A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

30 November 2015

Ugly political rhetoric did not pull the trigger in Colorado Springs

Robert Dear will be arraigned today and charged with various crimes, murder especially, connected with the shooting at the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs, CO, on Friday. We still don’t why the rampage occurred.

So far as we know, Dear was a recluse. There’s no evidence yet that just before he grabbed his guns and drove to the clinic someone whispered in his ear:

God wants you to kill people at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Robert. Go to Planned Parenthood, Robert. Take your guns and go. Do God’s work Robert. Shoot. Kill. You’ll feel better and God will love you.

That would be an incitement for which the whisperer could be held responsible.

But that sequence of events is not being alleged. Instead, leaders at Planned Parenthood and its allies are arguing that the religious right’s increasingly intense campaign against abortion, and Planned Parenthood in particular, is responsible for Dear’s rampage. Here’s an example, reported by the Washington Post:

Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association for abortion providers, said the antiabortion rhetoric had grown so heated in recent months that something like this was bound to happen.

“They have ignited a firestorm of hate. They knew there could be these types of consequences, and yet they ratcheted up the rhetoric and ratcheted it up and ratcheted it up,” Saporta said. “It’s not a huge surprise that somebody would take this type of action.”

At Mother Jones, blogger Kevin Drum disagrees:

Talk is not responsible for extreme acts, especially by the mentally ill. Political speech is often fiery. It’s often supposed to be fiery, and there’s always a risk that a few unhinged listeners will react in extreme ways. That’s a chance we have to take. If we rein in political speech to a level where there’s literally no risk of anyone reacting badly, we’ll have nothing but pabulum. [Emphasis is Drum’s.]

He’s right.

Political discourse should be civil. Most is. But the more an issue divides us, the more we are engulfed by our passions, the more our rhetoric smokes and flares. Our divisions on abortion and human reproduction are religious at heart and not susceptible to resolution through rational debate. Virtually all opponents of abortion, including those who howl and froth like mad dogs under a full moon, who come to fisticuffs on the picket lines, do not decide to take human lives to save human lives. Those who do are not listening to the howlers. They’re listening to voices only they can hear; voices others cannot silence.