Editorial: In a democracy, true leaders don't incite violence
Two days after Donald Trump suggested that gun-rights advocates might take matters into their own hands to stop a newly elected Hillary Clinton from seizing their firearms, Clinton was in Des Moines to deliver a speech.
As she spoke, a woman in the audience jumped over a barricade and ran toward Clinton, and was quickly tackled by Secret Service agents.
Shortly thereafter, former Iowa legislator Tom Fiegen took to Twitter. Fiegen is a Democrat, but he’s no fan of Clinton. The lawyer recently waged an unsuccessful primary campaign for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Chuck Grassley, and until he fired off his tweet on Wednesday, he appeared to be a sane, rational human being.
As reported by Bleeding Heartland, Fiegen tweeted: “How about a barricade hop-a-thon at the next Hillary event? At (least) 5 SS per tackled protestor, they could run out of agents quickly. Then what?”
This is the sort of talk that should disqualify Fiegen from ever again holding any sort of public office.
The act of encouraging people to jump barricades and overwhelm armed Secret Service agents at a rally for a presidential candidate is sheer, unadulterated lunacy. It’s reckless, and it’s extraordinarily dangerous.
Like Trump’s incendiary comments, Fiegen’s tweet is just vague enough, and just garbled enough in its broken syntax, that the two men can argue the words were entirely innocent and have been misconstrued by others.
Even if one were to concede that point, it doesn’t lessen the severity of the offense. Public statements by political leaders that can be easily and widely misinterpreted as a call to violence are every bit as dangerous as an explicit order.
After Trump made his comments about "Second Amendment people" stopping Clinton, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh blamed the "the liberal, drive-by media” for distorting the incident. He likened Trump to a comedian, saying: “You know, he's total improv. He loves getting a laugh. He loves pushing the boundaries. That’s what this was.”
“I know exactly where that comment comes from,” Limbaugh said. “I know the thought process. I know exactly what synapses and neurons fired in Trump's inner cranium, and I know exactly when they were firing. My guess is that the vast majority of people do, too. They understand exactly what he's talking about, and it isn't assassination.”
But what about the very real possibility that some unbalanced individual, lacking Limbaugh’s divine gift of telepathy, will act on what Trump says, rather than on what he thinks?
For his part, Fiegen says he was calling for non-violent civil disobedience at Clinton appearances. "I'm not calling for any kind of physical altercation," he told a Register editorial writer on Thursday. "My tweet was not to encourage people to rush the stage."
The reality is that jumping a barricade to get at a presidential candidate in the middle of a speech is guaranteed to result in violence. The best-case scenario is that the individual is tackled and thrown to the ground, as happened Wednesday. A scenario in which people jump the barricades en masse and overwhelm the Secret Service, which is what Fiegen seemed to envision, could easily result in people being killed.
Public figures who can’t articulate their thoughts without being “misunderstood” by the average voter are also at risk of being misunderstood by foreign leaders and by deranged individuals prone to violence. Words matter, and politicians who can’t speak without appearing to incite violence don't deserve to be put in positions of leadership.
America is still a democracy. It's not a Third World country in which would-be presidents and political opportunists can sway an election by inciting violence and encouraging lawless behavior. Not yet, anyway.