[i]There will always be groups who will act with “uncompromising” militancy and sometimes, with savagery. Consider the following strategies. Strategy one: match the militants for extremism. Strategy two: do nothing. Strategy three: insist on a level playing field.[/i]

Okay, but what, in practical terms, constitutes “a level playing field” and what mechanism is there to achieve it?

I think we’ve all commented on what the far end of the trajectory looks like — Nazis vs. Operation Anthropoid for example — but what about the near end of the trajectory?

Let’s return to the Hanging Palin example, since I think it’s illustrative. The display has been widely publicized and has gotten some stern condemnation from people who are not exclusively conservatives. (All the panelists on “The View,” for what it’s worth, which may not be much …) Will all this verbal condemnation and national spotlight cause Mr. Morrisette to have a change in attitude and remove or alter the display? Not likely, IMO.

Because we appear to be dealing with someone who, as the old phrase goes, has no shame. Doesn’t respond to public excoriation even when those on his side of the ideological aisle are telling him this is by no means acceptable.

However, even with a lot of tongue-lashing and finger-wagging, nobody is actually going to DO anything to compel Mr. Morrisette to change his display. And that’s precisely what he is counting on. The law can’t touch him, and social condemnation has no impact.

Which means what? This particular episode is a piffle in the broad scheme of things. But insofar as it does belong to the broad scheme of things, I think it needs to be paid attention to. Because “others” are paying attention, too, as I think most here would agree.

Wayyyyyy before a society gets to Heydrich domination & bloodbath retaliations … it looks something like, say, Theo van Gogh getting assassinated on the street in broad daylight. And before it looks like that (perhaps, again, wayyy before), it looks something like … oh, a shameless dolt hanging a VP candidate in effigy as a Halloween display, and nobody else actually DOING anything about it.

John Adams once remarked that the U.S. Constitution is fit for only a moral & religious people, and that it could not govern any other. We had, in his day, a society with a lot of restraints that were NOT governmental ones. Which was why the Constitution worked (imperfectly in ideal terms, but remarkably well in historical ones).

But what of a society in which those non-governmental restraints have largely eroded? This is the thing I regret to say that too many Americans don’t seem to realize about our much-vaunted “individual liberties.” The Constitution protects and prefers, rightly so, the individual vs. the state. But should the individual be preferred and protected in all cases and all ways above non-state entities — the family, the neighbors, the church or synagogue, the town, the co-workers, etc.?

Because it seems to me that when an individual gets it in mind to push past all those non-state barriers, and intolerable disruption results, then the only power left to put a stop to that individual is the state. The bigger and harder the push from anti-social individuals, the bigger and harder the push-back from the state. The more anti-social individuals there are pushing and pushing, the more bigger and more powerful the state will become. No good can come from this.

So where do we, as a society, as individuals in the society, stop or divert this trajectory? How?

What specific mechanisms are available to the ordinary person when the guy (or group) next door or across town does something that, while it may be legal, is most definitely not right, and that guy or that group is impervious to shame?