OPINION:
Title this: What not to do in politics.
A Missouri Republican lawmaker, state Rep. Warren Love, for the Osceola district, suggested on Facebook that the vandal of a Confederate statue in Springfield National Cemetery ought to be lynched.
Umm … note to politico: You can’t be stringing up and hanging people just ’cause they make you angry.
Here’s what Love wrote, above a link to an article titled, “Vandal throws paint on Confederate statue,” for all the social media world to see, Mediaite noted: “This is totally against the law. I hope they are found & hung from a tall tree with a long rope.”
My gosh, people — it’s a statue, for crying out loud. Can we keep some perspective?
Earlier this week on GCN’s John Gibson radio, a caller expressed similar violent tendencies, only this time, aimed at white nationalists who protest in the streets. To paraphrase, the male caller said that when he sees such people rallying in public, he actually hopes somebody might be standing to the side with a rifle, waiting to pick them off.
Shoot the protesters — that was his wish.
Again: Perspective, please?
Love’s colleague, state Rep. Shamed Dogan — the only black Republican to serve in Missouri’s House, took to Twitter to blast the notion of lynching vandals.
“Vandalizing property is wrong,” he wrote, “but hoping for people to be hung/lynched over it? Way over the line!! What is wrong with us.”
Good question.
A society that can’t solve its problems with talk and diplomacy isn’t much of a society — it’s more a mob rule waiting to happen.
Love, for his part, tried to explain away his vicious post by telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he was simply using “an exaggerated statement” that was “just a western term.” And, he went on, he likes to use those types of “western” terms because he’s “the cowboy of the Capitol,” he said.
Well, cowboy, that may be. But in this time of antifa and Black Lives Matter and KKKers bearing torches in the streets, perhaps it’s time to take off the 10-gallon hat and tone down the rhetoric. It’s this type of talk that gives Republicans, First Amendment activists and those who want to preserve America’s historical monuments a bad name.
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