Town-hall violence isn't helping anything

Posted 8/10/2009 02:00:00 PM

Many conservatives are angry about bailouts, tax-increase proposals, cap-and-trade legislation and health-care reform. Fine. But instead of resorting to violence, they need to take a seat at the table.

A libertarian activist in Albuquerque crossed a line on Friday when he advocated physical violence against members of left-leaning groups at town hall meetings on health-care reform.

I’m not giving the guy the publicity of linking to his page or publishing his name, but I will tell you that he posted messages on Twitter stating that people should use “retaliation… be it verbal or physical” against members of ACORN and the Service Employees International Union if they decide to attend or disrupt town-hall meetings and should “hurt them. Badly.”

He even advocated that people take advantage of their “license to carry.”

Of course, the man’s inappropriately dangerous tweets are only the latest disgraceful behavior in the national hijacking of the health-care reform debate that has included raucous town hall meetings, physical violence and at least one death threat against a member of Congress.

Though a violent incident in St. Louis appears to break the mold, in general, most of the potentially dangerous incidents have been caused by angry conservatives.

Fanning the flames

Some of the anger on the right is understandable. Conservatives have watched Republican control of the federal government slip away in recent years. But physical violence is not the answer.

I understand the sentiment of many fiscal conservatives who worry about the nation’s economic policies. I’ve expressed my opposition to the bailouts, and to recent tax-increase proposals that I believe are foolish during a recession.

Many people are also upset about recently approved cap-and-trade legislation. And now they’re worried about the proposal to create a public option to compete with private health insurance companies.

That’s fine. Those are reasonable policy differences between many on the left and right, and I’d be surprised if some Americans weren’t upset about such major policy shifts.

But the flames are being fanned by lies spreading like a virus on the Internet about President Barack Obama’s birthplace and false claims that Democrats are making plans to take away Americans’ guns. It’s all garbage, but some people are buying into it. The resulting fear is creating a climate ripe for the type of violence we’ve already seen, violence that threatens to get worse -- maybe much worse -- in the coming weeks.

Obama is not Hitler

To be fair, Obama has created an opening for conspiracy theorists and liars to spread their messages by acting a bit Big-Brother-ish in his first few months in office. First his administration asked all potential appointees detailed questions about their gun ownership on a personnel form, as if that’s any of the White House’s business. Then, last week, the official White House blog asked supporters of health-care reform to send in “fishy” e-mails or other misinformation that’s being spread about the health-care debate.

So now the White House is collecting e-mails sent by people who oppose its agenda on health care.

That sort of action -- collecting e-mails and information about gun ownership -- is a little creepy to me, no matter who is president. But comparisons between Obama and Adolf Hitler are not fair. They are outlandish at best, outrageous at worst because of the sentiment they’re helping spread across the nation.

America, we’re better than this. How about toning down the rhetoric, stopping to the violence, and instead putting our efforts into attempting to understand each other and come up with real solutions to our problems?