OPINION:
There are events that force a “time out.” One just occurred. Pausing to think about it, is worth the time.
Five hard truths come into sharp focus with the June 15 shooting of a Republican congressman, staff and supporters at the most American of activities — practice for a friendly congressional baseball game.
First, the gunman, while obviously deranged, was also plainly impassioned, intensely motivated — at least in some major part — by ingrained political animus.
To be painfully specific, based on his social media postings, he blamed Republicans at large, and President Trump in particular, for being a “traitor” and “racist.”
Second, a number of open, self-identified “left,” “left leaning,” “leftist” and “liberal” media outlets have, in recent months, run hard-hitting articles, editorials and opinion pieces identifying “President Trump,” and “Republicans” specifically in these exact terms, as “traitors” and “racists.”
Not to belabor the point, but a simple Google search identifies specific stories that describe Republicans and Mr. Trump in these terms, often with headlines that cause a casual reader to wince.
Some of these very popular left-leaning sites and publications even recite the legal definition of “traitor,” then embroider it with highly inflammatory rhetoric and opinions, attempting to make the case for unidentified action, but calling for “active resistance.”
Third, none of these inflammatory “articles” and opinion pieces — as far as I can discover — actually called for “imminent lawless action,” something forbidden under the U.S. Constitution, illegal and unprotected by constitutional right, including the First Amendment.
What is a call to “imminent lawless action?” According to a long line of Supreme Court cases, more or less ending with Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), a call to “imminent lawless action” involves “incitement to violence” that is both “imminent and likely.”
So, fourth, thoroughly and expressly forbidden is “advocacy of force or criminal activity” — by anyone — aimed at “inciting” lawlessness, and assessed as “likely” to produce it.
Where that happens, the law kicks in and kicks in hard. That goes for incitement to violence on college campuses, by newspapers, blogs, collective or individual, private or public forums and, of course, at a congressional or any baseball games. Frustratingly to many, but consistent with our nation’s First Amendment protection of free expression, Americans can call each other ugly names, insult one another vociferously, go eyeball to eyeball with derogations, and express opinions that become rude, offensive, baseless, ungrounded, ill-advised, undignified and downright dispiriting.
We are fully allowed to be foolish, wrong, overly emotional, embarrassingly self-serving, politically charged, or to express our inner feelings and most fanciful opinions.
Up to a point.
State and federal governments, in a phrase “We, the People,” have also over 225 years learned there is wisdom in placing “time, place and manner” restrictions on what we say, when, where, to whom and how. Circumstances do matter.
Defamation is not permitted. Famously, no yelling “fire in a crowded theater” and no “incitement” to lawlessness and violence. No advocacy of harm toward one another is permitted, not in any way meant to spur recourse to force.
Which brings us back to last week’s tragedy. Somehow, in the emotional froth and fury of an unusually tense political season, a hard-fought election that ended with a hard landing for one candidate, some seem to forget a seminal fact: We are, we must be, we are obligated to be, both history and the future expect us to be, a civil society.
So, fifth and finally, the obligation to maintain and participate in civil society — which as Americans we are signed up to do — has practical implications.
Incitement is a legal term, but the approach to it occurs by degrees. It can sneak up on a society, just as we let ourselves go by degrees.
We edge up to incitement. And doing that can have profound effects. It can be profoundly reckless, no matter how strongly held our political opinions.
Doing so invites reduced civility, and egregious, sometimes irreversible misunderstandings, mistakes and sometimes tragedy. This is not opinion. It is a fact.
Being indifferent to the effect that words have actually does not make a good case. It threatens to bring us all down, left, right and center, especially when we see something like what happened last week.
Despite all, some will ignore the significance of this event. They will insist on politicizing this tragedy in one way or another. Nevertheless, at this moment, two innocent Americans lie in the hospital.
Their tragedy is our tragedy. Their loss is our loss, a reflection of growing tolerance for what is intolerable, collective indifference to the obligation of maintaining civil order.
We have a right, even an obligation to vocally disagree if we feel we should and must. We are within our rights to argue, to be offensive, and to be animated by whatever opinions we thoughtfully hold.
But when reckless indifference to words bridges into open violence, we have allowed our civil society to go a critical step to far.
Now is upon us all — starting with political leaders in both parties — to pull back from the sort of rhetoric that inflames and escalates a propensity to violence. We can all feel it. It needs to be consciously, directly and consistently tamped down.
The president — whether you like him or dislike him — is not a “traitor,” nor a “racist,” and most Americans know that. Nor is Rep. Steve Scalise, who now fights for his life in a Washington hospital bed, in serious condition from a senseless act of politically motivated violence. Maybe it is time we took a “time out,” and just remembered again, what is means to be an American.
• Robert Charles is a former assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement in the George W. Bush administration.
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