There are a few bad ideas circulating around Democratic circles in the aftermath of the Tucson incident that probably won't go anywhere but still deserve to be singled out as bad ideas. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, for example, wants to revive the Fairness Doctrine:
The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use 'better judgment.'
'Free speech is as free speech does,' he said. 'You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.'
Words are dangerous, but not as dangerous as government telling us which words to say. Again, this is why the First Amendment is No. 1. The point of the "fire" in a crowded theater example is that, at the time, it was meant to convey circumstances in which certain speech would create imminent physical danger to others. Nothing on talk radio qualifies.
Likewise, Rep. Robert Brady wants a ban on imagery deemed threatening to politicians:
Citing the controversial "crosshairs" image formerly posted on Sarah Palin’s PAC website, Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) is planning to introduce legislation that will make it a federal crime to use symbols or rhetoric that appears to threaten members of Congress.
“I want to protect our congresspeople in a way that they can't put a crosshair on us and they can't put a bull's-eye on us,” Brady told Fox News. “Whoever does it should know it's going to be illegal to do it.”
Again, it really cannot be illegal to harshly criticize the government. Both the First Amendment itself and decades of jurisprudence grant Americans a lot of leeway to criticize public figures. While I understand why lawmakers would be traumatized by this incident, the relative scarcity of political violence in the U.S. makes a law like this truly unjustifiable even on empirical grounds, if it weren't already so based on first principles.
This stuff is also bad politics. The freedom of speech is perhaps the one all Americans intuitively understand the most, clamping down on speech in the aftermath of an incident like this one won't play well. It's also somewhat frustrating to see some Democrats reacting similar to the way Republicans have following terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists, assuming that the path to security lies in curtailing individual liberty.
