When I was in 8th grade, my best friend’s parents gave me a copy of The Rights of Students – The Basic ACLU Guide to a Student’s Rights (An American Civil Liberties Union Handbook.) I think it was a Christmas present. Maybe it was for my birthday. We studied American Civics that year, ably taught by Mr. Haddaway and Mr. Rosin. I was very fired up about the Bill of Rights and about the idea that people who had not reached the legal age of majority should still be treated as, well, people.
One passage from the book that struck me and has always stuck with me was this:
Can students be prohibited from expressing their views if those who hold opposing views become angry and boisterous.
No… courts have consistently held that the rights of those who peacefully express their views may not so easily be defeated.
The ACLU has fallen significantly from its perch as a champion of free speech rights since 1977, when the book was published; but, at the time, their stance was strong. I took a broader interpretation away from this question / answer couplet, which was that a person who is exercising his right to free speech cannot be held accountable for illegal actions performed by others.
There are legal limits on this idea. If it can be proved (the burden of proof is, as ever, upon the government) that the speaker had intent to incite illegal acts and there was likelihood of those acts resulting, then his speech is not protected.
Since 2020, America at large has seemed to me to play fast and loose with the burden of proof. We’ve decided that Donald Trumps words: “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore,” constituted incitement of any and all illegal activity that followed on January 6th, 2021. Whoever did whatever on that day, it seems, Donald Trump was to blame. At one level, I know, it’s just the Left’s answer to the Right saying, “Thanks, Obama!” whenever something goes wrong. At a deeper level, though, it troubles me that some were so quick to decide that words should be prosecuted as deeds. That feels un-American to me.
This week, a young man from a prominent family in my County was arrested for the murder of the C.E.O. of United Health. Daily I see a lot of vitriol spouted at “our health care system,” accompanied by claims that the people in charge of it are evil. It strikes me that, if we’re going to equate deeds with words, then an awful lot of people are liable for the murder of Brian Thompson.
What I expected was that pundits and electeds on the Left would begin to carefully explain why “this time it’s different.” That may yet happen, but I have yet to see it. What I’ve seen instead is one of the most bizarre cases of doubling down in my experience. Not only are a lot of people not bothering to defend all the statements which contributed to a climate in which someone might feel justified murdering a C.E.O., not only are a lot (in my eyes) of people defending that murder, it seems a lot of people are actually… aroused by the crime that has been committed.
Aroused. Like… sexually.
There are fan fiction stories popping up about the accused murderer on Archive of Our Own. There is merchandise being sold to celebrate the alleged criminal actions he committed. There are professions of love and desire being publicly declaimed.
The alleged assassin is being potrayed–even in the halls of Congress–as a champion of the oppressed. A veteran Senator has remarked on Thompson’s death, “People can be pushed only so far.” A U.S. Representative has claimed that people “experience denied claims as an act of violence.” This is the same twisted logic that has, before this, tried to argue that words are also violence. To beat the horse one more time, if that’s true, then Brian Thompson has literally millions of murderers.
But this murder does not “open a dialogue” or “bring to light the flaws in our system.” This murder demonstrates only that one broken person’s mind snapped and he killed another person. Nothing at all about our “health care system” is revealed.
The broken person in question is a rich kid who can afford and has received the finest health care. The stereotype of the scion of privilege being most susceptible to revolutionary ideas–when he has the least to gain if they are attempted–should be laughable. But here we are. And here we’ve been for some time. Karl Marx came from a prosperous German family, and his expensive education exposed him to radicalism. His partner in crime, Friedrich Engels, was more than prosperous, he was rich. Even Victor Hugo’s fictional Enjolras is a privileged student, not a denizen of the streets. Radicalism is a game for dilettantes.
But the game has become too serious when mainstream politicians, alleged moderates, are dismissing first-degree murder. Murder is the most loathsome of crimes, the absolute and final abrogation of all the rights of an individual. It should not be cartoon and meme fodder, and it must not be considered merely the start of debate.
I will not weigh in on the culpability of pundits for incitement. But I think we all need to consider how far down the road of Demonization of the Other we in the mainstream of United States society have traveled. Our politics have become more important than people. We shun friends and family because they voted for a different candidate. We’re so sure of our morality that anyone who disagrees must be evil. You voted for Kamala? You’re a communist. You voted for Trump? You’re a Nazi. Either way, I can’t associate with you and you deserve whatever you get.
Pardon me, but… what fucking arrogance.
The American obsession with being right, which includes a deathly fear of being wrong, begins in our classrooms. A kid gives a wrong answer. He is belittled by the class. I was belittled by teachers. Don’t know if that still happens. So kids learn to not offer answers, to not take risks. We become terrified, not of being wrong, but of being perceived to be wrong. We’re so terrified of it that we have to distance ourselves from anyone who might be wrong by denouncing them. By calling them evil.
Culpability or no culpability, that sometimes leads to murder.
You think you’re 100% morally right? Good for you. Take the advice of the late author Robert Heinlein in such cases… apologize immediately.