For The Record

Bear with me, I gotta get this off my chest. I'll try to keep it short.
   I've seen lately a strong streak of 'not my fault' breaking out among people who count themselves as our political leaders, or who desperately want to be seen that way, at any rate. They'll espouse a position or advocate a course of action using inflammatory rhetoric and dangerous imagery, and then try to completely disavow any responsibility for what happens when someone heeds that message a little too well. I'm seeing this from both the left and the right. Well, mostly the right.
   Let me make this clear: even if you have no direct legal responsibility for what someone does when they take your message too far, you absolutely, positively, without a doubt have moral responsibility. And if you count yourself a God-fearing person - as many on the right claim - the idea of moral culpability should terrify you far more than any temporal legal entanglements.
   Words are weapons, and once you hear something you can't un-hear it. You can put down the knife or the gun, you can dismantle the atom bomb, but words stay. And poisonous words keep spreading their sickness. Quietly. When vulnerable people are at their lowest they'll latch onto something they heard, something vitriolic and hostile, and cling to the hate like a drowning man clings to a life preserver. Hateful words can lead to deadly consequences, and the person who delivered the message stands accountable for what happens afterward.
   Still have your doubts? Think of it this way: would you hold your child responsible if the neighbor kids beat up someone because she said that person was a terrorist, even if she didn't actually participate in the beating? Of course you would, your girl would be as liable for the bruises and scrapes as the kids who threw the punches. And if you denied your child was responsible, the parents of the other kids and the one who got beat up would definitely have a different opinion.
   When someone in a position of power, authority or influence advocates a violent course of action - even when the message is symbolic or thinly veiled - they bear moral responsibility for any violence that follows when people heed that message. End of story.