So says Pennsylvania’s Bob Brady who, in response to the Arizona shootings, plans to introduce a bill that would ban heated rhetoric and symbolism that, well, some interpretive community (presumably made up of those “reasonable people” who happen to be in power at any given time, having weighed all the pros and cons of determining how their ruling might payoff politically) determines is threatening.
Having myself been told that my offering to bring a tree to my own rhetorical hanging was concomitant with issuing a “death threat,” I can point first hand to the potential dangers of empowering some collection of motivated “interpreters” to decide what is or isn’t threatening — and then having law enforcement power to act on that policing of my speech.
I really don’t wish to belabor this point, having spent years already doing so. But the fact remains that we have been on a linguistic trajectory in this country that allows for this kind of faux-populist — and baldly political, in my estimation — control of speech. From granting “authenticity” to those who are even allowed to speak to questions concerning certain identity groups, to insisting that meaning as a function of reconfiguring signs to create our own texts determines what meaning we can “reasonably” attribute to an utterance (and, it follows, to an utterer), we have embraced an idea of language that, as I’ve been at pains to point out, leads inexorably to the very place we are finding ourselves: considering, however marginally, a plan to constrain speech so that we’re legally responsible should we somehow incite nutjobs into taking our own texts, making them their own, then acting upon them in their own way (with us as complicit rhetorical accomplices).
Neither Sarah Palin nor that Kos jaggoff targeted Congresswoman Giffords. What they targeted was her Congressional seat. Nobody literally put a bullseye or a target on her. And anyone pretending that they did — in order either to win political points or because they actually believe such nonsense — is either craven and opportunistic, or else too moronic to be taken seriously, save for the dangers they pose to our liberties by advocating for a legally-binding crackdown of fucking symbolism.
Although I suppose they could be both.
This way lies madness and totalitarianism, friends. Which is why I always try to remind people: how you get there matters. And it matters who we empower to determine what something means with respect to how it is being made to mean. One person’s dog barking is another person’s words from the Devil instructing them to kill. The answer to which is to get the person hearing voices some help, not to outlaw dogs.
Now you see why. Again.
Nothing says “I respect my oath of office” quite like prior restraint, I always say.
They need that Reichstagsbrand.
Bob Brady, actually — don’t be making that opportunistic lying asshole related to me!
I decry the half measures ofthe gentleman from Pennsylvania! Let’s go all the way! and ban insanity itself alogether…
Enforce it via the thought police act that the Democrats have been yearning for these many years…
he acts like congresswhores are super-special superior humans but they’re supposed to be just like the rest of us I thought
This is what the rule of experts will tend to look like. They think they know something, so will recommend that the thing they think they know should be the rule. Most times, even if they’re right about part of the world, they don’t know enough about the rest of it to be right on the whole, and will burden themselves and the rest of us with extremely oppressive costs to squeeze out the last tiny drop of their obsessive pursuits, beyond all reason. So we end up having once again to ask, who’s the crazy man here?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kenny Hitt. Kenny Hitt said: RT @proteinwisdom: "'I don't know what's in that nut's head. I would rather be safe than sorry'" https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=23967 […]
I don’t know what that Manson fellow was thinking, but we’d better go ahead and ban The Beatles, just to be on the safe side.
The Manson family as an interpretive community has a right to its opinion about what the Beatles meant. And in fact, unless YOU are part of a homicidal set of hippie race warriors, you don’t have the requisite “authenticity” to presume to understand them.
[…] “shut up shut up shut up” isn’t particularly effective, so now they’re calling for the power to send policemen, with guns, to make sure we shut […]
I do hope Kathy Kiely has some good lotion. All that handwringing must chafe.
I was watching a news article on campus speech codes a couple years back, NBC, I think, and they had this charming little Asian girl on camera saying, “You know, if someone finds it objectionable, I shouldn’t want to say it…”
This guy as well as the V-Tech shooter were both noticably dangerous before they pulled the trigger, but there is no legal way to get them locked up and medicated.
