At a congressional hearing on free speech on college campuses Thursday morning, a GOP representative who was on the baseball field with Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) during the shooting last month spoke about free speech and the Left’s incitements to violence. He remarked that even though the shooting was sparked by violent rhetoric, not one of the victims has called for speech restrictions after it.
“Some speech does incite inappropriate behavior, even violence,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) noted in the hearing. “And I know that first hand because I was one of the Republican baseball players that was on the field, I was twenty steps from the guy when he started shooting, and it was clear that he was incited by certain speech.”
Indeed, James Hodgkinson reportedly asked whether the baseball players were Republican or Democrat before opening fire on them. Hodgkinson also “liked” the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Facebook. That group has long branded Christian organizations “anti-LGBT hate groups.” It also attacked Scalise specifically, putting him on its “hate list.”
The SPLC “hate group” list also inspired a terror attack on the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012. Even so, Democrats and media outlets have continued to attack Christian groups such as FRC, Liberty Counsel, and Alliance Defending Freedom as “hate groups.” One megadonor in the LGBT movement described his efforts this way, “We’re going to punish the wicked.”
Despite this rhetoric, and the traumatic experience of the Scalise shooting, Palmer explained that victims of the tragic shooting still stand for free speech.
“But I’d like to point out that as traumatic as that experience was, I’ve not heard a single demand from any one of those who were present, who were injured or wounded, for restriction of anyone’s right to speak their views on any issue,” Palmer declared.
Would that activists on the Left had this dedication to free speech.
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