The subject is the killing of a Democratic Party Worker in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Obviously, our heart goes out to the family of the victim. That should almost go without saying.
The motivation for the killing is still under investigation and yet a few of our friends have already written screeds to the likes of Michele Malkin, Sean Hannity, and maybe a few other of the more virulent Conservative bloggers to blame them for inciting the shooting through their writings which seem to encourage such violence against "liberals".
I've personally thought of freedom of speech as a pass/fail situation. That is, either you believe in it completely, or you don't. However, I am beginning to suspect that there is some kind of line which can be crossed from actually practicing free speech to committing or inciting to commit a crime.
It goes beyond the famous (alleged) Ann Coulter quote about the Arab States, "We should kick their ass and take their gas!" That's a pretty generalized threat. What I think crosses the line is when followers of particular writers or political figures are told specifically to ta
rget individuals; as Michele Malkin did by publishing the names, addresses and phone numbers of liberals she savaged in her blog and invited her readers to "contact" them. The "contacts" were, quite naturally, death threats. Did she cross the line by publishing the personal information? Or, is it still "freedom of speech"?Concerning the Little Rock situation, I'm not as quick to jump on the Conservative punditariat as some of my colleagues might be. I don't think there was any commandment from them to go kill a specific individual in Little Rock, Arkansas. I do believe there was, and continues to be, an attempt to whip people into a frenzy of hatred against "liberals" in general and that attempt itself may eventually spawn more violence like we saw in Little Rock...and I believe there was another incident where a crazy gunman said he was told (by _od?) to "kill Liberals"....
It's got to stop somewhere and if it doesn't then I am afraid that Congress will yield to the old "necessity if the mother of intervention" routine and enact a piece of really bad legislation over this issue.
