Words are powerful—though that power is not intrinsic. There is no more power in a closed dictionary than any other neglected book. It is only when the pages open that the words come alive. These living words have the power to travel through time and space, into hearts and minds. Like seeds they can sprout, and if cared for grow into forests of ideas. Words are powerful, not because of what they are, but because of what they have the power to do.

A week ago a shooter opened fire on a crowd that had gathered at a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona to meet their congresswoman. In one horrible moment of violence, six people were killed and many more wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Almost before the initial shock had registered, the hyperactive news channels were already sprinting towards their payday: finding someone to blame.

There is, of course, the obvious target—Jared Lee Loughner, the young man whose name we learned shortly after the massacre, has been accused of the shooting. But in a desperate attempt to make some sort of sense out of a senseless act, the media began search for others who could be dragged in front of an angry nation and made to pay for this horrendous act. The nation wanted someone to blame in addition to the young man who actually pulled the trigger. It’s as if the media refused to believe that one man could be capable of inflicting such a wound on an unsuspecting country. The media briefly targeted the gun lobby and conservative talk show hosts before finally setting its sights on the nation’s favorite former-beauty-queen-turned-vice-presidential-candidate-turned-Alaska-gubernatorial-quitter-turned-reality-TV-star Sarah Palin.

Throughout her relatively short and colorful career as national icon/pariah, this “mama grizzly” has given pundits on both sides of the aisle plenty to talk about. Perhaps the most salient gift she’s given a polarized nation is a catalogue of one-liners that at once capture conservative angst and fuel liberal disdain. There are many that would have us believe that Sarah Palin, with her talk of “targeting” or placing crosshairs on a map over certain congressional districts along with her now famous admonition “don’t retreat, reload” is somehow responsible for the tragedy in Tucson. Indeed, there are those who would hold Palin criminally responsible for Loughner’s attack. These ideas, in addition to being ridiculous, are also unspeakably dangerous in our democracy.

Words are powerful—that’s one of the reasons they’re protected. The First Amendment restricts Congress from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech.” With this prohibition, the framers recognized the power and the importance of ideas in a democratic society. They knew that by protecting speech they were ensuring a future of opposition, conflict, and polarization. But it is our ability to hear divergent ideas and to choose between them that makes us a free nation. While many may find Palin’s ideas (if not her grammar) to be offensive and ridiculous, it is the freedom to be offensive and ridiculous or brilliant and revolutionary that has allowed our nation to become great. Regardless of the quality or content of Palin’s rhetoric, if our nation is to remain great, her right to express herself must never be “refudiated.”

But just because speech is protected doesn’t mean that everything that can be said necessarily should be said, right? Public figures, and particularly those vying for positions of leadership, must be aware of the effects of their words on the hearts and minds of their listeners. While this notion may compel public figures to be responsible in their use of rhetoric, even held to the strictest standard they can only be responsible for the reasonably foreseeable effects of their words. An act like the one committed by Loughner was neither reasonable nor foreseeable. Therefore no amount of responsibility on the part of Palin could have reasonably caused or prevented this kind of outburst. Unless Palin had known about Loughner’s instability and had actively encouraged him to attempt to assassinate Giffords in light of that knowledge, we cannot hold her responsible for the unilateral acts of a crazy man no matter how incendiary her rhetoric may have been before the attack.

It’s hard to understand how someone like Loughner could commit such a despicable act. Our inability to understand his act leads us to look for answers that make sense. Rather than trying to spread the blame around in an attempt to understand, we should recognize the wisdom in the words of Forrest Gump: “sometimes we all do things that, well, just don’t make no sense.” Last Saturday a severely disturbed young man did a terrible thing. It wasn’t my fault or your fault or even Sarah Palin’s fault—it was Jared Lee Loughner’s fault.