Following are a few excerpts from the article.
It’s not foolish, at all. It’s not just the words but the tone in which they are spoken. For example, if a man says something that embarrasses his wife she may say, “I’m going to kill him!” No one would interpret that as a threat. However, those same words would be considered a threat if said in a different situation.
Of course we have conformed to political correctness. It is nothing more than adapting to the changing ways of communication. It’s not some diabolical plan.
Years ago, it would have been quite acceptable for a man to refer to a female counterpart as a “doll” or “she’s such a sweet little thing” or other similar words. Even though they were words of affection they are inappropriate today.
That’s exactly the problem and that’s the need to omit certain words in political discussions. How could one go about removing their intent or determining the proper context in which they’re used?
There is no debate about whether political rhetoric stirs people. It is a given. The question is when does it cross the line. When people start planning mass murders, when people shoot Police Officers when stopped for a driving violation, when people say the rhetoric drove them to plan and/or commit such crimes….surely any sane individual would conclude the line has been crossed.
Here's the problem I have with all of this... If the left had come out and said, you know, we have been wrong in ratcheting up the hateful rhetoric against the right all these years, and we resolve to make a change in our own tone going forward, and call on the right to join us in a more peaceful and civil tone... I wouldn't have a problem with that, I would think it admirable. But that is far from what we've seen from the left. From the outset, the left has inferred that
right-wing rhetoric is solely responsible for what Loughner did, and we need to take measures to silence talk radio and internet sources on the right, because they are responsible and culpable.
Personally, I believe political rhetoric played no role in what Loughner did. When people act in a way that is unreasonable and irrational, it needs to be recognized for just that, the act of someone unreasonable and irrational! There is no reason for it, there is no shared responsibility for it, there is nothing that we could have done to prevent it. We can have all the restrictions and bans you could dream up, and there would still be unreasonable and irrational people perpetrating unreasonable and irrational acts. Why? Because they are unreasonable and irrational, and nothing we can ever do will change human behavior. It's just something we have to live with and understand, is part of life. Trying to find an excuse for it, or some kind of underlying explanation, is futile.
The left in this country, is motivated largely by emotion. Something tragic happens, and the left is the first to have some lame-brain knee-jerk reaction to it, with the most simple-minded idiocy anyone can imagine... CNN deciding it can't say "cross-hairs" on the air anymore, for instance. The reasoning makes little or no sense at all, as if someone is going to hear a talking head on CNN say the word "cross-hair" and go out and start shooting people! If someone is so fucking unhinged as to be set off by a single word, how are you ever going to ban all possible words which might set some nut off?
It's silly and ridiculous for the left to be yelping about rhetoric, when we have video games depicting the killing of police officers, where you can, in the game, literally blow people's brains out, right down to the 9-year-old little girl... but that's okay, right? That couldn't possibly desensitize an unstable person to the point of doing something insane, could it? We have rap songs talking about "capping someone with a Glock" but that couldn't EVER provoke a reaction from someone who is mentally unstable, could it? What about the movies? Natural Born Killers, Kalifornia, Silence of the Lambs.... could viewing these movies cause a psychopath to do something crazy? Naaawwww.... those are perfectly fine.... we just need to stop saying "target" and "cross-hair" on CNN... that will fix everything! That, and of course, getting Rush and Hannity thrown off the air!
