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Did I hear this right? Republican congressman Peter King said that if Barack Obama is elected president, “terrorists will be dancing in the streets.” (I always have to doubt my ears when I hear comments like this.)
Now, someone might have the opinion that shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater is his free-speech right. If he sincerely believed there is a fire,-say, he was hallucinating,-that’s one thing. Otherwise, as a lie that could reasonably be expected to result in injury and even death, this is well-established as NOT a citizen’s right.
Terrorists blow themselves up. If someone is willing to conceal explosives on his body, there’s no defense against that. Not a total police state, not identity chips inside everybody, nothing. The idea, rather, is not for the US to play “whack-a-mole” with the world, but to behave in a manner that does not produce the desperation that drives people to the ultimate protest, suicide.
How could the prospect of a hawkish president such as Bush frighten people who expect –and want- to die? How can the idea of a less hawkish president such as Obama cheer suicide bombers to an even greater orgy of self-destruction? In all the years I’ve been asking hawks these questions, I have yet to get a clear, direct answer. It’s as though, in their lust for war, they’ll say things they can’t convincingly rationalize even to themselves. And, since saying these things are said with the expectation that they’ll result in injuries and deaths that would not have otherwise occurred, these statements are the same as falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater,-illegal and unconscionable. Peter King is no more harmlessly expressing an opinion, a free-speech right, than is the person shouting “Fire!”
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