We have taken great pains to distance ourselves -- and those individuals who have attended town hall meetings of their own volition -- from the handful of individuals and one or two nut jobs who sought to shout rather than ask tough questions even as certain poitical operatives have sought to lump us, them and all into one seething hateful mob.
That is politics as usual.
But the editorial today by Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Hoyer -- mostly unmentioned by the same media who covered the handful of angry Americans as if they were the vanguard of some neo-Bund movement -- calling those who assemble and organize against a misguided effort to increase government control over healthcare as "unAmerican.
Here is the key quote:
"An ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted "Just say no!" drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.
Let the facts be heard
These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades."
Those who oppose or criticize are part of an ugly campaign to drown out opposing views and suppress the facts. Thus we are unAmerican.
Have you been or are you now part of any campaign to oppose health care reform. If so, you are drowning out the facts. And if you were oppose health care reform you obviously endorse hanging opponents in effigy.
I think the exchange between Joseph McCarthy and Joseph Welch sums up the tactics and desperate moral compass of Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer with respect to enacting single payer healthcare reform. I can't generalize to anyone else ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_N._Welch
On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the hearings, McCarthy accused Fred Fisher, one of the junior attorneys at Welch's firm, of association (while in law school) with the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which J. Edgar Hoover sought to have the U.S. Attorney General designate as a Communist front organization (see Army-McCarthy hearings). Welch wrote off Fisher's association with the NLG as a youthful indiscretion and went after McCarthy for dragging the young man's name before a nationwide television audience with no prior warning or previous agreement to do so:
- "Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us...(L)ittle did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr (Welch's law firm). It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me."
When McCarthy tried to go on the attack once more, Welch stepped in again and famously rebuked:
- "Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild...Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
McCarthy tried to ask Welch another question about Fisher, and Welch cut him off:
- "Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this with you further. You have sat within six feet of me and could have asked about Fred Fisher. You have brought it out. If there is a God in Heaven it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness."
