Don't let debate stifle passion

Voltaire once said, "An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination." Whatever Voltaire may have thought, it's clear that there's no place for violence in American democracy.

The nation has struggled to understand what happened last Saturday in Arizona, moving from shock to accusation and finally to shared mourning. But something about this tragedy highlights how ill-equipped we are to collectively process why mass violence happens. Rather than understanding each act as its own unique culmination of events, we tend to plug it into broad public narratives. And broad narratives always rely on generalization.

In many ways, the hours after the shootings resembled those after the November 2009 killings at Fort Hood by a Muslim American U.S. Army major - only this time, the national narrative was, "Does the tea party encourage violence against moderate political leaders?" instead of "Does Islam encourage violence against Americans?"

At the heart, both questions imply that passionate beliefs - whether political or religious - are inherently violent. In response, a number of commentators have said simply that both of these men were mentally ill, and that political passions had nothing to do with their acts. But diagnosing mental illness is far more complex than looking at a collection of stereotypical gestures or angry writings.

It remains to be seen if the Arizona shooter has any ties to the so-called nativist militia movement, as has been suggested. And although the Fort Hood shooter communicated with a known radical militant Yemeni cleric, federal investigators haven't found any evidence that he had co-conspirators or was involved in any terrorist plot. But the question remains, can't someone be passionate about politics without becoming pathologically enraged?

As was the case after Fort Hood, in the wake of the Arizona shooting there have been the inevitable questions about whether lax gun control laws encourage violence. One of the proposals now on the table, advanced this week by Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), would prevent anyone from carrying a gun within 1,000 feet of elected officials.

Such a law would have prevented protesters in New Hampshire and Arizona from carrying handguns and semiautomatic weapons - as they were legally allowed to do - to demonstrations outside the health-care reform town halls President Barack Obama led throughout the country in August 2009. At the time, Paul Helmke, head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said they were endangering those in attendance and even stifling reasoned public debate.

But the protesters claimed they were exercising the rights they would like to see protected - an undeniable form of passionate political engagement.

Which brings us to the question so many have been grappling with this week: Can ardent, partisan politics actually cause violence?

Although the contemporary political landscape still bears the scars of Sept. 11 and Oklahoma City, the period most marked by political turbulence and assassination was the 1960s. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birth we will celebrate on Monday and who was assassinated during one of the most contentious political periods in U.S. history, said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter."

To those who speak out - whether in favor of gun control or the right to openly bear arms, whether to make immigration easier or to close the borders, whether to seek universal health care or to repeal last year's reform - it is not assassination but spirited debate that should characterize our democracy. That leaves us to struggle with how to protect the right to speak freely - while protecting the civil servants we entrust to protect those freedoms.