He's Baaaaaaaack

That would be Lower Manhattanite of the Group News Blog, writing about moral hazard and the assassination of Malcolm X:

A basic difference of opinion will not move you to bring assault weapons to a town hall debate on health care, to hang nooses to and fro—just out of protest, mind you, or to vandalize opponent's homes and campaign offices. Once violence rears its medusa-head in mere discussions of policy, we have moved from an airing out of differences and debate to terroristic thuggery. And the general rule is: You terrorize when your opponent is someone you hate to the point where your ability to civilly disagree and engage in discussion has effectively left you.

The knifepoint, noose and bullet is the last bastion of the simple-minded zealot.

And when you keep these people madly frothing, knowing full well that you are agitating an unstable core and one of these nuts acts out—because when you talk of “the tree of liberty needing to be refreshed with the blood of patriots”, and you gun-sight ideological opponents and defend anarchic, bomb-making, would-be domestic bomb-tossers—you have tacitly incited that act and are on the hook for it. If not legally, then at the very least in the spirit of the law of basic common sense.