With flu season nearly upon us, the attention of public-health experts and hypochondriacs is turning to the potential perils of the H1N1 pandemic. But there is another, far more insidious disease in our midst: Demagogic Fever. We have grown accustomed to witnessing the maniacal rants and incoherent ramblings of high-profile individuals who suffer from this affliction and are therefore employed by light-weight infotainment outlets such as Premiere Radio Networks (Rush Limbaugh), Fox News (Glenn Beck), and CNN (Lou Dobbs). But it would behoove us to keep in mind that there are quite a few infected men and women who hold positions of power in the U.S. Congress. Given that Demagogic Fever is characterized by a dangerous degree of delusion, this is a matter of grave concern not only to public health, but to national security as well. Witness for yourself the degree to which the intellectual faculties of some of our nation’s lawmakers have been impaired by this debilitating ailment:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who currently occupies a seat in the House Financial Services Committee, believes that “global warming” cannot be real because it involves a warm-and-fuzzy atmospheric gas known as “carbon dioxide,” which not only “is a natural byproduct of nature,” but “occurs in earth” and is essential even for the life of “the fowl that flies in the air”:

In a related vein, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, believes that “global warming” is a hoax perpetrated by a Leftist cabal that includes Hollywood Elitists, the United Nations, and The Weather Channel:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, believes that precisely 17 of his fellow congressional representatives are openly socialist, although it remains unclear who they are or if Bachus actually knows what the term “socialism” means:

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who fills a chair in the House Rules Committee, believes—somewhat defensively, perhaps, given her advanced age—that the health-care reform legislation slowly making its way through Congress would allow the federal government to put senior citizens to death (although there does not appear to be a Euthanasia provision in any of the bills currently circulating):

It should give one pause to realize that these individuals, who are clearly not in their right mind, possess some degree of power in shaping the fate of the United States. More alarming still is the fact that a majority of the electorate in the locales from whence they come are equally ill. It may be time to start spiking the nation’s drinking water with Zyprexa.

{pic by Burns!}

It is by no means clear when a word becomes violent. Murkier still is the question of when a word becomes so violent that the person who stands behind it deserves imprisonment or some lesser form of legal censure. And trying to decide what degree of responsibility is borne by a speaker of violent words for the violence committed by others who were inspired by those words tends to be a circular exercise in ethical futility.

The many gradations of meaning and intent that transform Free Speech into Hate Speech into Verbal Violence have been on prominent display over the past month or so as the Radical Right—already apoplectic over the ascendancy of dark-hued liberalism in the nation’s Capitol—has cloaked itself in health-care drag and infested the Town Hall Meetings that congressional representatives feel inexplicably obliged to conduct during their August recess. Much of the Right Wing’s theatrics in this regard have been farcically delusional in nature. Drones who receive their marching orders from intellectual luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck parrot patently absurd talking points about Fascism, Socialism, and “death panels” while parading around with pictures of Barack Obama sporting a Hitler-esque mustache. During a recent Town Hall Meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, Representative Barney Frank (D-4th/Mass.), Chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, illustrated quite brilliantly just how seriously these kinds of histrionics should not be taken based on their merits (or lack thereof).

Unfortunately, Hate Speech is not all fun and games in which the intellectual deficiencies or mental instabilities of Right Wingers can be mocked for sport. Hate Speech can be deadly in its consequences, unintended or otherwise. For instance, Washington Monthly notes that Pittsburgh cop-killer Richard Poplawski suckled at the ideological teats of Fox News and the National Rifle Association in feeding his fantasies that the Obama administration was about to seize his beloved weapons. And the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights points out that the anti-immigrant rhetoric spouted by “high profile national media personalities” such as Lou Dobbs and Michael Savage “correlates closely with the increase in hate crimes against Hispanics.” Of course, correlation does not prove causality—and blaming the demagoguery of Dobbs and Savage for anti-Latino hate crimes is akin to blaming Marilyn Manson for the Columbine massacre because shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris liked his songs.

