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In the early fall of 2009, Representatives began peddling a health care reform bill using the “town hall meetings” as their forum. There are no specific rules or guidelines for holding a town hall meeting they are usually held just so “the people” can influence elected officials in their decision making or to feel they are part of the decision process. So, these town hall meetings have given a medium in which the people can finally give voice to their fears, frustrations and concerns. They have felt ignored as congress wrote and voted on bail outs, stimulus packages, buying out the automobile industry and Cap and Trade, etc. The representatives have been caught off guard and often rendered speechless literally by the strong opposition being expressed by loud boos, jeering, or when they concur with a question or statement, deafening applause and hollering. Perhaps, if they had been given voice, felt involved and heard earlier there would be only a simmering, but now “the people” have reached a slow, rolling boil.
One woman earned loud applause when she said she did not want Washington interfering with her health care choices.
“I look at this health care plan and I see nothing that is about health or about care. What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. Medicaid is broke, Social Security is broke and you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a cash for clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy? No sir, No, “ she said.
Katy Abram, an average 35 year old, had never before taken much interest in politics. However, she was lifted from indifference by the repeatedly brazen actions of our congress. She made her way to the nearest “Town hall meeting”, in Pennsylvania to listen to Sen. Arlen Spector and hopefully get a chance to express what was on her mind.
She was given that chance and in her question to Sen. Spector, she addressed her concern with the debt that will be inherited by her children and grandchildren and her fear of rapidly becoming like Russia. She went on to warn this administration that they were “waking a sleeping giant”. What Mrs. Abrams was experiencing herself and noticing in her fellow American’s was that America is shaking off its covers of nonchalance and complacency waking into a unified titan.
Sen. Spector did the “Health care reform cause” no favors with some of his answers, such as the response to the chant from the crowd to go and read the bill. He responded by stating that lawmakers divide up the bills into sections and have their staffs read portions because, “We have to make judgments very fast.“ He then said that he will have to read the Senate bill before he votes on it, which Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, pointed out hasn’t even been written yet. This did not calm his Philadelphia town hall audience down at all, but only agitated them further.
A shocked Democratic Senator Arlen Specter said in an interview on “This Week” after he was verbally assaulted by a very upset group of Americans, that he supports American’s right to organize, but warned that recent town hall ruckus from critics of the Democrats' health care proposals are not representative of the public's view on the issue. Specter further stated that we can’t allow these kinds of town hall meetings to dominate the political process, that would be destructive of what we need to do to figure out what is the best approach.”
Jack Kimball, 62, a Portsmouth tea partier who owns a cleaning business, said “I’m not a shouter, I’m just passionate. We’re going to be outside the town hall because we’re concerned not just about health care anymore - it’s about the growth of government. “
When a reporter recently asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) whether these protestors were a “sign of genuine grass roots opposition to the Obama health care plan, the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi showed her distain for anyone disagreeing by stating,
“I think they’re Astroturf,” “You be the judge.”
According to Harry Reid, people who are not conforming are “evil-mongers.” Does he really believe that the people protesting are “spreaders of evil”? Perhaps not, but he was searching for the phrase to paint the protestors in as dark a light as possible as seems to be par for the course in the liberal arena.
Rep. Barney Frank lashed out at a protester who held a poster depicting President Barack Obama with a Hitler-style mustache during a heated town hall meeting in a southeastern Massachusetts senior center, by asking, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" She was going to ask why Frank supports what she called a Nazi policy, but when she came to the microphone, Frank replied, “Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it". At one point, Frank asked the crowd, "Which one of you wants to yell next?"
On August 11th on “Hardball”, Chris Matthews, not knowing what to attribute this open show of irritation, resorted to the old standby, “I think some of the people are upset because we have a black president.” To this, Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal brought up the fact that perhaps some of the protester’s rage was caused by the “$800 billion obscene fiscal stimulus bill”. You think?
Their use of the race card, seems in itself incredibly racist. To blame his race for his decline in support is something that most of the American people hadn’t even considered. They do not care what color his skin may be, they only want him to work for the United States of America and be proud of her and feel that he is fighting to protect her democracy, as was expected of all the predecessors before him. However, a new era has emerged, “get on board or get off the tracks” because they are pushing this train on through no matter who they have to run over to do so. One thing forgotten by the extreme left is the simple fact that you never ever push Americans into anything. You can inform, enlighten, advise, and lead, but never push. If you push, they will react as is human nature, by forming a defense and pushing back. The town hall meetings and tea parties are proof of the beginning of a steadfast push to put government back in their favor.
On Dec. 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II because of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Admiral Isorku Yamamato, the Japanese fleet commander was depicted to have made the same assessment by stating, “"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." On that December day, Americans woke abruptly with the war hitting their homeland. In the last few months, Americans have not entered into a world war but rather a war from within its very borders. A war to preserve and keep our freedoms intact.
The outspoken fervor being displayed in the town hall meetings over the past couple of months is indicative of the passion Americans have for their freedoms of self-expression and democracy. It is simply a bucking against the pressure of having their voices muffled. Being explained away as if they have no mind to think or their opinions obsolete and outdated. They have been called, “silly rednecks”, “ stupid hicks”, but the one most protested and angering was to be called, “unpatriotic” because of their disagreement with this health care reform and the tactics of this administration.
Hillary Clinton, Obama’s pick for Secretary of State, which seemed a case of, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer“, even took great offense at the protesters being labeled as, “un-American and unpatriotic“. She voiced her opposition to this labeling quite clearly by saying,
“ I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.”
This is one of the few times that I applaud Hillary and appreciate that she had the guts to speak out even though she is in “this administration’s” cabinet.
The Democrats continue to use an old ploy by asking, How could a person be against health care for all?, they asked, “that is just heartless and cruel. Shouldn’t everyone have the right to medical care?”
Ronald Reagan warned of this back in 1961 with these word:
“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. . . . Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.
The doctor begins to lose freedom. . . . First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren’t equally divided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can't live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go. . . . All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won't decide, when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.“
This sums up beautifully why this issue has incited such passion and fervor. It is feared and reasoned that this bill and some of its predecessors are but a launching pad into socialism, massive government. and loss of our democratic freedoms. Add to this equation, the left’s extreme unyielding, disrespectful, reaction to opposition, as if in disagreeing you were committing heresy against the gods, and it is a, no-fail, guaranteed, formula for the “waking of a democracy loving giant”.
President Obama has gone on national television attempting to calm the disquiet and disbelieving. However, it seems the Tea party and town halls were rubbing off on the Republicans who brought copies of their healthcare bills to wave at President Barack Obama when he accused them of having no plan of their own. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) held up his H.R. 3400, which he's titled the "Empowering Patients First Act." Then throwing out all protocol, an outright, “ You lie!!”, by Senator Joe Wilson of South Carolina, after Obama said illegal immigrants would not be covered by proposed health care legislation.
Now that congress is back in session we will see if the congressmen who held and witnessed the town hall meetings and other “grass roots” protestors such as the tea partiers, will succumb to the will of their constituents or fall prey to the stiff party line loyalties. The democracy of America quakes as it awaits the outcome of this fall congressional session.
