NOTE: I do NOT want this to be focused on any particular event but rather debated on its own merits please.
According to "The Hill" and his appearance on Fox News this morning, Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress. He told Fox News that he wants federal lawmakers and officials to have the same protections as the President. He doesn't know whether graphics or language using crosshairs or targets or similar inflammatory language has been implicated in any violence, but he would rather be safe than sorry.
And that comes amidst a fresh round of accusations of various conservative figures instigating and encouraging violence through their various speeches and programs.
You know there have been tens of thousands of vitriolic political ads in my lifetime and I don't recall any inciting anybody to violence.
Alos, tens of millions of people listen to Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Savage et al every weekday and also read Malkin, Coulter, and others equally as provocative. Sarah Palin has appeard at several dozen Tea Party events where there was no violence of any kind. And though their audiences are tiny by comparison, none are any more explicit in their rhetoric or any more negative toward those they criticize than are Olbermann, Matthews, Maher, some of the folks on the View, etc. etc. etc. And words like 'target' or 'crosshairs' are commonplace and often used.
And that doesn't even include the other talking heads spewing hate speech toward this person or that group or whatever.
Wouldn't you think if such rhetoric had any power to inspire violence that we would see wholesale violence with so much exposure and so many opportunities and hours devoted to political criticism?
This morning Jack Shafer at Slate, not exactly the last bastion of conservatism, opposed this kind of extremist government control and defended heated political rhetoric:
So what do you think. Do you approve of restrictions on the everybody words and imagery used in political ads and promotions? Or is this an unacceptable assault on free speech?
According to "The Hill" and his appearance on Fox News this morning, Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress. He told Fox News that he wants federal lawmakers and officials to have the same protections as the President. He doesn't know whether graphics or language using crosshairs or targets or similar inflammatory language has been implicated in any violence, but he would rather be safe than sorry.
And that comes amidst a fresh round of accusations of various conservative figures instigating and encouraging violence through their various speeches and programs.
You know there have been tens of thousands of vitriolic political ads in my lifetime and I don't recall any inciting anybody to violence.
Alos, tens of millions of people listen to Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Savage et al every weekday and also read Malkin, Coulter, and others equally as provocative. Sarah Palin has appeard at several dozen Tea Party events where there was no violence of any kind. And though their audiences are tiny by comparison, none are any more explicit in their rhetoric or any more negative toward those they criticize than are Olbermann, Matthews, Maher, some of the folks on the View, etc. etc. etc. And words like 'target' or 'crosshairs' are commonplace and often used.
And that doesn't even include the other talking heads spewing hate speech toward this person or that group or whatever.
Wouldn't you think if such rhetoric had any power to inspire violence that we would see wholesale violence with so much exposure and so many opportunities and hours devoted to political criticism?
This morning Jack Shafer at Slate, not exactly the last bastion of conservatism, opposed this kind of extremist government control and defended heated political rhetoric:
. . . .For as long as Ive been alive, crosshairs and bulls-eyes have been an accepted part of the graphical lexicon when it comes to political debates. Such inflammatory words as targeting, attacking, destroying, blasting, crushing, burying, knee-capping, and others have similarly guided political thought and action. Not once have the use of these images or words tempted me or anybody else I know to kill. Ive listened to, readand even written!vicious attacks on government without reaching for my gun. Ive even gotten angry, for goodness sake, without coming close to assassinating a politician or a judge.
From what I can tell, Im not an outlier. Only the tiniest handful of peoplemost of whom are already behind bars, in psychiatric institutions, or on psycho-medscan be driven to kill by political whispers or shouts. Asking us to forever hold our tongues lest we awake their deeper demons infantilizes and neuters us and makes politicians no safer. . . .
. . . .Any call to cool inflammatory speech is a call to police all speech, and I cant think of anybody in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with that power. As Jonathan Rauch wrote brilliantly in Harpers in 1995, The vocabulary of hate is potentially as rich as your dictionary, and all you do by banning language used by cretins is to let them decide what the rest of us may say. Rauch added, Trap the racists and anti-Semites, and you lay a trap for me too. Hunt for them with eradication in your mind, and you have brought dissent itself within your sights.
Our spirited political discourse, complete with name-calling, vilificationand, yes, violent imageryis a good thing. Better that angry people unload their fury in public than let it fester and turn septic in private. The wicked direction the American debate often takes is not a sign of danger but of freedom. And Ill punch out the lights of anybody who tries to take it away from me. . . .
The awesome stupidity of the calls to tamp down political speech in the wake of the Giffords shooting. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine
So what do you think. Do you approve of restrictions on the everybody words and imagery used in political ads and promotions? Or is this an unacceptable assault on free speech?