Thanks to the ACLU, that is, who wants the schizos themselves to decide whether to be institutionalized and medicated, based on their exquisite judgment.
Fact: There was horrifically awful stuff said during Bush’s presidency, but no schizo felt moved to shoot HIM (as far as we know).
Fact: Loughner went to a Giffords event awhile back and asked her, “How do you know words mean anything?” Poor woman didn’t answer the question to his satisfaction, she not being tuned in to the voices in his head, and THAT is most likely what made her a target.
Fact: If the hyperventilators truly were worried that “violent political rhetoric” was going to set someone off, they’d hyperventilate when the Left does it, and we all know that they don’t.
Linky for his psycho obsession with Giffords.
If he hadn’t quit smoking pot this wouldn’t have happened.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1
Let me step in here to make this observation: the left weren’t trying to tie the shooting to Mitt Romney. Or John McCain.
Just thought I’d point that out.
Or to YOU, Jeff, oh proprietor of a blog about the locus of linguistic meaning. Given that the shooter was obsessed with how the government controls our minds through grammar, I think you need to be shut down.
OMG! IT WAS NISHI! NISHI IS JARED LEE LOUGHNER!
You know it’s only a matter of time before any political disagreement will be diagnosed as mental illness. It’s been used before.
The left already thinks we’re stupid for not agreeing with their agenda. I’m sure some of them already think we’re insane as well.
I begin to wonder what the effects of this meta-discussion (sorry about the ungainly expression there) — the discussion grow quite wide now about the false attributions made about Tea Partiers or Conservatives by leftists and their journalist friends, and their unseemly motivations — will have on the wider polity as a whole? I don’t know where it will lead, but I am starting to harbor some hope in that regard.
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[…] John Green’s defense of freedom with this: “‘I don’t know what’s in that nut’s head. I would rather be safe than sorry.” Posted […]
The left already thinks we’re stupid for not agreeing with their agenda. I’m sure some of them already think we’re insane as well..
They only think that about you if they think you can be
persuadedintimidated into either changing your mind or shutting up. If they don’t think that will work, they go straight to one of their many “eeeeevvvvviiiilllll” cards.What’s the difference between a Democrat and a zombie?
What? Too soon?
sdferr, it’s a likely to get worse as it is to get better.
You know, I always let the behavior of the insane dictate what words I use. Better safe than sorry. That’s why I want to ban the word “lemming.” Just seeing it in print makes me feel unsettled.
It’s best I don’t hear it spoken aloud again. Fair warning.
this is completely overshadowing Mary Bono’s booby
They are the “good” conservatives, the ones that can be beaten or co-opted. Other “good” conservatives are apparently George Will, Olympia Snowe, Maureen Dowd, Lisa Murkowski, and Scott Brown.
I don’t think so Ernst, but then this is a guess and a whiff on my part, I readily admit. This new round of this stand back discussion is after all a continuation of earlier versions we have had. Something, I believe, metaphorically amasses in the repetition, mostly, though not entirely, to the good.
I loved playing Lemmings on my Amiga.
The zombie doesn’t know any better?
By the way, isn’t it nice that all our representatives are careful to think things through and not respond with knee-jerk bills every time something untoward happens? I’m comforted by their careful deliberation, because we all know if they don’t pass some new law right now then their fellow congressmen will end up getting shot at a lot more than they do now, which is really, really often I’m sure.
sdferr, if the voters start punishing Democrats for their illiberal rhetorical ploys (crudely, but accurately, summarized as YOU will show your TOLERANCE! by SHUTTING UP for ME!) I’ll be just as happy as you. But I think it’s as likely as not that we’ll continue on this present trajectory of delegitimizing opposition to Leftist utopian schemes, resulting in an ever more illegitimate political process (e.g. since only dumb, crazy, or evil people oppose the Left, opponents will have to be “reeducated,” “institutionalized,” or “eliminated”). Right now we joke about it, but it’s whistling past the graveyard.
