Town Hall Passions Have Deep Roots
Health care town halls have featured overflowing crowds and the rise of a popular fury not seen in decades. Some have portrayed these passionate opponents as an angry mob. Videos of these meetings show elected officials unable to comprehend the explosion of opposition to a federal takeover of medical care. Even Senator Harry Reid was flummoxed when he ungrammatically called the town hall participants “evil mongers.”
What the critics don’t understand is that Americans have always been ready to defend liberty when it is threatened.
I recently took my daughters to visit Fort Moultrie in South Carolina. Moultrie sits on Sullivan’s Island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. We strolled along the sandy shoreline and peaceful fields near Charleston, where in 1776 thousands of deadly cannon shots filled the air. Throughout June 1776, the most powerful navy on the face of the earth sailed toward its target, Charleston, then the fourth largest American city. After common farmers stopped the British regulars at Lexington and Concord, King George sought to conquer the southern colonies through Charleston, and thus snuff out the rebellion.
After dozens of British warships from around the world were ordered to sail to Charleston, volunteers in the South Carolina militia knew they had little time to prepare harbor defenses. The Americans cut down hundreds of spongy soft palmetto trees. They threw up log walls and backfilled the space in between with mud and sand 16 feet thick.
By the time the British fleet was spotted approaching Charleston, only three of four sides of Ft. Moultrie were completed. The future looked bleak for the Americans.
The hot sun and frenzied mosquitoes made our two-year-old protest the walk along the cannons now guarding the site of Ft. Moultrie. The risks and deprivations the heroes of the Revolution endured are mostly forgotten. Today, it is more likely that schools don’t even teach much about the Revolution at all.
So we sat where the mud, sand, and log parapets once stood and read our older daughter a children’s book about the brave Americans who defended Charleston. She was in awe of the story and the scene, the modern harbor and shoreline now peaceful and familiar, where in 1776 men gazed seaward at hundreds of approaching sails that would unleash a war on them.
There is a famous painting of the scene by John Blake White called “The Battle of Ft. Moultrie.” Everyone who criticizes or mocks the town hall participants should see it, for it captures the passion for liberty that has characterized Americans for over 400 years. In the painting, hundreds of American volunteers are huddled tightly behind their wood and mud parapets. Lurking just offshore are nine terrifying ships of the line — the Bristol, Syren, Active, Experiment, Solebay, Sphinx, Friendship, Actaeon and the Thunder. Combined, these warships commanded 300 heavy cannon, almost a gun for every American hiding behind the wood and mud walls.
We need more of this heart-stopping history come alive to instruct and inspire the younger generations. Your elder daughter’s reaction is where it’s at. So many Americans of all ages don’t have a clue about what the Founding Fathers meant by “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/artifact/Painting_33_00004.htm
Shouting at legislators is not passion of liberty, it’s total disregard for good communications and nothing is accomplished. Drunks shout, sport fans shout, but here nobody cares.
Obama lovers,
Do you love the message or the messenger?
(We have trolls in the wire.)
The Left can continue to use the Communist, Alinskys, tactics against us all they want. We are growing as more and more Americans are waking up to the threat that the Left truly represents to our country. I’ve been involved in the Tea Party movement locally from day one. I stand next to small business owners, moms with their kids, veterans, grandmoms and regular working stiffs. The hated middle class that Communism despises and must eradicate to succeed. We are now met by paid Astroturfers from the Left at Town Hall meetings. Another case of the Lying Left accusing their opponents of doing what they themselves are actually doing. This is Chicago politics on a national level. Let them bring their union goons, there are millions of them – there are tens of millions of us. We will trample them underfoot to exercise our Constitutional Rights. Those who would be our rulers thought they had a clear field after the ’08 elections to finally Socialize America. OOPS, didn’t factor in the Spirit of Ft. Moultrie, did they?
If boobama hears about Ft. Moultrie he’llprobably feel a need to apologize to the brits
The crescent on the Moultrie Flag is not a crescent moon. Rather it is a depiction of the silver crescents that the militia wore on their uniforms. Such crescents, smaller versions of medieval gorgets, where frequently worn by officers of the time. The crescent was also an established heraldic device. Exactly why the crescent was used on the flag is not clear, but it is also clear that it is not intended to represent the moon. See http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-sc_cr.html
#4 USABruceB: “I’ve been involved in the Tea Party movement from day one…..” Funny that “Tea Parties” didn’t come into vogue until after Obama became president. I get a strong impression that a lot of PJM posters weren’t conservatives until after January 20 inauguration day.
I keep asking some questions on various threads and no one seems to want to answer. How many of you campaigned for McCain, voted for McCain, contributed to his campaign? How do you feel about the horribly expensive prescription drug benefit? How do you feel about the $260 billion in Pentagon cost overruns identified by a GAO study back in February? Do you feel safer knowing that defense contractors have lined their pockets at taxpayer expense? How do you feel about the giant bailouts of AIG, CitiGroup, etc. last autumn? Don’t think Obama was president yet when that happened.
The news flash for you: some of us were actually conservatives back during 2001-08 when being a true conservative wasn’t cool. Have to think that all you guys coming out of the woodwork since January are mostly just CINOs (Conservatives in Name Only).
SteveB: You betray an elitist mentality. If you suspect some people are new to the conservative viewpoint, why not welcome them and suggest some good reading material. Calling people CINOs is not helpful in the least. Or maybe you’re a troll.
