Health Care Town Hall Meetings Could be Dangerous

Congress is in recess taking the month of August to go back and visit constituents. Anyone who has spent an August in Washington's swampy weather will appreciate the wisdom. However this year, the legislators return home with the health care debate swirling around everyone's head. Many are holding town hall meetings, where everyday citizens can listen to their representative and ask questions. These are inherently good, but under current circumstances, they could be a recipe for political violence.

Unlike other countries, France for example, rioting only happens in America when a city's team wins a championship. Unlike Britain, American legislators operate in a highly polite chamber (although they can be nasty to each other on TV). Yet the venomous nature of the health care meetings suggest that the Americans have the potential to shout and yell at one another, and they could turn violent.

The right appears to have started this particular kerfuffle. The Republican Party has been shattered in the last two elections to the point it is a party of the South and older white males. They only know how to scare, as the Bush administration did so adeptly while in office. They are trying the same strategy again by packing these meetings with scared and often ill-informed sympathizers. Congressmen and Senators have been shouted down at their own meetings -- this doesn't happen in America, but it is part of other democratic cultures. It is nothing to fear if it goes no farther than that.

Realizing for once that fighting back can work, the left has done much the same, ensuring that pro-reform forces are just as loud, if not any better educated on the proposals out there. This can result in an enlightening give-and-take, but one has seen video of people telling others to shut up and get out. Much heat is generated but little light.

What one fears is not an attack on President Obama at his town hall meetings (the Secret Service will see to that), but rather what happens at the back of the meeting hall when two or more knuckleheads decide to throw a punch or twelve. At one meeting in Florida, there was pushing and shoving, and a fist couldn't have been far away. At that point the line has been crossed, the line Germany crossed in the 1920s, when street fights between the Nazis and the Communists did more to decide what happened than any election or debate. When violence enters the equation, debate exits the room and democracy becomes untenable.

It will be a long hot summer yet.

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Kensington Review Home