When Rhetoric Kills

I believe thoroughly in the freedom of speech. If people believe that the election of Obama means that they will lose their right to bear arms, they are free to voice that opinion. While I don’t think laws should be passed to stop people from voicing misconceptions that they legitimately believe in, I do believe that it is highly irresponsible for those on the right who recognize the fact that Obama will not take away the right to bear arms, to use the fear of the ignorant to political advantage. In Pittsburgh, a young man who believed that the federal government was out to get him killed three police officers in cold blood.

Richard Poplawski, a 23 year old man from Pittsburgh, killed three police officers while wearing a bullet proof vest because he was afraid that they were trying to take his gun. The officers were responding to a domestic dispute. Poplawski is obviously a disturbed young man. He likely would have struck out against society with or without the existence of paranoid rhetoric about the federal government and constitutional abridging gun control. But we would be shutting our eyes to the facts if we didn’t recognize that such rhetoric acts as a catalyst to such tragic events.

Timothy McVeigh contributed his bombing of a building in Oklahoma to fears of tyranny by the Federal Government. Anti-government rhetoric has been the bread and butter of the far right. Again, this is a free country and one can say what one wishes. However, it is my hope that those who say they love this country would act in a way that benefits it. It is a cruel, both to the mentally disturbed perpetrators of senseless acts such as these and their victims, to play politics with such rhetoric considering the horrible effect it can have. Let us all hope that the far right will stop using the un-based fears of the uninformed to win political points, and that the mentally disturbed perpetrators of such violent acts find no inspiration in the main stream for their violent acts.

Politics