of Defending the Indefensible

Jack Shafer doesn't get it.

Not surprising from someone who is as hardnosed a Libertarian as he claims to be, but still upsetting that he would turn such a tragedy into an opportunity to show off just how much he loves his freedom.

Shafer starts by declaring any call for civility an attempt at censorship. By his own broad standards, Shafer's criticism of Sheriff Dupnik is itself censorship. Can't a sheriff who actually sees the violence have an opinion, Mr. Shafer? He then goes on to say that vitriolic speech doesn't cause violence. Cause? perhaps not, but certainly gives comfort to to unbalanced and provides a reason, something that they can say made them do it.

He also seems to assume that being angry at the government entails hate speech and violent rhetoric. This is odd, as between the years 2000 and 2008, I can recall only ever being angry at the government and never drawing a target on a map, saying, "don't retreat, reload," or encouraging, "second amendment solutions." Anger and rage do not go hand in hand, but anger can certainly feed rage and the angry words we use can provide the fuel an enraged person needs to act in ways he only dreams about.

Mr. Shafer says he'd, "wager that in the last 30 years there have been more acts physical violence in the stands at Philadelphia Eagles home games than in American politics." For a moment let's ignore his glib comparison of a drunken fight to murder and highlight that his time frame is bookended by assassination attempts on politicians and at least one bombing of a federal building. He says that targets have been political graphics his whole life, but doesn't offer much in the way of example. I, for one, don't recall this level of vitriol in national politics in my generation. The previous generation, however, did have some terrible examples of inflamed political rhetoric. It also had the assassinations of a Civil Rights leader, a senator and a president.

In my experience, vitriol flows from vessels that have nothing more than that in their reserves. Anger is one thing, but violence is what fills the void between anger and solutions. To defend the violent speech and vitriolic rhetoric as Mr. Shafer does is a commitment to ignorance and violent action. To be clear, NO ONE is calling for inflamed rhetoric to be censored. That would be un-American. However to ask people with no real solutions to tone down their noise is at its worst aesthetically appropriate. Further, it gives the unbalanced people no excuse for their actions.