Mr. President, Americans are not an 'angry mob'
Examiner Editorial
August 9, 2009
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| Joan Korman ,left, and Dawn Tabrizi, right, hold protest signs during a rally protesting government managed health care in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009. Democrats and the White House are claiming that the sometimes rowdy protests that have disrupted Democratic lawmakers' meetings and health care events around the country are largely orchestrated from afar by insurers, lobbyists, Republican Party activists and others. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink) |
They aren't carrying swastikas, either, contrary to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's rant about the legions of worried citizens who have been standing up in multiple town halls and congressional forums to demand straight answers from their congressmen about what they are doing under the guise of "health-care reform." Pelosi's attempt to smear honest citizens as Nazis is only the most reprehensible manifestation of a White House-directed propaganda campaign to discredit anyone who disagrees with President Obama's health-care proposal. A growing list of major national surveys suggests that the people targeted by the campaign represent a clear majority of Americans, if not something very close to it. And they are being portrayed by some in their government as its enemy.
The Obama White House has established a health care reform snitch line and encouraged its supporters to turn in critics for allegedly spreading false information about Obamacare. In its effort to intimidate and silence dissenter, the administration is also working hand-in-hand with the Democratic congressional leadership, the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America (formerly the 2008 Obama campaign committee), friendly journalists in the liberal media, tax-exempt supposedly non-partisan non-profits like AARP, and the AFL-CIO, SEIU, and other labor unions. This campaign is creating the spectacle of Democratic congressmen being shielded from constituents by squads of union goons.
We are witnessing something terribly ugly in America this summer. Obama is leading a campaign to shift our peaceful democratic process away from civil discussions of programs and candidates to using the power of the state to bully those who oppose the majority party's policy proposals. The threat may be as subtle as the fear of being reported by a neighborhood informant to the White House, or as overt as stick-wielding union toughs who might not approve of the way you ask your congressman a question.
During his campaign last year, the president famously told his supporters to "get in the faces" of those who disagreed with his vision for America. One of his Chicago mentors recalled in a 2007 New Republic profile that Obama, as a community organizer, was "the best student he ever had, a natural, the undisputed master of agitation" to gain political power. Sadly, now that he has it, he is turning it against those who oppose him.
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