Too strong a word? Then what do you call it when union thugs push out citizens from a town hall meeting?
Now obviously, this is from the perspective of one camera. More obviously still, there’s no question that a good number of people were pushed out of the room, and that the tactics used to block their access to the town hall were yes, those of brownshirts.
Thank you, Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor. You should be well on your way to defeat in 2010 for antics such as these.
As predicted on Bearing Drift, Deeds for Governor has gone on the attack, says this morning’s Washington Post.
Let’s just cut to the chase — why is Deeds doing this? A skeptical WaPo gets straight to the heart of the matter:
Deeds’s appeal is directed at moderate suburbanites in Northern Virginia and elsewhere who might be turned off by McDonnell’s views. It’s also an attempt to rally support from Democrats who have joined Virginia’s electorate in recent years but who might be ambivalent about Deeds because of his relatively conservative positions on guns and other issues.
Before the PPP poll came out, Deeds was tied amongst rural voters, losing women voters, and losing even the suburbs.
So how do you turn back losses in demographics no Democrat should be losing? By holding a rural tour one week, and have Deeds perform a negative attack campaign to get the attention of suburban women the next week. Next week, it’ll be something else.
Simple, isn’t it?
His name was cyxymu, more than likely targeted by the Kremlin, and you can follow his Twitter feed here.
He said he is a 34-year-old economics professor named Georgy (he wouldn’t give his last name), a married father of two. He said he is a refugee from Abkhazia, a region of Georgia that declared its independence in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but is recognized by only a few of the world’s governments.
Georgy said he started a blog on the LiveJournal site to unite fellow refugees who would like Abkhazia to recognize Georgia’s authority over it. Last summer, Georgia and Russia went to war with each other, and Georgy started criticizing Russia — which recognized his homeland’s independence — online.
Worth reading… but just think about it: One man vs. one government, and it took out Twitter and brought Facebook, LiveJournal, and Blogger (attached to Google, mind you) to its knees.
God bless the AFP:
(h/t to The Write Side of My Brain)
Interesting… this from the Political Spectrum Quiz, and I’d hardly call myself a moderate:
My Political Views
I am a right moderate social libertarian
Right: 3.47, Libertarian: 1.19
And on the foreign policy and the culture war:
My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 0.35
My Culture War Stance
Score: 0.15
Odd, though I’d probably find myself just balancing out between some very strong conservative positions (pro-life, minimize government) and some very strong social justice positions (opposition to the death penalty, support minimum wage laws, and social equality). Guess that just makes me a Catholic.
Just goes to show that not all quizzes are the same, eh?
(h/t Doug Mataconis and Vivian Paige)
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.
James Young over at SkepticalObservor shares the AARP meeting discussion talking-to delivered to their donors and supporters:
Now isn’t that disgusting? What a terrible way to treat your donors and supporters.
Take a look at what the president had to say (Charlottesville Newsplex): “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.”
Well, here in Virginia, the persons most “credited” with the mess would be Governor Tim Kaine and the Finance Secretary whose rosy revenue predictions led to a spending spree that is still being dialed down today
Too easy…
And amazingly, the world is still turning on its axis.
Did I mention how useless I find Twitter to be?
