Excerpt: "What Palin, Beck and their kind are practicing is not free speech. It is the equivalent of, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, 'Crying fire in a crowded theater.'"
A Tea Party member wrapped in an American flag, 12/07/09. (photo: Getty Images)
The Tucson Massacre and Our Future
14 January 11
Reader Supported News | Perspective
here are two groups responsible for the January 8th tragedy in Tucson, Arizona. One group is made up of right-wing Republicans, Tea Party fanatics and extremist conservative talk-show personalities. These people have, for too long now, been consciously creating an atmosphere in which illegal acts of intimidation and violence are mistaken for patriotism. It does not matter if members of this group are self-deceived "patriots" or just political opportunists. The nature of their actions were, and are, predictably disastrous. When Sarah Palin placed a map on her website showing the whereabouts of twenty Democratic politicians, including Gabrielle Giffords, using, in Palin's words, "bullseye icons" (that is gunsights), she essentially committed an act of criminal incitement. Anyone with average intelligence can recognize this to be so, given the pre-existing combustible environment created by the near criminal speech of people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that when she released her metaphoric invitation to violence Palin knew that among her supporters were a large number of angry white men armed to the teeth with everything from handguns to bazookas. The fact that in the case of Tucson (not the first or the last case) it was allegedly a mentally unstable fellow who acted out this violence is irrelevant to the fact that the pre-existing climate of incitement was palpable. What Palin, Beck and their kind are practicing is not free speech. It is the equivalent of, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "Crying fire in a crowded theater."
However, the situation would never have gotten to its present explosive level without the complementary behavior of the second group. And that is the country's center/liberal establishment, including the Democratic Party leadership, all of whom have failed to treat the right-wing threat seriously. It does not matter if members of this group simply misjudged the situation, or if they had the mistaken notion that to confront it would only make things worse. In either case, they were wrong. Whether we consider Al Gore's response to the stolen presidential election of 2000 or Barack Obama's consistent refusal to prosecute the criminal acts of the Bush-era extremists, these center/liberal leaders have behaved irresponsibly in the face of a growing and recognizably dangerous situation. They do the country no favor by confronting a violent right with passivity or sorrowful words.
It has been 153 years since Abraham Lincoln made his prescient House Divided speech. He did so in June of 1858 in Springfield, Illinois. His words, which at the time were considered alarmist, went like this, "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it." Making reference to continuing "slavery agitation" he went on, "In my opinion it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed." And then he told his audience (1,000 members of the original Republican Party) that, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
The United States is, once more, increasingly a house divided. It is not divided by "slavery agitation" though some of the issues have their roots in that era. It is divided over fundamental differences in the meaning of the nation's Constitution and the very nature of government. These differences bring with them feelings that are just as emotional and inherently divisive as was slavery.
There are a growing number of Americans who no longer believe in the modern interpretation and application of US Constitution. They insist that the way Constitutional interpretation has evolved over the past half-century is a betrayal of true American principles. Many of these Americans are apparently enamored of the 19th century outlook that the only government that is legitimate is that which sees to the police, the military and the law. Everything else should be a private concern. If you tax them for programs that have to do with social equity or economic justice (even in its pitifully weak form), or even to maintain public functions such as education, transportation and social services, they consider it theft and imagine that they are subject to a new tyranny. In addition, many of them are not willing to go along with any election that might run counter to their outlook. Some are very close to advocating sedition, and a few are obviously already gunning for their imagined "tyrants."
The present center/liberal leadership is confused. As Lincoln put it, they do not know where they are, where they are going, or what to do. Unfortunately, unlike Lincoln, they are not prescient. They do not seem to understand that what is happening is not superficial or transient. They beg us not to "politicize" the Tucson massacre, as if the murders were not, prima facie, political acts. Lincoln knew that the house was dividing and that the process would "not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed." Our center/liberal establishment has yet to come to a similar understanding.
Passivity and accommodation will not make right-wing violence go away. Those who incite this violence, as well as those who act it out, have to be confronted in an aggressive yet principled fashion. One way to do this is to enforce the law in a way that prioritizes our problems in a common-sense fashion and ceases to practice double standards. In other words, it is time for President Obama to tell his Justice Department and the FBI to stop chasing around the Midwest harassing people friendly to the Palestinians, and to start going after that element of the American right that is inciting its members to act out their political rage. They can start by taking a look at the activities of one Sarah Palin.
