Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 6, 1995 TAG: 9505100022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PETER S. FOSL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Are Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and other conservative media personalities moral kin to the Hutu broadcasters who urged on Rwandan militias in their deadly business? Are this country's Christian fundamentalist movements political cousins to the Islamic fundamentalists currently bedeviling the Middle East?
The answers to these questions are, by no means, simple.
It's probably false to say that conservative political rhetoric served either as a sufficient or as a necessary condition for the recent bombing. Similarly, casual links between the rhetoric and the bombing are probably too diffuse and too oblique to warrant legal culpability. Nevertheless, by helping to create and legitimize a climate of uncompromising anger, intolerance and zealotry, conservative political discourse was indeed a contributing cause to the death of more than 160 innocent people in Oklahoma City.
There are many things of which the bombing reminds us. It reminds us that white, conservative male Americans are every bit as dangerous to our national security as darker-skinned foreigners; that Christians are every bit as lethal as Muslims; that the militia movement in the United States cradles violence, bigotry and paranoia just as well as neo-fascist groups and the Ku Klux Klan.
But the bombing also reminds us of something else, something conservatives so ardently wish to deny. It reminds us that words are powerful, they provoke, stimulate, harm and incite. Moreover, those of us who use words to such purposes are responsible for the effects they produce. Conservatives used to know this.
Although their criticisms have often been priggish and censorious, conservatives have forcefully argued that the words and images of rock music, rap, and popular film and television contribute to the violence and promiscuity characteristic of our society. (I happen to agree with them on this.) Now, however, that their own rhetoric has been accused of producing similar corruption, conservatives seem to have changed their minds.
We now hear conservative leaders trumpet the innocence of words, maintaining that only individuals bear responsibility for their actions. This is a dangerous and foolhardy reaction, and it's so because the conservatives' willful refusal to engage in self-criticism may hobble us in preventing future political attacks.
Make no mistake. My claim here isn't that conservative ideas cause violence. Rather, the problem rests in the way those ideas have been advanced. Nor do I think the left has nothing to learn from this horrific assault. Left-wing rhetoric has, at times, been just as vitriolic as that produced by the right, and we on the left should be well aware of the strange fruit that such language can yield. It's the right, however, which currently dominates this country's political scene, and the preponderance of hate speech today certainly emanates from the right.
With nets of polarizing political invective, conservatives have, in recent years, been trawling with increasing intensity in the waters of hatred. Through the bombing, we can now see that conservatives have not only harvested a majority in Congress with these nets, but they have also hauled up some very ugly creatures.
It's time they own up to that fact. Conservatives talk a lot about personal responsibility. If they mean what they say, they should have the courage to stand up and acknowledge (or at least explore) the extent of their responsibility for the Oklahoma tragedy.
Limbaugh and other right-wing leaders have warned their followers that the left will use the bombing as a bludgeon to assault this country's conservative movement. What Rush & Co. fail to add, however, is that the left is justified in doing so, for the right is, in part, to blame.
Peter S. Fosl is an assistant professor of philosophy at Hollins College.
by CNB