Regardless of the precise relationship between Hate Speech by one person and violent acts committed by another, the question remains of what one can actually do about it. In Europe and Canada, for instance, certain forms of public hate speech are simply illegal—although these laws have not exactly succeeded in eradicating either hate crimes or Right Wing hate groups. In the United States, on the other hand, freedom of speech as encoded in the First Amendment to the Constitution is generally held in high regard; and for good reason. As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) succinctly notes: “History teaches that the first target of government repression is never the last.” In other words, let the government ban the speech of your enemy and it may ban your speech next. It is for that reason that the ACLU sometimes finds itself in the uncomfortable position of defending the free-speech rights of utterly vile hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan—and opposing progressive students who seek to ban Right Wing hate speech on campus. As the ACLU argues rather persuasively: “Where racist, sexist and homophobic speech is concerned, the ACLU believes that more speech—not less—is the best revenge.…when hate is out in the open, people can see the problem.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean one must sit back and do nothing when mainstream media “commentators” who are bankrolled by major corporations spew forth hate rhetoric day after day. For instance, the Color of Change campaign seems to be having some success in persuading advertisers to pull their ads from Glenn Beck’s show. Ultimately, however, peddlers of hate like Beck will fade away only when they no longer have a mass audience dumb enough to believe their lies. Darkness flourishes where the bulbs are dimmest. Conservative ideology tends to be a refuge for the ignorant… it is people who don’t know what “socialism” actually is who are the most likely to believe that the centrist Obama administration is “socialist.” For better or worse, an educated populace is the only viable, long-term solution to the social problems and quandaries posed by Hate Speech and Verbal Violence.

{pic by stallio}

People who are accustomed to thinking for themselves often experience confusion upon visiting the virtual salons in which Arch-Conservatives share their erudite observations concerning history, science, and current affairs. This confusion stems in large part from the vastly different evidentiary standards by which Far-Right Wingers tend to evaluate different beliefs. Some beliefs require no supporting evidence at all to be accepted as Truth in the Uber-Conservative Consciousness. But there are other beliefs for which no amount of evidence can ever suffice. For instance, no evidence is necessary to support the belief that Barack Obama is an illegal Kenyan immigrant born in Mombasa. But no amount of evidence is sufficient to support the belief that Obama is a U.S. citizen born in Honolulu.

There are no hard and fast rules among Super Conservatives as to when a belief requires evidence and when it doesn’t. Such knowledge is more of an art than a science and requires experience to master. For those readers unfamiliar with the unpredictable empirical twists and turns of the Paleoconservative Worldview, here is a handy topical guide for distinguishing Fact-Free Truth from Evidence-Based Heresy:

Cosmology

Fact-Free Truth: A magical and invisible Supreme Being created the universe about 6,000 years ago.

Evidence-Based Heresy: The universe as we know it came into being 12-14 billion years ago with an event called the “Big Bang.”

Biology

Fact-Free Truth: The magical and invisible Supreme Being created all forms of Life just as they exist today.

Evidence-Based Heresy: All forms of life change over time through the interplay of genetic mutation and natural selection; a process known as “evolution.”

History

Fact-Free Truth: The stories of The Bible tell the literal truth about the history of Humankind.

Evidence-Based Heresy: The stories of The Bible are parables created before the existence of a clearly defined “non-fiction” genre in literature.

Climatology

Fact-Free Truth: “Global warming” is a hoax perpetrated by a vast international conspiracy designed to undermine U.S. sovereignty in order to create Word Government.

Evidence-Based Heresy: Emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” from industrial processes are causing the average temperature of the earth to rise over time.

Politics

Fact-Free Truth: The Obama administration is “socialist.”

Evidence-Based Heresy: The Obama administration is “centrist Democrat” by U.S. political standards (which qualifies as “moderate conservative” by global political standards) and does not come close to fitting the actual definition of “socialism.”

Patriotism

Fact-Free Truth: The United States of America is the greatest nation that has ever existed or ever will exist and is uniquely favored by the magical and invisible Supreme Being.

Evidence-Based Heresy: The United States of America is number 15 on the Human Development Index of nations as ranked by average health, knowledge, and standard of living—right after Iceland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Finland, Denmark, and Austria.

Sexuality

Fact-Free Truth: Homosexuals choose a deviant and hedonistic “life style” that is frowned up by the magical and invisible Supreme Being.

Evidence-Based Heresy: Homosexuals are attracted to members of the same sex.

Sex

Fact-Free Truth: Sex outside of marriage is wrong.

Evidence-Based Heresy: Sex outside of marriage is fun.