Fear Codes

(fm the BC thread "No, leave it on")

JMH,
You are not giving Fineman enough credit. He was speaking to the Democratic base. He was telling them that because Brown drove a pickup truck in Massachusetts where the people are not all bigots it will be seen and inspire all those redneck Republicans in the rest of the country and soon people of color and gays are going to be getting dragged to their deaths behind trucks in Texas. The argument is that the Democrats should fear and hate all opposition and suppress it everywhere because if they don't their supporters may be at risk sometime somewhere.

This is the same logic behind speech codes. They arrogate to themselves the power to judge and suppress innocent speech, as with the academic who lost his job for correctly using the word niggardly, because it will protect some member of a favored or protected class from some possible psychic trauma in the future.