Lately I've been wondering if the Internet is responsible for a New Dark Ages descending upon mankind. Throughout history there have always been crazies around who preach destruction and death. In the past they would almost latterly stand on a soap box in the park and yell at the top of their lungs to everybody within the sound of their voices. Some of these people seemed quite lucid while most simply raved.
Today, due to the Internet, these crazies who were mostly ignored in the past now have a world wide pulpit to connect them to other crazies. Take what is happening now in Wisconsin. I don't care if you support the governor and the republicans or appose them and support the democrats. You definitely have the right to do either of these two things. However, the crazies who in the past were restricted in how much damage they could do by the distance their voice travels are now posting things on the Internet like "all crazies wanted, must have gun, training as sniper preferred; target Scott Walker." I'm sorry but to me that sounds like incitement to murder.
The unfortunate fact is that unless you name one particular individual, in this country you will almost never be prosecuted in conjunction with a murder by calling for one. The crazies who yell things like that are generally to cowardly to do any of these things themselves and are generally too stupid to understand the effect of their snout on the mind of some disturbed individual.
I don't know what may set the next crazy with a twenty two pistol off. I do remember several instances of something like this occurring. Remember a fellow named John Hinkley? All it took for him to try to kill the President was the thought that it would impress Jody Foster. There are even a few crazies out there who think that Jody Foster is responsible because she did not give in to Hinkleys advances. (I think that is just as nuts as the nut balls who are sending the death threats to Governor Walker.)
The fact is, those nuts are almost guaranteed to shoot themselves in the foot. If some crazy does take a shot at Walker, the back lash against the unions is going to be viscous. These people have never really studied history. All they have ever done is to look at the sanitized version of history written after the fact. I will give a few examples below.
First let's talk about the most famous assassination in modern times. I'm talking about the death of John F. Kennedy. For those of you who were not alive in 1963 the political reality was not what most historians try to paint for you., Kennedy was not a popular president. The simple fact was that without Lyndon Johnson he would have never been elected to his first term and in the interim he had alienated Johnson and a large number of the voters who did vote for him. Then along comes Dallas, Texas. After the assassination John Kennedy became the matter who stood for everything which was right about America. First he was a champion of civil rights then there was the moon program, etc, etc, etc. Now for a reality check. EVERY piece of civil rights legislation attributed to Kennedy was actually passed under Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy was dead. As for the moon landing, Kennedy asked Johnson to research what the country could do to get ahead of the Russians in space and Johnson suggested going to the moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy did make the speech.
Now look a little farther back in history, say to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Serbian separatists believed that they could force Astrio-Hungarian Monarchy to grant freedom to Serbia. The result was a little temper tantrum called World War I. Serbia did not get what they tried to force with their stupid assassination attempt even though they were on the winning side of World War I. To much of Europe knew who had fired the first shots and why. Think it was over quickly, search for the Bosnian war in the 1990's. Now for one last example. In ancient Rome there once was an Emperor named Caligula. Caligula was a mad man. That is perhaps the nicest thing which can be said of him. I won't go into the depth of his depravity but when he was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guard Rome breathed a sigh of relief. After all Claudius was a descent Emperor. The problem came in with Claudius's successor. I will give the name here. I think you may have heard it. In a way this one name made Caligula seem almost tame. That name? Nero!
Occasionally I hear some idiot wishing an assassination would kill the President, which president; you add the name of the last several I've heard nuts calling for each and every one of them to be killed. Every time I hear this I say, 'God no, all you will do is turn him into a mortar.' The reality is, if you want to turn any President you hate into the greatest President in history and make sure that every piece of legislation he ever spouted really does happen regardless of how much harm it will do or how much it violated our own Constitution, try duplicating Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald changed the world. It's just that he did not change the world in the way he wanted to.
If you are thinking about posting what amounts to a death threat on the Internet, think about it. Some other nut may just post a threat on the Internet naming you a target. Think about having to live with the chance that some other nut, having read that request for a murder, may be waiting outside you door to kill you. Worse yet, they may shoot at you but hit one of your kids. The unfortunate fact is that the nut case who pulled the trigger is perhaps less guilty than the Internet nut who requested the kill to begin with. Unfortunately under the system of laws we live under that person is usually immune from prosecution. At least that is until one day when they have to answer for their crime standing at the feet of God.