Words have consequences (Leo W. Gerard)

Drew wasn’t charged with the child’s death. In fact, a judge
reversed her conviction on computer fraud charges, saying the law was intended
to deal with hacking, not murder. But for most Americans, there is something
deeply disturbing, something morally, if not criminally, wrong with deliberate
torment, with predatory viciousness. Drew eluded accountability the same way
conservatives are seeking to evade culpability after their irresponsible speech
has provoked the delusional to violence.

It’s hard to draw a line directly from Drew’s cruel words to
the noose around Miss Meier’s neck. Similarly, it’s difficult to directly link violent
political rhetoric like Sarah Palin’s illustration showing gun sight cross hairs
on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona district, to the shattering of
Giffords’ office door after her vote for health insurance reform last March, or
Jared L. Loughner’s shooting spree last weekend that left six dead and Giffords
and 13 others wounded.

What is clear, however, is that vile and threatening
communication that becomes so repetitive that it’s routine has the effect of
sanctioning an atmosphere of violence.

Conservatives are yammering that they’re not the only ones
who engage in brutal rhetoric. That’s true. But in a contest for production of
violent words and images, Republicans would, to use their words, “kill” the
Democrats.

The Department of Homeland Security concluded in an April
2009 internal report that right-wing extremism, with a growing potential for
violence, was on the rise. That was followed last spring by Capitol security
officials reporting a tripling of threats against members of Congress – almost
all from opponents of health care reform – in other words, from Republicans,
right-wingers or people influenced by GOP TV and radio front men like Glenn
Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, who personally profit from
the hostile climate they generate. 

They didn’t stop though they had fair warning about the consequences.
Consider the case of Byron Williams. He launched a 12-minute shoot out with
California Highway Patrol officers last July, after they stopped him for
erratic driving. A police affidavit filed the following day said Williams
intended to “start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing
people of importance at The Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”

The Right has for decades slammed the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to protect
constitutional rights, but Glenn Beck had made the Tides Foundation, once an
obscure progressive organization, famous by attacking it repeatedly – at least
29 times between January and the July shootout last year, including two tirades
the week before Williams began his assassination mission. 

Williams, who was armed during the shootout with a handgun, shotgun, rifle
and body armor, said he watched FOX News to see Beck, who blew his mind, and
who he viewed as a “schoolteacher.”

Still, Beck expressed no remorse and tried to squirm out of any
responsibility for inciting Williams, saying on his show:

 “I am the only one that has
mentioned the Tides Foundation. . . So that’s what they’re using. This guy
couldn’t have found this out on his own; it had to come from me. America, if
you don’t think that they will use anything, they will. They absolutely will.”

Words do have consequences, Mr. Beck, no matter how many times you cravenly
shout denials.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives insisted on
reading the U.S. Constitution on the opening day of the new Congressional
session. It was, however, nothing but political theatre because conservatives
disassociate the rights it grants from the incumbent responsibilities.
Right-wing leaders like Beck disavow responsibility altogether.

When it was Arizona Rep. Giffords’s turn to read, the
chamber had come upon the First Amendment, which guarantees, among other
things, the right to free speech. It even guarantees Republican Arizona Sen.
Jon Kyl the right to go on television the day after the shootings and contend
that Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik didn’t have the right to speak
about the complicity in the crime of vile, hateful and threatening political
speech.

The courts have established the “crowded theater” test to
determine when free speech ends and responsibility begins. Americans are
responsible to refrain from yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when, in fact,
there are no flames. The freedom to yell ends at the point when it endangers
others.

Republicans are recklessly yelling. During the fall
campaign, Arizona Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle suggested her supporters
consider their Second Amendment rights if Sen. Harry Reid were re-elected.
Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman said at a Tea Party rally on July 4, “If
ballots don’t work, bullets will,” and then was hired by new GOP Congressman
Allen West to serve as chief of staff. Tea Party contender Jesse Kelly held a
fund raiser in June asking his supporters to “get on target to . . . remove
Gabrielle Giffords from office” by shooting a “fully automatic M16” with him.

 Republicans bear responsibility for the consequences of this
kind of brutal discourse – a political atmosphere charged with violence. Just
like Glenn Beck, though, Republicans guard their rights, but shirk the
concomitant responsibilities.