Assassination Two

According to the media, savage and violent behavior towards seemingly peripheral individuals can be stimulated by nasty and erroneous public opinions. So an isolated idiot or a completely disconnected maniac can be focused into action by the written or spoken word. This is in contradistinction to our opinion on education which shuns any kind of moral or civics teaching. So people can be stimulated to do negative things but not to do positive things. And we apparently know what these dangerous stimuli are. This comes as good news to those who remember the interview with the attempted assassin of George Wallace who revealed that he experienced great anger and hostility while watching The Donna Reed Show, certainly a vipers' nest of chaos and social disruption.

Of course we need to identify these high risk dangerous information areas and stop them. The problem seems to be what is causing what. It appears that violent rap music does not cause violence in inner city youth. Mark Twain, however, can cause prejudice. Muslim terrorists point to the Koran as their inspiration but apparently they are wrong. Does Homer and books about whale hunting cause aggressive behavior in the West? And what censorship could have saved Senor Carlos Castro from his unfortunate recent demise?

There is no reason to denigrate these insightful people who know the causes of these terrible things. But it would be more reassuring if they had something that looked like evidence to bolster their belief. Otherwise the merely plausible might become law. Perhaps it is a simple matter of reading further in the book. The notion is the hypothesis; it is only a starting point. Once the hypothesis is made, long and difficult evaluations have to be made as the hypothesis is stressed. Only after good challenge does the hypothesis get any credibility and, even then, may fail.

But the first day of any study is always exciting and fun. And easy.