The message being put forward, especially by the Right, in the aftermath of the shootings in Arizona, is that it is absurd to blame the rhetoric of violence and hatred for the actions of anyone, let alone Jared Lee Loughner. Words don’t matter. The man is a loon, his actions cannot be laid at the feet of anyone else. Taken far enough, by this reasoning he acted in complete isolation from all influences. Maybe so.
But really—words don’t matter?
In 1774, Goethe published his novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, a seminal work in the so-called Sturm und Drang movement. …