One Mentally Deranged Shooter Is No Reason To Throw Out The First Amendment

from the discourse? dept

Like many people, I was absolutely horrified by the story over the weekend concerning the shooting in Arizona that has left a bunch of folks dead and left US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in extremely serious condition in a hospital. At the same time, for many years, I've been disgusted by the nature of political discourse, which often seems to involve petty name calling and ridiculous hyperbole (on all sides of the debate) usually based on association, rather than any actual position. It's one of the reasons that we almost always try to avoid naming political parties on this site -- because we seem to get knee-jerk reactions to the party that someone is a member of, rather than a response to the actual positions. That said, I'm troubled by the fact that many people have immediately jumped to the conclusion that the shooting was somehow caused by that ridiculous level of hyperbolic discourse, despite little evidence to support that. So far, almost everything said has suggested that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was an immensely troubled individual, whose views were all over the map, rather than tied to any particular prevailing viewpoint.

So I'm troubled by reports that the quick, knee-jerk reaction from some politicians following the shooting is to pass laws to restrict forms of speech, especially the exceptionally vague plan of Rep. Louise Slaughter to "better police language on the airwaves." Don't get me wrong: even if this shooting had nothing whatsoever to do with the level of political rhetoric and childish bickering we see everyday in Congress and among the chattering pundits, it would be great if the end result were to lead to more reasoned debate, rather than ridiculous hysterics and blatant overstatement and exaggeration. But passing laws are not the way to do that. Telling people what they can and cannot say is not going to fix the level of discourse in American politics today. Outlawing certain forms of speech on the airwaves will not stop crazy people from shooting others.

Are there crazy people out there? Absolutely. Is the level of political discourse in this country somewhat ridiculous and often counterproductive? Almost certainly. Are those two things connected? That seems like a huge stretch, with many people jumping to some unproven and unsubstantiated conclusions, leading to knee-jerk responses that limit speech based on nothing but an unproven hunch. That's not the way law making is supposed to work. And isn't making unfounded accusations against your political oppoents to try to squeeze some political advantage from such a tragedy just compounding the hysteria already present in the debate? Why not start by setting a good example, rather than threatening to force everyone else to shut up?

Filed Under: discourse, free speech, garbrielle giffords, jared lee loughner, politics, shooting