Lawrence Davidson is a professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and author of the works listed below.
Contributing Editor: Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture
http://www.logosjournal.com
"Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest"
http://www.kentuckypress.com/viewbook.cfm?Category_ID=I&Group=55&ID=1490
"America's Palestine: Popular and Offical Perceptions From Balfour to Israeli Statehood"
http://www.upf.com/authorbooks.asp?lname=Davidson&fname=Lawrence
"Islamic Fundamentalism"
http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR2429.aspx
Keep your eye on the language: When South Africa assigned rights according to race they called it apartheid. When Israel assigns rights according to religion they call it the only democracy in the Middle East.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Comments
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National Socialism had some of the key ideological elements of fascism which originally developed in Italy under Benito Mussolini; however, the Nazis never officially declared themselves fascists. Both ideologies involved the political use of militarism, nationalism, anti-communism and paramilitary forces, and both intended to create a dictatorial state.
You are just parroting what you heard on Fox News.
Gee, now which party does THAT sound like?
The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4113.htm
in Schenck vs. U.S. is:
"FALSELY crying fire in a crowded theatre.....",
Compare violence rates between various countries with tolerance for freedom of expression and anyone can see that the most violent nations typically are the ones where free speech has been suppressed.
I don't know that free speech allows people to vent dissatisfaction thereby ameliorating the frustration that causes violence, but this is at least a theory that is consistent with known facts about the prevalence of violence in various societies.
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
Referring to the other half of the Establishment, the wholly-corrupt and special interest-beholden RepubliCrat Party by these terms is to take the empty slogans of the far-right too seriously, and plays right into the hands of both of these groups.
There is no fundamental difference between these phony opposition parties, and this is something that Americans must come to understand if they are ever to free themselves from their monopoly on power and see the change needed to heal the country, which would threaten the interests of this Ruling Class.
Most certainly, once is far more radical in its tactics, but where policy is concerned, both have their hands tied by corporate power and lobbies - and often, the direct connections politicians have with these same powers.
Lincoln's prescience would see clearly that Davidson is attempting to usher in a new era of McCarthyism, only this time by the Left. This too is not surprising. McCarthyism lasted a mere 3 or 4 years; however, Hollywood's banning of Conservatives has lasted 50 years.
The great irony of it all is that Loughner was if anything a Lefty. He hated God; was pro-abortion; one of his favorite books was the Communist Manifesto; his classmates described him as a huge Liberal. As for the counter claim that he didn't trust the government, show me a Liberal who trusted the government while Bush was in power.
Perhaps Davidson's greatest assault (pardon that word, don't use it as an excuse to commit mass murder) on reality is the idea that the Left is passive and reasonable in their language and arguments. Indeed, Davidson blaming Palin for mass murder is itself vitriolic in the extreme.
You seem to be cherry picking Loughner's "literature" - My guess is that he was uniformally paranoid of government and authority and that most of his material indicates that, but before saying left or right we'd have to do some cpontent analsysis and a tally of bias.
Finally, Yes, the liberal folks in the US and probably the majority in the center of the US are passive and go along to get along and that only encourages the radicals.
There's a reason that rioting is a crime distinctly different from the crime of INCITING A RIOT. There's a distinction between committing a crime and INFLUENCING someone to commit a crime. They may be distinct crimes, BUT THEY ARE BOTH CRIMES.
He should check the facts before writing
publicly. Holmes compared Eugene V. Debs
speaking against U.S. entry into WWI as
comparable to falsely shouting fire in a
crowded theater. Debs had already been
imprisoned for his speech. Holmes, a
rightist vigorous anti-socialist; Debs
was a Socialist candidate for president.
He opposed entering the war largely as
involving workers of one country fighting
workers of other another country or countries.
Holmes is closer to Palin, Beck & Co., than to their enemies.
Of course, Holmes' opinion was a figure of speech, or a metaphor, so to say, because the leaflets had fluttered into the street below, where only federal agents paid any attention to them. There was no theatre and no crowd, just the Feds who were working at ridding the country of oppossitionism, or at least silencing it at which, as history shows, they were at least partially successful. The Russian revolutions had really frightened authorities here and abroad.
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