Guns don’t kill people; politicians kill people. In the spirit of Rahm Emanuel not letting a crisis go to waste, John Dingell went sliding right past ridiculous and bumped into insane with his rhetoric about the Arizona mass shooting last week. Do these people not see the irony in using inflammatory speech to denounce inflammatory speech? If harsh words drove someone to shoot Gabrielle Giffords, then it follows that making the connection public would drive someone to shoot Sarah Palin.
Supposedly Palin’s bullseyes on political maps during the Presidential campaign were instrumental in moving a disturbed young man to take up arms. “Targeting” certain districts for extra attention led him to gun down the opponent and her supporters. These were the pronouncements being aired before the smoke had even cleared from the Safeway parking lot, before anything substantial was known of the assailant.
Several things about this situation bother me beyond the obvious irony. First, I am a writer and a poet, so that makes me more sensitive to language than the average observer. But must we emasculate the language completely; is it even possible to remove every connotation of damage and discord from our speech? Even the term “flower power” (coined during the peace movement of the Sixties when many of our liberal leaders were coming of age) suggests the dominance of force.
Secondly, individuals must be held responsible for their actions. Why must there always be extenuating circumstances when someone does something heinous? Before the suspect is even fully identified, the media (and media hungry politicians) begin searching for a hidden cause that made an otherwise good person go bad. They did it with Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, Columbine and every other senseless tragedy that comes to mind. The truth is that people are not basically good. Lacking the concept of sin and evil, today’s relativistic society cannot explain bad actions.
Finally, political rhetoric has always been rancorous. To suggest that only in our generation has politics become abusive is to ignore (to be ignor-ant of) the history of politics. The Whigs and the Tories were duking it out verbally before we even had a formal government. The First Amendment speech protection was crafted purposely to allow political differences to be expressed openly. King George and his Lobsterbacks were not the only targets (pardon the violent language) of political scorn. Our precious founding documents were forged in a cauldron heated by lively debate.
The Bible does prohibit demeaning speech. Our verbal efforts should be toward building coalitions and improving interpersonal relations where possible. But Jesus himself stooped to invective when confronting evil in his society. He called the disingenuous politicians of his day snakes, whitewashed tombs and children of the Devil. I concede that he had perfect knowledge of his opponents which we often lack. However, we encounter countless situations which present black and white, right and wrong moral alternatives. If political correctness has its way, it will become impossible to speak truthfully about these cases.
That is a consequence we must speak against now, before it is too late. No shooting from the hip, just taking aim at the soft underbelly of deceit with whatever weapons our First Amendment grants, and charging the white horse of victory onto the battlefield, confident in the tactical correctness of defending our embattled way of life. Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war. March and pray, since the real battle is not with human opponents anyway.
