on the field of reason ctd.

In the comments to this post discussing David Frum’s recent column on the talk-radio right, several commenters thought Frum had said a bit too much in his hypothetical:

It’s not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric. If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic—if he were those things, somebody should shoot him. [emphasis mine, EDK]

But he is not. He is an ambitious, liberal president who is spending too much money and emitting too much debt. His health-care ideas are too ambitious and his climate plans are too interventionist. The president can be met and bested on the field of reason—but only by people who are themselves reasonable.

Well, to his credit, Frum today writes a correction:

I regret deploying the extreme hypothetical I did. There may be people actually in fact contemplating violence against this president. My hypothetical point was meant to condemn the inflammatory talk, but even in condemning I should not have raised the possibility.