Pat Robertson Attempts To Incite Panic. Again.
TV evangelist Pat Robertson apparently can’t stand being out of the national news for more than a month at a time. This time, continuing his tradition of making dire predictions, Robertson is claiming that God has warned him there will be a major terrorist attack in the U.S. some time after September.
In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in “mass killing” late in 2007.
“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”
Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.
One wonders why Robertson can’t see that baselessly predicting a mass terrorist attack can be criminal itself. And lest someone argue that Robertson is justified in making this “prediction” because God told him to do so, consider Robertson’s own appraisal of his earlier hit-and-miss predictions:
“I have a relatively good track record,” he said. “Sometimes I miss.”
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Ole Pattie and I have something in common. The voices in my head keep telling me to make predictions also.
Like just the other day the voices were telling me that most of the people alive today will be dead by the year 3,296. Most because I’ll live forev
I posted on this as well. What a bonafide wacktard!
Really stupid, yes. Criminal, no.
At least, I can’t think of any statute it violates. Given that he said only sometime in the year, and somewhere in the US, it’d be difficult to even think of a tort. (A more specific prediction might manage to actually cause someone a specific tortious harm, I’m guessing).
Well, under English common law incitement of mass panic — like shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre — is an offense. That’s not what’s happening here, though, where Robertson’s “prediction” doesn’t put people in immediate peril.
My choice of the word ‘criminal’ was a poor one. I blame it on nicotine withdrawal.