A year ago today, the reins of our country were handed over to a new administration. The year that just passed makes me wish that the years that are to come soon will be just like it. While we saw an occasional story of negligible importance coming out of Washington, the quality of our national dialogue triumphed again and again.
While petty issues such as Afghanistan and the Wall Street country club passed by with barely a reference, nary a day passed where CNN, the Wall Street Journal or some other media organization weren't talking about the issues that affect us most.
Day after day, we were updated on the latest regarding the 'most important' issues our country faces. Barack Obama's birth certificate. The Sarah Palin chronicles. ACORN. Death panels. Teabaggers and tea parties.
But seriously, truth be told, our national commentary is a disaster. All year long we're exposed to paranoia and hyperbole that's not only nonsensical, but borderline dangerous.
For months on end, certain cable and radio hosts warned about the president's plans to repeal the Second Amendment, despite such a plan not existing at all. Yet, in April, 23-year-old Richard Poplawski allegedly used an AK-47 to gun down three police officers in Pittsburgh because he feared that the government was going to take his guns away. The effects of reckless rhetoric had once again surfaced with real consequences.
Perhaps nothing reminds me more of some of the consequences of reckless and inflammatory rhetoric than the murder of Dr. George Tiller. For those of you who have never heard of him, George Tiller was a doctor who specialized in family medicine. His clinic in Wichita, Kan., was one of three clinics in the country known for performing late-term abortions, a highly controversial yet completely legal medical procedure.
Tiller had already been shot in both arms by an attempted assassin in 1993, but made a full recovery. Last May, he was serving as an usher at the local church he had attended for years. During the service, he was attacked by a gunman named Scott Roeder, who is charged with shooting and killing Tiller.
Jury selection for Roeder's trial began last week, after a long delay. The delay was caused by Roeder entering a plea of 'justifiable homicide,' claiming that the death of Dr. Tiller was necessary to prevent the murder of others - a ludicrous justification to be sure.
Roeder had previously been arrested, and subsequently released, for having bomb components in his car. He's been linked to a fringe group called the Army of God, which publishes bomb-making instructions while calling for the deaths of abortion providers. Multiple members of the Army of God have already been tossed in jail for bombing medical clinics.
This is an extreme, but real, example of what can happen when reckless hyperbole is allowed to poison our national discourse. Elected officials, members of the media and certain media organizations have fueled the fire, making such nonsense a daily fixture on television and all across the Internet, almost to the point where it's considered 'normal' to be this out of touch with basic common sense.
All that said, occasionally a good response to this paranoia gets some airtime. There was a dialogue caught on video last summer at a town hall appearance in Massachusetts. With most of the focus being on the health care issue, one woman proceeded to evoke Adolf Hitler and Nazis as some sort of comparison between attempts at lowering costs and expanding health care coverage for Americans.
Clearly, the person isn't exactly an Ivy League graduate, and in an instant YouTube classic, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) promptly shut her down, flat-out embarrassing her for her nonsense. The unfortunate part of it is that it was Frank who the all-important members of the media decided was out of line.
This isn't a call for government censorship of those poisoning our national discourse. Instead, it's intended to promote taking some responsibility for those discussing issues affecting the people. There are several very important issues we, as a country, need to tackle in the near future, and we need to be serious if we're going to solve them.
Write to Michael at mgkarafin@bsu.edu.
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