Shrieker of the House
Ubiquitous
ObamaCare is getting too heated. "Anyone voicing hateful or violent
rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results,"
the Associated Press reports:
"I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm [tune
in for the season premiere, Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO] in
some of the statements that are made," Pelosi said. Some of
the people hearing the message "are not as balanced as the
person making the statement might assume," she said. "Our
country is great because people can say what they think
and they believe," she added. "But I also think that they
have to take responsibility for any incitement that they
may cause."
Pelosi raises an excellent point. Two weeks ago we noted an example: A
prominent California politician had referred to opponents of ObamaCare
as "un-American" and accused them of "carrying swastikas." Subsequently,
in Thousand Oaks, Calif., an unbalanced-American bit off the finger of
an elderly protester, Bill Rice. The politician? Nancy Pelosi.
To be sure, it is unclear whether the biter took inspiration from that
politician's inflammatory words; Thousand Oaks' Finest tell us they have
yet to finger a suspect. Further, even if this act of mayhem was
directly provoked by Pelosi's rhetoric, she probably could not be
convicted of incitement. The relevant legal standard, which the U.S.
Supreme Court set forth in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), entails a
two-part test: first, the speaker (in this case, THE speaker) must
intend to incite violence; second, there must be an _imminent_ threat
that such violence actually will be carried out. In the Pelosi case, it
is highly unlikely that prosecutors could prove both elements without a
reasonable doubt.
Yet although Pelosi is protected from legal liability by the First
Amendment, she is right to take moral responsibility. As the AP reports:
"Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must
take responsibility for the results." This hits especially close to home
for Pelosi, as the AP notes:
Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted
in 1977 [actually 1979] of the murders [in 1978] of
openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a
link between the assassinations and the violent debate
over gay rights that had preceded them for years.
Dan White, like Nancy Pelosi, was a Democratic elected official from San
Francisco. But let's not make too much of this comparison. Between her
rhetorical excesses and his despicable crimes, there is a world of
difference.
--
It's now time for healing, and for fixing the damage the Democrats did
to America.