archer wrote: As long as it's someone on the "right" side of the political spectrum I doubt there will be much outrage.
Outraged? No. Worried? Yes. Why should I be outraged simply because some one speaks a different view than my own? What is there to be outraged about, their opinion on any given subject? That's not a cause for outrage. Acting on that opinion, however, is a horse of a different color entirely. I was not outraged at the feelings that McVeigh had for his government, I am not outraged about the Muslim extremist's view of this nation either. I was, however, outraged at both the OK City bombing and the use of occupied passenger planes as guided missiles on 9/11.
For the record, I wasn't outraged about what Hoffa said, nor was I outraged when senior Obama advisers talked of killing Romney. I just think that if folks are going to get outraged about the spoken word, they need to do so on a consistent basis regardless of whether it's one of their guys or not. If 'targeting' a district in an election is verbotten because it is an outrageous use of words, then so too should be 'killing' the chances of a candidate and 'taking out' those who disagree with your political objectives or encouraging an ethnic block to 'punish' their enemies. If you are truly going to get all worked up about nothing more than words, why limit the outrage to only those with whom you disagree politically? Why shouldn't your outrage be vented on those with whom you agree politically when they act in the same manner?
I'm not going to get outraged about someone giving voice to their discontent regarding our government, not even when they say they sometimes fantasize of taking to arms to set the wrongs right. Warnings need to be given when discontent exists; the greater the degree of discontentment, the more important it is to give voice to it. Every government should be afraid of losing the consent of the governed and listen closely when they are warned that what they are doing is costing them that consent.
You shouldn't be outraged, you should be worried. Just as a company needs to be worried when the union warns them that the contract terms are not acceptable and that there will be a strike if certain provisions of the contract are not addressed to their satisfaction. Just as the union needs to be worried when the company tells them that the new contract must contain a no strike provision or a new plant will be built where no such danger will exist. That's how balance is achieved, by the existence of adversarial relationships. Without that adversarial nature, balance is lost. That is why public pensions have such large unfunded liabilities, balance has been lost between employer and employee. That is why Social Security and Medicare have such large unfunded liabilities, the balance between a safety net and the creation of a defacto pension plan has been crossed. That is the reason we have, and will continue to have, an annual deficit in excess of $1 Trillion each and every year for the foreseeable future, the balance between the coordinate levels of government has been lost. The Senate is no longer a representative body of the state legislatures, it is a representative body of political parties and their agendas. The House is no longer a representative body of the citizens of the states, it too is nothing more than a representative body of political parties these days. Even the Supreme Court, in the wake of the FDR coup, is little more than another arm of the political parties exercising power at the federal level.
If we want to fix the problems we have, this is where we need to begin, by dismantling the absolute power of a central government that we have been building for the last 80 years. We can do it voluntarily or we can do it violently, but the reality we face is that it must be done unless we are willing to watch the United States of America become simply the next failed empire. The path we are on will lead to failure; central governments, regardless of type, have done only one thing with any consistency - fail. It hasn't mattered whether it is a centrally run republic, a centrally run democracy, a centrally run theocracy, a centrally run autocracy or a centrally run monarchy - the one thing all of them share in common, in addition to being centrally run that is, is that they have failed.