Like Listening to Kids Bicker

I was skimming an article on Huffington Post about how the past few generations of Americans have taught me and mine to eschew responsibility. The author, Dr. Mark Goulston, offers as evidence a hypothetical conversation amounting in a teenager telling their parent they will take responsibility for their actions. When the adult presses for a definition of "take responsibility," the teenager responds, "I'll say I'm sorry."

Feeling remorse is not, in and of itself, taking responsibility but is the first step in doing so. Even a child can realize and acknowledge a connection between his or her actions and the next step of causality. Sarah Palin cannot, and I'm wondering if I've done such a bang-up job myself.

As you probably know, Arizona representative Gabrielle Giffords was recently the target of a madman with a gun. This violence has shocked the country and it is, like any shooting, a tragedy.

Of course, Sarah Palin had nothing directly to do with it, but there is a link between Giffords and Palin: Palin had put out a map which prompted voters to oust politicians who had voted for the Obama health care reform, and Giffords' district was one of the targeted. The map used crosshairs to mark these districts.

A reasonable person will say that Palin is in no way responsible for what happened in Arizona, and I'm inclined to agree. No sane person would see this map and think they should kill the residing Congressperson. That much is clear, but I do think this even should give us pause to consider where American politics are heading.

Even making an abstract based on violence is hateful speech and wrong. I'm not saying we don't have the right to use hate speech, but we all know we shouldn't. In a small sense, I wonder what Palin was thinking when she approved that map with crosshairs, how she would, if needed, explain it to her children. In macro, we have all gotten acclimated to the idea of threatening people who disagree with us and lowering their value as human beings.

We need to take responsibility for our actions, and that includes what we say. Even a child knows how to do that.

According to this article, though, Sarah Palin doesn't. While an aide of hers protests that the symbols on the map were never meant to portray gun sights, Palin herself said that her followers should "reload."

Palin's backpedaling is reprehensible, but it reminds me of something I said just last night. I was talking to a friend about House Republicans reading the Constitution in session and wasting everyone's time and I told her, "being angry with Republicans for making a false show of patriotism is like the girl who put the snake in her coat and got mad at it when it bit her." To put a fine tip on it, I implied, "Republicans=snakes." And that was reprehensible.

It's time for all of us to stop dehumanizing our political opponents and start talking like civilized people.

The Weight of "?"

In considering Voltaire's criteria for judging people, that is, by their questions and not their answers, I find myself worried to introspect and find myself too simple: my overwhelming, all-encompassing question over the past few weeks has been a straightforward, "wait, really?"

My question is prompted by an ongoing series of answers ostensibly about WikiLeaks and its editor in chief Julian Assagne, but are actually about freedoms like speech and press. The US government demands his Twitter account info, Vice President Biden labels him a "high-tech terrorist" (as did Newt Gingrich) and some buffoons want to kill the "traitor." Assagne is Australian.

Compare answers like the US government calling Assange a terrorist to the Economist awarding him the Index on Censorship award and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggesting he win a Nobel Peace Prize.

So while Sarah Palin is the only person I've found who has actually levied a specific charge against him, on her Facebook page, all other criticism has been nebulous at best. On the other hand, you only need hop over to Assagne's Wikipedia page to find out he's published material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumping in Africa, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer.

But that all amounts to weighing good and bad, which is so largely a matter of perspective. According to Joe Biden, Assagne is guilty of the monstrosity of making meetings with world leaders "cumbersome." So that's bad.

All these answers are given to the woefully underasked question, "is Julian Assagne and WikiLeaks in the wrong?" I'm going to come down and say "no." I voted for Obama because he promised for transparency in government. I really wanted to see the people in my government who started the war in Iraq held responsible for their actions. I hoped this administration would stand for the liberties the PATRIOT Act (which Obama upheld) usurps. Obama didn't, Assagne did.

But the US still wants to jail him for releasing State Department documents and no one could blame them. Just consider Assagne's audacity for exposing US diplomats in selling Boeing jets.

Which incites me to ask another too-simple question: so what? So what about all this bickering and name calling? So what about the government lusting after classification and opacity? So what about Joe Biden's convenience?

And what about the First Amendment? The accusations levied against Assagne and WikiLeaks shouldn't amount to a hill of beans next to the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the rights of people in a democratic society to know whatever they want about their government.

Right Newt Gingrich? Sarah Palin? Joe Biden? President Obama? The freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution are more important than vagaries and speculative charges, right?

Right?

My questions are simple. I might be a simple person, but I don't think that's such a bad thing. I'm incredulous, and that disbelief might be the beginning of something better.