You might think that your words and actions — talking of putting people in the “cross-hairs” and putting gun-sites on various districts — don’t matter. But they do. Didn’t you teach your children to think before they speak? Did you tell them that what they say and the words they choose matter?<\/p>\n
Maybe not, given that your children have used homophobic slurs in social media. When you accuse good people of supporting “death panels” rather than giving a reasoned response outlining the reasons you disagree with a proposal, you encourage people who don’t look deeply into a subject to think that their life depends on drastic — perhaps violent — action.<\/p>\n
If you truly believe your views are correct, don’t concoct Tweet-sized soundbites to rile up the masses. Explain your reasons and encourage people to study the proposals and come to a conclusion. Reasoned discourse doesn’t lead to violence. Telling people that socialists are taking over the government and want to put your grandmother down like a dog could just push someone unstable over the edge. Telling them to take down their opponents? That’s just asking for a loon to pick up a gun.<\/p>\n
Think then speak. I tell my 13 year old that. I shouldn’t have to tell someone who once ran a state.<\/p>\n
Lisa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You might think that your words and actions — talking of putting people in the “cross-hairs” and putting gun-sites on various districts — don’t matter. But they do. Didn’t you teach your children to think before they speak? Did you tell them that what they say and the words they choose matter? Maybe not, given…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,220,226],"tags":[236,263,296,180],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-are-you-serious","category-gun-violence","category-politicians","tag-arizona-shootings","tag-healthcare-reform","tag-rhetoric","tag-sarah-palin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}