In this treatment of the word good this writer runs into a difficulties. Punishment solves nothing, but when it comes aggressive crime, restriction of criminal behavior is a requirement.  Call it what you like, including punishment. The question here is why a death threat not treated as the serious criminal behavior it is. Congress men and women and public officials across the land are being assaulted with death threats and somehow these injuries are being vaguely treated as the price of freedom of speech. If we have to have detention centers lets swap out the victim immigrants who are there for the lack of due process for the louts that threaten death to public servants and fellow citizens. The concept of due process could be restored to America.  The numbers of genuine criminal death threats could be about equal to those immigrant victims of the president’s angry policies.  There is no conceivable way threatening a persons life was anticipated to be a tolerable form of free expression when the Bill of Rights was penned.

This writer proposes the death threat be treated as felony assault carrying a prison sentence sufficient for the offender to reconsider his or her behavior and recognize the damage done to the victim.  In the matter of threatening public officials with death, and harm their families, the damage has two victims: the person or person’s threatened and the nation itself. If We the People find that the willingness to serve the public in any public space so dangerous that every day is spent in a defensive posture protecting both self and family we could end up with the only people in public service are those rich folks who can hire private personal security.  That would be a disaster.

Modest Proposal for Good

One task of a good decision in government is to discern the line between criticism and crime.  Threatening violence on a person must be known as a felony crime with a penalty to be enforced.  Threatening the families of public servants is crime on steroids. We can show our maturity as a culture and nation by drawing certain lines on bad behavior from the President on down to the last new citizen in our land. We must vocally assert with clarity that violence and violation of another person’s rightful safe space is criminal behavior requiring rehabilitation. A good start would be looking at legislation to strengthen the consequences of the death threat as criminal assault on its own.  If you say the threat you own it.  The legislation would require a delicate balanced hand, but that is the kind of hard work you sign up for when you live in a free democracy.  We cannot govern through democracy when fear and intimidation are considered a right.  We can behave as mature human beings and that would be good.