Posted on 01/14/2011 4:52:55 PM PST by unseen1
Amid phony furor over dog whistles, and the meaning of “blood libel,” the major media not surprisingly missed the central point of Governor Sarah Palin’s eight-minute address to her Facebook supporters Wednesday:
Poliltical speech doesn’t cause violence, it prevents it.
It really can be boiled down to that simple, refreshingly retro, concept. Indeed, Governor Palin reminded us that political speech is fundamentally protected, and central to our nation’s enduring freedom. In quoting President Reagan, she reiterated that individuals are responsible for their own crimes, and rejected any notion of “collective guilt” that might be concocted as a libelous pretext to quash political opposition.
She even set the narrative for those of us on her side who might be tempted to play “tit for tat” in accusing the left of inciting violence. She rejected any attempt to connect unrelated “heated” political speech with an actual crime scene.
Which makes what President Obama said a few hours later all the more hollow and unsatisfying. Yes, I know, I know, he gave one of his trademark “brilliant” oratories that salved our nation’s wounds, and rhetorically brought us all together. But did he? Really?
Forgive my lack of “moral imagination” but I don’t think the point of free speech is to “bring people” together – especially not coming from the guy who told his supporters to “get in their faces and argue” with opponents. I don’t think the Founding Fathers would have a problem with arguing, actually. From what I know about them, they weren’t utopists enamored of shallow, marginally-healing words. I think they envisioned a nation of competing visions (of arguing, if you will) and stridently contrasting ideas. Thankfully, they designed a system for managing that perpetual conflict and limiting the power of any one ideological contingent, a framework that has survived an (un)Civil War, and even political assasinations.
Governor Palin rightly pointed this out, asking essentially: “When was our political discourse ever more civil?”
So, now we have a situation where our president magnanimously declares that “uncivil rhetoric” did not cause the Arizona shootings. But there is a subtext to his words: He believes there is such a thing as “uncivil” rhetoric and his clever speech masterfully laid that “uncivil” label on the Tea Party movement, while distancing himself from the leftwing “blood libel” still being manufactured about the movement on a daily basis.
Why else, we might ask, would President Obama spend so much of his speech lecturing us on the virtues of being civil — if so-called “incivility” bore no responsibility in the Tucson calamity? It would make as much sense as a physician counseling a congenital heart disease patient on the virtues of sign language. Granted, in times of tragedy, a nation often comes together spontaneously as we saw after 9/11 or the shuttle disasters. But we didn’t need President Bush to remind us to embrace one another after our nation was attacked. We cried together. We mourned together. And Democrats and Republicans stood shoulder to shoulder on the steps of the Capitol singing “God Bless America” with no grand “call to unite.”
One of the things that perpetually bothers me about Obama’s brand of politics is its emphasis on pryric bipartisanship. Obama campaigned on a supposed new kind of politics where presumably we’d all just get along. His promises didn’t even survive his campaign, where he famously told a Philadelphia audience in June 2008, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Yes, nothing helps people bring people together more than a gun to their heads.
In the final analysis, the federal government has a metaphoric gun to all of our heads. It controls how much of our earnings we keep, it controls whether we have fair trials, and whether we have a right to freely elect our representatives. And that is why we need robust free speech (and a second amendment, but I’ll leave that for another post).
Strikingly, there is one major instance where free speech can be curtailed. That is in instances where someone is falsely accused. We have defamation laws in this country to protect reputations from lies. You cannot falsely accuse someone thereby causing them financial, or emotional harm without consequence. You can be sued civilly, although the remedies for public figures are understandably more limited.
So, why is it when Sarah Palin defends Constitutional freedom of expression and points out the truth about being falsely accused, it makes liberals come unhinged?
Maybe because in liberal newspeak truth is considered “uncivil.”
Ping for the morning; Mama wants to go dancing!
Nicole is spot on in her analysis!
The left gets a pas while Sarah gets pilloried for using a phrase that describes what is happening to a T!
Something must give and pretty soon.
Nicole is spot on in her analysis!
The left gets a pass while Sarah gets pilloried for using a phrase that describes what is happening to a T!
Something must give and pretty soon.
Thank you for posting this wisely written article. Too bad most of the media will not speak this, the truth, and too bad they won’t even apologize for their horrible slanderous reporting.
I agree. the country has been taken over by the insane.
she is one of few sadly within the GOP that speaks truth so she gets the “two minute hate” program.
I wonder if Orwell was a prophet at times.
in liberal newspeak truth is considered “uncivil.”
Newspeak is exactly what it is. They say "civility" but they mean censorship. On general principles whenever "Newspeak" issues arise, IMHO it's a good idea to repair to an online etymylogial dictionary. Thus, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=civil&searchmode=none
- civil:
- late 14c., "relating to civil law or life," from Fr. civil (13c.) and directly from L. civilis "relating to a citizen, relating to public life, befitting a citizen," hence "popular, affable, courteous;" alternative adj. derivation of civis "townsman" (see city). The sense of "polite" was in the Latin, from the courteous manners of citizens, as opposed to those of soldiers. But English did not pick up this nuance of the word until late 16c. "Courteous is thus more commonly said of superiors, civil of inferiors, since it implies or suggests the possibility of incivility or rudeness" [OED]. Civil case (as opposed to criminal) is recorded from 1610s. Civil liberty is from 1788.
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