Brownshirt tactics at town hall meetings. Snitch lines. Fistfights. AARP reps walking out on donors. Demeaning comments towards protesters (wasn’t dissent the highest form of patriotism just 12 months ago?), and now the White House urging House Democrats to “punch back” against critics:
“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.
The hourlong session was the last opportunity for Democratic leaders and the White House to prepare senators for what will be a crucial month in shaping public opinion on health care. With no final legislation to promote, senators have expressed concern about dealing with questions and criticisms about the almost $1 trillion overhaul. The spate of confrontational town hall meetings have raised the stakes.
“They are just helping us understand the fringe that is trying to mess up our meetings,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Fringe politics? Are you serious?
Now you have comments from President Obama himself telling opponents of nationalized medicine to just shut up and stay the out of the way. Seriously? What kind of heat would the MSM have poured on President Bush had he said this about the War on Terrorism (oops… it’s the “war on al-Qaeda” now), deficit spending, fixing the housing bubblebefore it popped, or just plain ol’ telling the Democrats to go to hell?
The radicals were violent enough before. Worse, they are threatening violence again and hoping it will keep Main Street America away from the debate.
The always eloquent Peggy Noonan writes about the reaction from the grassroots, and she’s certainly not far from hitting home:
We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.
…
And so the shock on the faces of Congressmen who’ve faced the grillings back home. And really, their shock is the first thing you see in the videos. They had no idea how people were feeling. Their 2008 win left them thinking an election that had been shaped by anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and pro-change feeling was really a mandate without context; they thought that in the middle of a historic recession featuring horrific deficits, they could assume support for the invention of a huge new entitlement carrying huge new costs.
The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he’s a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that’s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, “You are terrifying us.”
Noonan goes further, describing the Democratic response to date as “crude and aggressive” and “incendiary” to boot. That’s a very mild and sober take. One might also describe the reaction from the Democrats as heavy handed and completely distopian.
I have a theory on all of this: Political parties after a loss tend to look towards the opposition, imitate its successes in caricature, and unleash this upon their enemies. In 1994, the Democrats viewed talk radio as the enemy. Up went Air America. After 1996, the Republicans viewed the liberal media as the enemy, so up went sites like Free Republic. After 2000, the Dems felt they didn’t have the think tanks to counter the GOP, so up went the liberal think tanks. In 2004, the Dems got out-patriotized and un American-ed, so up went dissent and in-your-face Saul Alinsky style resistance.
In 2008, the GOP now sees the internet and in-your-face outrage as the keys to Democratic successes. So they’re imitating. And it’s scaring the hell out of the Dems.
It’s a poker game. One bets, the other raises, there’s a re-raise and the bets keep getting bigger and bigger. That’s the nature of politics, especially America’s style of it.
What I fear is a system that denies debate and resorts to force. Isn’t that what the Democrats were afraid of (whether rhetorically or truly) during the Bush administration? Now that dissent is the duty of the opposition, the bar having been placed so low, aren’t shouting matches and sit-ins and ad hominem attacks and caricatures the new norm?
The good news is that America has been through this before. Several times. Jefferson and Hamilton endured bitter attacks before the election of 1800. Lincoln endured the same. Rutherford Hayes just before his election saw Democrats and Republicans drilling in the streets just before the compromise that ended Reconstruction — and a healthy dose of Federal troops at President Grant’s request to maintain order. There is the Bonus Army in 1932, FDR’s implementation of the New Deal, the 1968 riots after the assassination of MLK Jr., and so forth. Perhaps this time is just another go on the merry-go-round.
Perhaps not.
And that’s what we have to keep in mind.
Civil discourse is a responsibility for us all, whether citizens or elected officials. When lost, it is results in the distrust that elections often resolve, or acrimony and tension only acerbate. Jefferson’s dictum: “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty” is one bit of advice. Yet there is another I would appreciate more readily than this:
In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion, and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
I have no use for coercion as a tool for persuasion, whether by physical force or by invective. Those in Washington should not let their power affect their duties; those outside of Washington should not let their outrage affect their prudence.