By the way, if you listen to the guy interviewed by Mother Jones, you begin to get the idea that the shooter really should have had a copy of Catcher in the Rye with him…
First, I’m not expressing happiness (at least I hope I’m not, cause I ain’t). Second, “start punishing”? What just happened?
You’re hopeful, I’m not. But I’ll be happy if you’re right and I’m wrong. Better. I’ll concede that the Dems were punished, in part for the contemptuous (and contemptible) way they treat their opponents. If it contnues to happen great.
The Left has been aching, aching, ACHING to move from merely policing speech through PC initimidation to physically policing speech with handcuffs and jail cells. It’s the final solution, doncha know! (h/t to Adolph)
Well, Congressman Brady, it’s like this:
Not to put TOO fine a point upon it, but my rights are more important (at least to me) that your continued existence, unmolested by loons. By which I mean that if, God forbid, some nut-case should, y’know, shoot you or some such low-probability shit, I’d be very upset for a good hour. Just inconsolable.
Then I’d go find another congresscritter to represent me. Because, face it, they’re a dime a dozen.
E, let me dig (heh) in here a little further. Let’s look at Kathy Kiely’s expression:
This “unearthed” presumes the thing had been buried somehow. Buried by whom? For what?
But she’s so wrong. It had not been buried. It was not unearthed. It sat here among us, prominent in our minds since the day it was spoken. We didn’t have to look far to find it at all.
Moreover, if she means to say by “been contagious” that Obama has been infected by some thing in the air, we know too that she is wrong. I don’t think people are fooled by such loose thinking and writing.
that’s like less than a penny each
There are no coincidences only Jareds, everywhere.
Jared Leto tries so hard to be taken seriously someone should take him seriously just for an afternoon so he can know what it feels like
The rig is even better. It would be interesting to see how a gerrymandered clause is inserted in there that allows members of one political inclination to use language that another political inclination couldn’t.
That’s why I am always happy to see the PC absolutists forced into the open. If they have to acknowledge they are attempting to restrict speech and freedom of association that very act diminishes their power (usually.)
It’s guys like this that are the profound danger.
On the other hand, it would be really interesting to see lefties and progs have to cope with the full-force of their speech restrictions.
link
A small sign where the tiny hope might reside: distinguishing for the sake of distinguishing.
Though their numbers are severely reduced right now, I think their prospects are only upward (sort of in the can’t get any worse variety) in the next few election cycles.
Mojo, you hit the point that’s ben rolling aorund in my head. Congesscritters will use this, among the many other things being discussed, to continue their transformation from representatives to perfumed pashas– either demanding protection services (less likely at the moment) or (much more likely) being allowed to get reimbursement for private security arrangements or maybe just being allowed to co-opt local police.
Some of the Congresspeople won’t like being watched out for a lot, since being watched out for also means being watched the bulk of the time. Some might think they can control how invasive to their personal freedom that process can be. They’ll probably be wrong.
Liberals: finding new excuses to turn objective law into subjective law, because, dammit, we can’t waste a good crisis.
For the children.
I guess Microsoft will have to revise PowerPoint because it includes the scope cross-hairs as of its standard shapes.
So until they do we can’t use PowerPoint?
Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter. After they get through resinding the 1st Ammendment, there won’t be any need for the 2nd.
This is gonna make a GREAT SUPREME COURT CASE!
[…] few select Congressmen who, like vultures, swoop in to exploit a tragedy. The most daffy might be Bob Brady, who wants to enact legislation to ban certain types of political rhetoric. I’m sure by the […]
Does this mean it would become illegal for me to suggest that Bob Brady is a feckless crapweasel? :-)
[…] John Green’s defense of freedom with this: “‘I don’t know what’s in that nut’s head. I would rather be safe than […]