Friday, January 14, 2011

20110114.0839

The recent events in Arizona have attracted a significant amount of attention to the inflammatory rhetoric that pervades the American political discourse. The rhetoric deserves attention, certainly, and it had been receiving it, but not to the degree that it ought to have--except as it has followed the tragedy in Tuscon.

Shame on us that we needed that to happen to actually pay attention for a moment.

I deplore what was done, whatever the motivation. There are ways to address grievance. Spraying bullets around a peaceful gathering is not among them.

I do not, though, and cannot fully agree with such commentators as Paul Krugman, who on January 13, 2011, wrote in "A Tale of Two Moralities" for the online New York Times that "both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds." It seems to me that resorting to legislation to enforce civil political discourse will be ineffective. It also seems to me that curtailing "any language hinting" at anything opens a dangerous, dangerous path.

I realize that this is a bit of the camel's nose fallacy. But I also make my living working with hints and implications. It is not difficult to cast relatively innocuous statements as "hinting at the acceptability of violence." Also, who would judge whether or not such hints have been dropped? Do we leave it to the lawyers, who carefully parse language according to strict legal interpretation that passes beyond what the theoretical "common" person perceives? Do we put it in the hands of those such as myself, all too often labeled as effete in large part because we spend our time gaining the kind of expertise that allows us to make that kind of determination?

And is it not true that there are, in fact, times when violence is acceptable? I seem to recall that one call to it begins "When in the Course of human events..."

I am wary of the kind of blanket pronouncement Krugman offers, and even more so at those coming from our lawmakers. I am wary, indeed.

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