's the issue about which we should be talking, not some old campaign graphic from one of Palin's puppeteers.

Actual incitement to violence is one thing. If someone is saying hey, go kill this list of my political enemies, that's a problem. But saying that because some graphic designer used crosshairs to "target" key seats in a political race that Sarah Palin wants a U.S. Representative dead is really disingenuous and steals focus from the actual important issues here. Bad taste? Ill-advised? Maybe. Criminal? Hardly.

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01-10-2011, 12:17 AM	#14
rainintothesea Member How Do You Identify?: - Preferred Pronoun?: - Relationship Status: - Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: - Posts: 533 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 1,135 Thanked 801 Times in 314 Posts Rep Power: 4143698	As loathsome as I find Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, I hesitate to assign them any more power and responsibility than they already so ineptly wield. The degree of ugliness of political rhetoric may ebb and flow, but it's politics. It has always been and is likely to remain ugly. From where I stand, the best weapons we have against bad ideas are good ideas, better ideas. The best response to speech with which we disagree is MORE speech, not less… never less. If someone with repugnant ideas is spewing them all over the airwaves or from a rally stage, the way to take the power from those people is not to stand by silently, ignoring them, and hoping they go away… and it's definitely not to turn them into a political martyr by trying to silence them so they suddenly have the moral high ground. The way to take their power is by standing up and saying no, I don't agree with that, I won't support it or you and now I'm going to tell everyone else why. It's by challenging them to defend those ideas, to show their work, to produce the evidence, the data to back up the claims they make. This discussion, on a national level, should be reframed to focus on the actual issues. If a political stance got Gifford shot (immigration?), then it's the issue about which we should be talking, not some old campaign graphic from one of Palin's puppeteers. Actual incitement to violence is one thing. If someone is saying hey, go kill this list of my political enemies, that's a problem. But saying that because some graphic designer used crosshairs to "target" key seats in a political race that Sarah Palin wants a U.S. Representative dead is really disingenuous and steals focus from the actual important issues here. Bad taste? Ill-advised? Maybe. Criminal? Hardly.