Jared Loughner's Question by Rev. Tom Schade

Minister's Memo
FIrst Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA
January 15, 2011

Rev. Tom Schade

Jared Loughner's Question

We are told that Jared Louchner asked Rep. Gabrielle Gifford at a Town Hall meeting this question: ""What is government if words have no meaning?". He was angered, we are told, that she did not answer the question adequately.

We are told that this question indicates his mental illness. Perhaps there is something wrong with me, a potential derangement, but I think I get his question. It is more basic than the question of whether our political rhetoric is so heated as to be dangerous.

Let me take you on a trip in my personal "wayback machine" to the late 60's, when I was in college. As an antiwar activist, I, with others, had concluded that the political system was rigged and fixed. Our evidence included the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr, the nomination of Hubert Humphrey in Chicago, and Nixon's election in 1968. We said that "Fascism" had come to America.

We had not studied "Fascism" in depth, nor made a rigorous analysis of the political system. Looking back, it is now clear that the United States had not entered into a period of dictatorship in 1968.

After all, the President we thought was a power mad tyrant was impeached only a few years later.

We said that "Fascism" had come to America because we were really angry and because accusing the system of Fascism was rhetorically satisfying. Our accusation was not based on the commonly understood meaning of words, but on an exaggeration. The problem was that an untruth became accepted in some circles as truth and that led some to dangerous political actions.

How are government, politics and civic life possible if words have no meaning?

The political discourse in this country is dangerous, not because military, cowboy and violent metaphors are used by some to describe what is going on. Those metaphors come to mind because we talk about events with words untethered to reality and truth.

To quote some examples:

Modest regulation of the kind of weapons that can be legally sold or who can buy them is not "taking away people's guns." No governmental power now exists that actually permits the confiscation of anyone's weapons. Gun regulation is declining, not growing. It is not simply an exaggeration to say that President Obama wants to take away your guns; it is factually untrue.

Giving large amounts of cash to banks to improve their liquidity during a credit crunch is not 'socialism'.If anything, it is the opposite, a public subsidy of the present bank managements. You may not think it wise policy, but you cannot call it "socialism" without robbing the word of its meaning.

Setting up a modest system of subsidies for people to buy commercial health insurance is not a "take over" of the health system. Nor is permitting physicians to bill Medicare for end of life planning discussions with patients setting up "death panels" in actual fact.

I know these examples reflect my political preferences, but I suspect that any honest conservative could cite similar exaggerations made by liberals.

The problem is not political speech that can be rhetorically vivid, but that eventually exaggerated rhetoric causes words to lose their meaning. And when words like "confiscation, take-over, socialism, treason, enemy, terrorism, anti-American, murder and genocide" lose their careful, precise and exact meaning, then all sorts of dangers can result.

I do not, for a minute, believe that speech should be regulated. No "ministry of truth" should decide when an exaggerated phrase meant to shock verges into untruth. But everyone, including commentators, reporters, pundit and ordinary citizens ought to be asking "What a second, is what you are saying actually true? Are you using words according to commonly accepted meanings?"

Liberal Religion is not simply committed to the truth. It is committed to the social process of the truth. We do not claim to know the truth, but believe that the truth will emerge from honest dialogue and questioning. We insist that people tell the difference between facts, opinions, fictions, rhetorical flourishes, jokes and poetry. We are all responsible for preserving the meaning of words, so that government and politics and civic life are possible.

John Milton, the English Puritan poet, is quoted in the Responsive Reading 671 in our Gray hymnal as writing: "Let [truth] and falsehood grapple, [for] whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter."