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[bryant]

The biggest reason I value David Neiwert's reporting is the simple, matter-of-fact way he reminds us that yes -- the rhetoric of the right is extreme and unacceptable. His latest post on the subject is a great example. It's so obvious: "I say start executing the leftists in our country, soon." That's flat out ugly and it's not an exceptional case.

Comments

That's not quite true.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

I wrote something earlier that went into the ways that slander, death threats, and incitement to violence are not the same as free speech.

Then I deleted it, because there's a different knee I would rather jerk. And it's this:

Not everything that is legal is acceptable.

We go through a lot in this country to limit the power of the government to restrict speech. That's well and good, and democracy suffers whenever the government puts any kind of limit on what you can say.

But Orcinus isn't the government. Bryant isn't the government. Neither are you, and neither am I. None of us make, enforce, or interpret the laws. We just live here.

He, and David, and I, are free to consider this sort of speech wholly unacceptable. It doesn't mean we think those responsible should be thrown in jail for saying it. It does mean that we consider the speech to be having dangerous effects on its listeners, and that we must counter it.

And frankly, if your idea of countering speech you don't like is to buy a gun, then we're about to reach a point in the country where people engage in a whole lot of behavior that's not at all constitutionally protected. Incitement to riot isn't protected by the 1st Amendment any more than shooting people is protected by the 2nd.