Just a few days after the Constitution was read aloud to open the 112th Congress, the shootings in Tucson and their aftermath have underscored both the document’s central position in American life and the wish of many on the left to weaken its First and Second Amendment liberties in the name of “civility” and “safety.” They should be vigorously resisted.
Leave aside the media’s obscene haste to try to pin the atrocity on conservatives, Republicans, the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, whose very existence makes them foam with rage. This much is to be expected from the partisan shills at MSNBC and elsewhere.
Far more worrisome is the immediate inclination of some politicians — mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats — who’ve seized the occasion to call into question both free-speech rights and gun rights.
Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) wants to ban speech that “threatens” public officials in the interests of “toning down the rhetoric.” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) wants to reinstate the so-called Fairness Doctrine to regulate talk radio. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) plans to introduce a law banning the carrying of a firearm within 1,000 feet of a “high-profile” government official.
Horse, meet barn door.
Why are some politicians’ first instincts to punish 300 million innocent Americans for the crimes of a single individual? Why rush to introduce bills banning even symbolic speech that some might be able to construe as “threatening,” when the First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no law . . .”?
We’ve clearly drifted into uncharted waters when the martial images of political campaigns can now be deemed “threatening.” Even on the fantasizing left, whose stock in trade is imaginary emanations from penumbras, there must be someone who’s heard of metaphor and simile — and who knows the difference between image and reality.
After all, we already have the capacity to monitor and deal with genuine threats. Hal Turner, a broadcaster and Web-site host, was convicted last year for inciting injury against officials in Connecticut and sentenced to 33 months in prison. Nobody got hurt.
What literal-minded solons like Clyburn and Brady fail to understand is that it’s precisely our tradition of free and robust political speech that keeps us free. Politicians don’t have a divine right not to be insulted.
“A hideous, hermaphroditical character with neither the force and firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman,” said a key supporter of Thomas Jefferson about John Adams. For its part, the Adams camp called Jefferson “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
Somehow, the nation survived both the Adams and Jefferson hate-speech presidencies.
As for the Second Amendment, and its guarantee of individuals’ firearm rights (upheld and codified by the Supreme Court in the recent Heller and McDonald decisions), critics ignore several salient facts: Inanimate objects don’t commit crimes — only human beings with free will can do that — and criminals will always be able to get guns.
Mexico has a grand total of one legal gun shop and yet somehow the country is awash in military-grade weapons (most of them, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times, smuggled in not from the United States but from Central America).
The fact is, outrages like Tucson are the exception — not the rule. Arizona’s gun laws may be among the most “lenient” in America, but they’re not as “lax” as Vermont’s — and nobody’s rushing to demonize Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. Indeed, Arizona’s laws are far closer to the American mainstream than are the restrictive policies of New York, Massachusetts and California.
Benjamin Franklin’s famous admonition — “Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” — has rarely been more apposite.
There’s no collective guilt in Tucson, just the monstrous acts of a lone man.