I don't recall anyone saying "I'm worried this rhetoric might inspire a perfectly sane person...

[Electric Monk]

... with a coherent political theory, towards violence."

Do you?

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. Sanity

can be a fine line, sometimes easily crossed through the power of emotion, the moment...and even them, is it really the threshold of insanity, or just anger?

No definitive answers for this one...

[Electric Monk]

2. I'm worried Palin's and Beck's rhetoric might inspire borderline nutballs to cross over that edge.

Actually, I think it's already happened, more than once.

[DrDan]

3. "perfectly sane" - not sure such a person exists

[naaman fletcher]

4. of course not. it's a bogus issue.

anyone who has every been around politics at all knows that "targeting your opponent" has been going on for decades. Crosshairs over districts and such has gone on forever, on both the left and right.

Perhaps it should stop, but this sudden frenzy over it is just because people like to get worked up over non-issues.

[DCKit]

5. I couldn't disagree more. We used to have a far more civil society.

The likes of OxyRush and Beckkk would not have been tolerated by the masses and political rhetoric which crossed the line didn't result in a Senate seat.

We even had rules and laws to keep them in check.

[naaman fletcher]

6. A far more civil society? That's just not true.

We have the issues that led up to Hamilton's death. Look at Jackson's career. The border wars, the civil war. KKK, lynching, mob violence. Father coughlin, KKK resurgence in the 50's.

People like to wax nostalgic on a former era of a civil society and it's just not true.