"Hate Speech" and the Tucson, AZ attack

A question to those on the left, the
right, and everywhere between those
end-points. If "hate speech" possibly
contributed to this attack, should
negative campaign ads be forever
banned as a form of "hate speech"?
After all, how many decades have we
had a steady diet of such ads during
elections?

Amen to your thoughts WD. I hear that Ms. P. has cleaned up her website though. A small modicum of progress.

I've been giving this some thought. While hate speech and negative campaigning are reprehensible, the only thing worse can be censorship. We all remember the days of McCarthyism (those of us over 50) and the pall it cast over free speech in the name of political correctness.

Instead of reigning in hateful speech, we must teach our children and their parents how to think independently and objectively so that they may view such drivel with an open mind. The real problem is people are taught to follow and beleive any authority, especially one with charm. They are not taught how to think critically.


Far better to not have sheeple than to suppress speech in order to protect people.

We must speak out against such sites as Palin's; present other views, not let that group run over everything as they have been doing for decades now.

My position is balanced on maximum personal liberty and maximum personal accountability.

The most changes I see required, is after the event in the justice system. At that point in our system, politics inserts it's corrupted self into the picture, so I don't have much optimism in the short term - maybe not even in the long term, with the understanding this reality is a 'school for learning'.

At the incarceration phase, the mindset of 'OK, now throw away the key' is pretty self-defeating from a societal perspective. Overall I think there is plenty of tweaking from top to bottom of the post-event system that can result in significant improvement at the societal level.