Liberal columnist and talk-show host Bonnie Erbe suggests that we "round up" purveyors of hate speech before they cause violence:
Not only have we had three hate crime murders within the last two weeks
([Stephen] Johns, as noted above, Dr. George Tiller a week ago last Sunday,
and Pvt. William Andrew Long by an American-born Muslim convert outside a recruiting station just before that.)
Now we have this quote from the so-called Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who used to be President Obama's pastor. Hate comes from among all peoples and all religions. He said this about his lack of communication with Barack Obama since he's been elected president, according to the AP:
"Them
Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that
he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years
when he's out of office," Wright told the Daily Press of Newport News
following a Tuesday night sermon at the 95th annual Hampton University
Ministers' Conference.
It's not enough to prosecute these
murders as murders. They are hate-motivated crimes and each of these
men had been under some sort of police surveillance prior to their
actions. Isn't it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before
they kill?
I've been as sickened and disturbed as anyone by the incidents Erbe describes,
as you all know, but I wonder if she's thought this through. "Round them up" and then do . . . what? Put them in jail for
thoughtcrime? I thought that sort of thing went against everything that the left held dear. (If you'd told me back during the presidential campaign, when we were all being told to pay no attention to the man behind the pulpit, that a prominent liberal journalist would soon advocate his arrest, I'd have done a spit-take all over my keyboard.)
We need to take steps against the encouragement of violence in our society; there's no question about that. But the steps Erbe advocates would lead us in a very dangerous direction.
Comments: