Bill Clinton Advises Conservatives to Put a Sock In It (For the Good of the Nation, of Course)

When the despised  Dubya was in office, it seemed every day brought another play, novel, film, TV 'comedy' sketch centering around his assassination. Also during those eight years, those who loathed the man often apended one or more of the following--Hitler, Chimpy, Haliburton, McDonald's--to his name. During those eight years, I'm pretty sure I never once heard Bill Clinton say anything about how the Bush-bashers should watch their hateful, hurtful words. That when then; this is now, and since the Democrats are once again in power, Bill, sounding very much like a cracker Jennifer Lynch/Bernie Farber, wants all you Obama critics to shut the eff up. From My Way:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former President Bill Clinton warned of a slippery slope from angry anti-government rhetoric to violence like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, saying "the words we use really do matter."

The two-term Democratic president insisted he wasn't trying to restrict free speech, but in remarks Friday he said incendiary language can be taken the wrong way by some Americans. He drew parallels to words demonizing the government before Oklahoma City.

On April 19, 1995, an anti-government conspiracy led by Army veteran Timothy McVeigh exploded a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people.

"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold - but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike," he said.

"One of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have."
Clinton made the remarks at events sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund on the upcoming anniversary of the bombing.

He mentioned the rancorous fight over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Passage of the law elicited threats against some lawmakers.

"I'm glad they're fighting over health care and everything else. Let them have at it. But I think that all you have to do is read the paper every day to see how many people there are who are deeply, deeply troubled," he said...

I would suggest that Obama may be one of them, what with his narcissism, unresolved daddy abandonment issues and endless proliferation of fundamentally unsound ideas predicated on a skewed worldview. But I have a feeling that's not exactly what Bill had in mind.