Following is a 2009 column by Dionne on the threat of such violence in our
politics. Both articles are short. -Ed
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/gabrielle_giffords_tragic_prophet_20110109/
Gabrielle Giffords: Tragic Prophet
E.J.Dionne
Truthdig: January 10, 2010
There is one commentator whose words should enlighten us on the meaning of
Saturday's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the savage murders that
took the lives of, among others, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. The
person is Giffords herself.
In an interview last March, the Arizona Democrat anticipated almost
everything being said now and explained why what happened on Saturday is a
violation of our national self-image as "a beacon." Our pride, she said, is
that "we effect change at the ballot box" and not through "outbursts of
violence."
She spoke on MSNBC after the front door of her Tucson office was destroyed.
Giffords had strongly supported health care reform, which made some of her
constituents very unhappy.
Asked if leaders of the Republican Party should speak out more forcefully
against violence, she replied that this task fell as well to Democrats and
"community
"Look, we can't stand for this." There were problems with certain ways of
"firing people up," she said, and then she offered an example close to home.
"We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list," she said, "but the thing is that the
way she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our
district. When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences
to that action."
MSNBC's Chuck Todd pressed her then, noting that "in fairness, campaign
rhetoric and war rhetoric have been interchangeable for years." He asked
what she thought Palin's intentions were.
"You know, I can't say, I'm not Sarah Palin," Giffords replied evenly. "But
what I can say is that in the years that some of my colleagues have
served-20, 30 years-they've never seen it like this. We have to work out our
problems by negotiating, working together, hopefully Democrats and
Republicans.
"I understand that this health care bill is incredibly personal," she
continued, "probably the most significant vote cast here for decades,
frankly. But the reality is that we've got to focus on the policy, focus on
the process, but leaders-community leaders, not just political leaders-have
to stand back when things get too fired up and say, 'Whoa, let's take a step
back here.' "
Can we please take that step back now?
Let's begin by being honest. It is not partisan to observe that there are
cycles to violent rhetoric in our politics. In the late 1960s, violent talk
(and sometimes violence itself) was more common on the far left. But since
President Barack Obama's election, it is incontestable that significant
parts of the American far right have adopted a language of revolutionary
violence in the name of overthrowing "tyranny."
It is Obama's opponents who carried guns to his speeches and cited
Jefferson's
line that the tree of liberty "must be refreshed from time to time with the
blood of patriots and tyrants."
It was Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate against Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid in Nevada, who spoke of "Second Amendment remedies." And,
yes, it was Palin who put those gun sights over the districts of the
Democrats she was trying to defeat, including Giffords'.
The point is not to "blame" American conservatism for the actions of a
possibly deranged man, especially since the views of Jared Lee Loughner seem
so thoroughly confused. But we must now insist with more force than ever
that threats of violence no less than violence itself are antithetical to
democracy. Violent talk and playacting cannot be part of our political
routine. It is not cute or amusing to put cross hairs over a congressional
district.
Liberals were rightly pressed in the 1960s to condemn violence on the left.
Now, conservative leaders must take on their fringe when it uses language
that intimates threats of bloodshed. That means more than just highly
general statements praising civility.
In honor of Giffords, the effort to drain the rhetorical swamps should be as
nonpartisan as she was in her interview. It is wrong, at any point on the
spectrum, she said, to "incite people and inflame emotions."
There are, she said, "polarized parts of our parties that really get excited
and that's where, again, community leaders, not just, you know, the
political leaders, all of us have to come together and say, 'OK, there's a
fine line here.' "
It is not misusing an overly invoked word to say it is tragic that a
politician so attuned to the costs of political violence became its victim.
***
Editor's note: We are re-featuring this E.J. Dionne column from August of
2009 in light of this weekend's deadly shooting in Arizona.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090819_the_politics_of_the_jackboot/
The Politics of the Jackboot
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Truthdig: August 19, 2019
Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of
loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald
Reagan or George W. Bush?
How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a
Bush speech carrying a sign that read: "It's time to water the tree of
liberty"? That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson's declaration that
the tree "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and
tyrants."
Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense
of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of
tyrants.
In fact, the Bush folks didn't like any dissent at all. Recall the 2004
incident in which a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was
arrested for protesting at a rally in New Jersey for first lady Laura Bush.
The detained woman wasn't even armed. Maybe if she had been carrying, the
gun lobby would have defended her.
The Obama White House purports to be open to the idea of guns outside the
president's appearances. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done
state or locally," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said Tuesday.
"Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or
locality."
Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded
he can't even take his own side in an argument.
What needs to be addressed is not the legal question but the message that
the gun-toters are sending.
This is not about the politics of populism. It's about the politics of the
jackboot. It's not about an opposition that has every right to free
expression. It's about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by
the threat of violence.
There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so
many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the
so-called American heartland.
The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our
freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in
a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and
sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted
in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to
violence, and guns have no place in them.
On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used
by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law.
Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its
work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after
Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state
governments.
Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that
firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president's public
events only now, when the president is black. Race is not the only thing at
stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those
carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these
questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should
know what memories they are stirring.
And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless
they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world? Are we not
the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over
the bullet?
All this is taking place as the country debates the president's health care
proposal. There is much that is disturbing in that discussion. Shouting down
speakers is never a good thing, and many lies are being told about the
contents of the health care bills. The lies should be confronted, but
freedom involves a lot of commotion and an open contest of ideas, even when
some of the parties say things that aren't true and act in less than civil
ways.
Yet if we can't draw the line at the threat of violence, democracy begins to
disintegrate. Power, not reason, becomes the stuff of political life. Will
some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA,
have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when
they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?
E.J. Dionne's e-mail address is ejdionne@washpost.com.
© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group
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