Updated and brought to the top of the fold: Iowahawk makes the point much more effectively and much more humorously than I have. Please read … and per usual, be sure to keep the liquids clear of the keyboard.
[Update at bottom]
A growing segment of the American public is angry and awakened about the Obama administration’s sly attempt to socialize our nation’s health care system. They’re showing up to Congressional townhall meetings and expressing their displeasure. I am amused to watch the Left’s increasingly unhinged reaction. The irony is so very rich, it’s hard to capture it all.
First, there’s the Democratic National Committee going on the offensive calling you part of an orchestrated “mob” if you stand up vocally against socialized medicine. Meanwhile, the DNC is actually orchestrating protests against swing Republican members of Congress.
Another classic case of projection can be found more locally by the Dead Guvs. Here’s what they wrote:
We’re hearing rumors that the left-wing protesters who have been forming ranks over the last few weeks in anticipation of the August recess are being directed to drop whatever they’re doing and head downtown tomorrow. As most of you know the latest batch of ‘townhall crashers’ have been whipped into enough of a frenzy to get downright nasty with, well, just about anybody–George W. Bush, though, has been inculcated into the minds of these protesters as only a step or two removed from Satan himself. You can just imagine what a high-value target they consider him for disruption, preparations that have been made for this contingency…should probably be doubled.
Oh, wait. A couple misprints there on my part. Sorry. That should be “right-wing” and “Nancy Pelosi” and “her”. But I assumed you already knew how generally concerned the Dead Guvs were during the last administration when groups of enlightened citizens showed up at public events with the President to raise questions about his policies, especially concerning the Iraq War. They were extremely concerned about ensuring high levels of security for high-ranking government officials then, even for groups of peaceful protesters that had no record of violence but had been inculcated with ideas of their target as “Satan himself”.
Michelle Malkin goes into far greater detail about the level of hypocrisy and projection emanating from the Left these days. For pointing this out, she gets labeled as anti-democratic by local Lefty blogger Zappatero — who incidentally also thinks you’re a “thug” if you show up to peacefully protest Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s government health care agenda.
You know it’s bad when Pelosi conjures out of thin air the absurd notion that protesters are “carrying swastikas and symbols like that” to the anti-Obama Care townhall meetings. Is that part of the DNC’s coordinated strategy with allied Lefty groups? Meanwhile, the Left holds out as its smoking gun a grassroots activist’s memo concerning “best practices” to pack townhall meetings and ensure that Congressmen offer more than prepackaged talking points. Wow.
Friends of liberty, all I can say is be not dismayed. The Left is heightening its desperation in defense of the sinking ship of Obama Care — a ship that carries many of their political hopes and dreams with it. The arrows may fly wildly for a time, but pay them no more heed than to provide yourself a good laugh.
Stay focused. Stay active. Stay strong. Stay respectful.
Update: American Enterprise Institute blogger Andrew Biggs makes some insightful comparisons between the current health care reform debate and townhall meetings during the 2005 debate to reform Social Security. He closes with this knockout punch:
Finally, the Daily Kos’s Greg Dworkin writes:
>>The idea that hired, organized disruptors are playing ‘ordinary spontaneous citizen’ when they are planted to disrupt and that the media isn’t always covering them as such is rather horrifying, as is the amount of money being spent to defeat health reform.< < Poor thing. During the Social Security reform debate, I recall seeing busloads of paid union activists unloading at town hall meetings and millions of dollars in ads run by unions and AARP opposing Social Security reform. If Mr. Dworkin was equally outraged at the time, I can find no evidence of it. The difference between then and now is that we on the reform end of the Social Security debate simply took it for granted that unions and seniors groups would organize against us. In the health debate, conservative opposition is being generated far closer to the grassroots level, yet is being treated as a conspiracy.
And for those who need to be reminded why people are so up in arms, economist Arthur Laffer in today’s Wall Street Journal explains why “Implementing Mr. Obama’s reforms would literally be worse than doing nothing”, and offers an alternative solution.
“Stay focused. Stay active. Stay strong. Stay respectful.”
But don’t leave yir torches ‘n pitchforks at home. My gud friend “Cicero” had this t’ say at Townhall ’bout somethin’ Hew Hughitt sed ohn his radio show-att day. Note esp. my emphusis ‘mong th’ aisterisks:
Hugh Hewitt, that rising star of neoconservative talk radio, “center-rightist” extraordinaire, whose name graces the top of Townhall’s web-page, has just instructed his listeners who attend townhall meetings to be perfect gentlemen and ladies, and not raise their voices like the patriots we observed in a couple of YouTube videos posted here. You can hear him in his podcast when he posts it, if he posts it.
I’m hoping Miss Jessup doesn’t share his demonstrably inadequate position.
When it comes right down to it, Hewitt is no conservative. And certainly no patriot. **If all the pamphleteers and preachers printing and preaching during the days leading up to the Revolution had been like Hewitt, we’d likely still be part of the British Empire.**
My fellow middle-class Americans, don’t listen to the likes of Hewitt, who are nothing more than the pseudoconservative version of the American “elite” we all detest so much. Don’t fall for the siren song of “civility.” Stay true to your gnarly, revolutionary, Middle American roots. Pick up torches, pick up pitchforks, and give them bloody hell at the townhall meeting, **because the cretins in Congress don’t respect civility; they respect the passion of revolutionary resolve. They’re intimidated only by your vocal anger, not your quiet reason. They respond only to force, not flaccid attempts to get them to listen to facts and logic.**
Send Congress your *angry message*, friends. And send Hewitt back to his neocon constitutional law class, and all gentle womenfolk commentators back to their knitting.