If people bear no responsibility for inciting others to evil acts, why is Charlie Manson still in prison? Or most of the top-level white supremacists from the 80s and 90s? Why do we think of Jim Jones as a bad guy? All he did was float some ideas out there. If people went a little nuts with them, well that must have been their misinterpretation!
For that matter, what’s the moral basis for our war on terrorism? A good many of the people we hunt are guys who have nothing to do with moving money or weapons or planning attacks or training or any material act of terror. They’re just “imams” who craft the mythology which inspires young men to join the movement.
Does the moral responsibility for WW II rest solely on the guys who pulled the triggers and ran the logistics of the death camps? Before he took power, Hitler was just a guy who spoke forcefully about very legitimate grievances of his fellow countrymen. His words inspired many killings without his direct involvement or knowledge Did he become morally culpable only after he issued his first signed orders in office?
Why does the Catholic Church have a penalty of excommunication for people who publicly advocate heresy or theological “error”? They’re not making anyone do anything after all.
Of course individuals bear responsibility for their own action, but so do those who incite them. I’m not talking about some nut reading secret messages into song lyrics, but demagogues who deliberately and intentionally incite hatred and create an atmosphere where violence seems welcome, even moral.
Some of these guys, mostly conservatives these days, put out rhetoric around the clock telling people that their country is being stolen from them by evil alien forces and that it’s time “some patriot” does “something” wink-wink about it. I find it hard to believe they’re not hoping for violence, or at least indifferent to its possibility. They’re recklessly manipulating people for their own power and they bear no moral responsibility for the results, then we have truly become an amoral society.

“What if the Discovery Channel hostage taker had been “awakened” to the words of Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck?”
He’d have tried to kill one of our brave abortion providers, as has happened a number of times before. Or maybe attacked a synagogue or mosque, depending on his bent, as has happened too often. Or tried to fly a plane into an IRS office as happened a few months ago and was applauded by some conservative bloggers.
These things done by conservative kooks have happened often enough not to be big news and of course won’t be parroted by right wing bloggers like JWK. It’s very unusual for a left winger to go nuts like this, perhaps because there aren’t so many borderline nutcase leftys as righties or maybe because the righties who read these blogs and listen to the conservajerks on radio and tv get it beaten into their heads constantly how there are terrible things being done to them and their beliefs.

http://open.salon.com/blog/austincynic/2010/02/23/why_do_conservatives_make_excuses_for_white_terrorists
“Consider David Koresh. By way of full disclosure, I should mention that I once had a casual acquaintanceship with David Jewell, who took his daughter Kiri out of the Branch Davidian compound about a year before the standoff. Jewell’s ex-wife died in the aftermath of the siege. None of that changes the fact that CPAC straw-poll winner and Tea Party movement patriarch Ron Paul saw Koresh as some sort of misunderstood martyr to freedom of religion. In a post attributed to Paul from The Free Market, written in 1994, the Congressman from Texas makes it clear where his sympathies lay. In the essay, “The Moral Promise of Freedom,” Paul writes:
“Yet in its dealings with the Waco religious dissenters, the central government revealed that it has become intractably opposed to any individual or group that represents a challenge to its singular authority. To counter this challenge, the central government resorted to tactics that resulted in the death of 86 men, women, and children. As for the survivors, the government has put them on trial.
This sort of brutality is inevitable in a system of absolute and centralized power. A government that invades private business by demanding confiscatory taxes, imposes unbearable regulations, and rules over business culture through pervasive labor controls, builds an appetite for even more power. As the power builds, so does the extent of corruption at the top and the disinformation that covers up the truth about its tyranny.” “

You know, it takes someone a little twisted to compare Al Gore to Glenn Beck. One is a guy who, tragically for our nation, couldn’t bring himself to want the presidency enough to do the legal but unpleasant things needed to win. But who has been working hard to get us to face a problem that we must not only face but solve if we are to have a future.
The other is a guy who will do anything for power including dividing the nation.
I’m not the least impressed that Kennedy, here, will implicitly compare them.

Everyone who demagogues issues and uses hatred to divide people, usually for a profit, needs to watch and absorb the lessons of “The Fisher King.” Careless words and actions can cause disturbed individuals to go ’round the bend.

There is no comparison to Al Gore with anyone like Rush, Coulter, Beck, Palin, O’Reilly, etc. Al Gore is not out there spewing hatred & lies and trying to scare the “real” Americans.
He is not on the radio or TV suggesting every minute that the “real” Americans are getting screwed every which way to Sunday or that the bogey man is going to ruin our country.