As very long time conservative ( probably before many of you
were eligible to vote even), I thank God that those like SteveB are a very small minority. Whether USABruceB is a long time conservative, or did or did not support the Bush years, or even if he was previously an Obama supporter and only now come to understand just how wrong the LibTards are and the rightness of conservatism, he is welcome to the ranks. Not every American agreed with the stand at Lexington and Concord when the revolution started (and a minority of them never agreed), but as things went on, more and more of them flocked to the cause. Should they have been scorned or rejected in 1776 just because they were not on board in 1775? I don’t think so.
Anyone who disagree with conserv pajammers is a troll. Any ignoramus supporting ‘the cause’ is not a troll.
Getting kicked out of your comfort zone?
It’s your fault, so don’t whine.
A great story about Ft. Moultrie, thank you for sharing. It is in our blood to defend liberty, it is in our history, and it is in our Constitution and our Declaration.
keep up the fight and pass the powder.
8. Gary Ogletree wrote:
SteveB: You betray an elitist mentality. If you suspect some people are new to the conservative viewpoint, why not welcome them and suggest some good reading material. Calling people CINOs is not helpful in the least. Or maybe you’re a troll.
Peter writes: SteveB is a troll.
Vivo, give everyone a break and stop your lying-in-wait, knee-jerk, ad hominem, sound bite attacks on everything written on this site. Tell us why you disagree with what the author has said and make the counter argument. I’ll listen.
13. Mike G:
I don’t know what else to add to what I wrote here. I don’t need tons of paragraphs to tell you what I just told you (2 & 10). Maybe you should read them veeery slowly and digest the message.
I read them again, very straightforward and clear.
I don’t attack everything. I just make a point. I don’t touch many people here because they write sensible things. I may disagree with some, but I will attack only the derelicts that are totally out of line. You may be half way there but at least you’re half polite.
Adams is right. “Americans have always rushed to defend liberty when they feel it is threatened.” But I would add this corrective: Genuine Amemricans have always rushed to defend liberty when they feel it is threatened.”
I draw a distinction between Genuine Americans and Counterfeit Americans. I’d put the whole of the Obama administration is the category of Counterfeit Americans, save Robert Gates.
A thougtful alternative by EJ Dionne to this thoughtless article
“Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?
How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read: “It is time to water the tree of liberty”? That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that the tree “must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Pardon me, but I don’t think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.
In fact, the Bush folks didn’t like any dissent at all. Recall the 2004 incident in which a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was arrested for protesting at a rally in New Jersey for first lady Laura Bush. The detained woman wasn’t even armed. Maybe if she had been carrying, the gun lobby would have defended her.
The Obama White House purports to be open to the idea of guns outside the president’s appearances. “There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally,” Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said on Tuesday. “Those laws don’t change when the president comes to your state or locality.”
Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can’t even take his own side in an argument.
What needs to be addressed is not the legal question but the message that the gun-toters are sending.
This is not about the politics of populism. It’s about the politics of the jackboot. It’s not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It’s about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.
There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.
The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.
On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law. Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments.
Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president’s public events only now, when the president is black. Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should know what memories they are stirring.
And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world? Are we not the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over the bullet?
All this is taking place as the country debates the president’s health-care proposal. There is much that is disturbing in that discussion. Shouting down speakers is never a good thing, and many lies are being told about the contents of the health-care bills. The lies should be confronted, but freedom involves a lot of commotion and an open contest of ideas, even when some of the parties say things that aren’t true and act in less than civil ways.
Yet if we can’t draw the line at the threat of violence, democracy begins to disintegrate. Power, not reason, becomes the stuff of political life. Will some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA, have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?”
16. RobertHurley:
“And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world? Are we not the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over the bullet?”
The World has had a violent image of the USA since cowboy movies were shown in the 50′s and 60′s. Then add all the wars and invasions. Then add all the CIA backed coup d’etats. And now this!
16. RobertHurley wrote:
“Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?
Peter writes: As long as they obeyed the law, had permits, and did not make threats, I would not have any more concern about them then I do the current protesters that are showing up to town hall events.
It has been my experience, however, that when libs bring guns to presidential events, they generally wind up trying to use them.
John Hinckley, Jr.
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme
Lee Harvey Oswald
Need I say more?
2. vivo: Please pass your memo to CodePink and their little friends on the left.
16. RobertHurley:
Did it ever dawn on you that the citizens of the United States have been attacked, primarily the non-liberal blacks in this country, by the SEIU, the Black Panthers, and Liberals when they exercise their right of free speech?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFeUhSlHiUQ
19. Ms. Attitude:
“2. vivo: Please pass your memo to CodePink and their little friends on the left.”
Never heard of them, now I know who they are, thanks to you:
“CODEPINK emerged out of a desperate desire by a group of American women to stop the Bush administration from invading Iraq. The name CODEPINK plays on the Bush Administration’s color-coded homeland security alerts — yellow, orange, red — that signal terrorist threats. While Bush’s color-coded alerts are based on fear and are used to justify violence, the CODEPINK alert is a feisty call for women and men to “wage peace.” ”
Not a bad cause.
I just don’t get how one can equate the wartime defense of a port with physical force with the current healthcare debate.
Are you advocating a martial uprising against the democratically elected leader of our country?
What liberty are you in danger of losing? Choosing your healthcare provider? Making healthcare decisions?
I have little say in my own insurance coverage. I’m limited to whatever my policy dictates and that’s whatever my employer sets up. The insurance company takes nearly any clerical error or misunderstanding and uses it to deny coverage.
The only liberty is if I want to pay for my own insurance policy or pay out of pocket if I want to see a doctor out of my plan. Neither of which are feasible for me since times are tough.
Are you fighting against Death Panels? They already exist. Ask my two friends who last year had discussions with the hospital about what their options were for their comatose mother’s care when the benefits run out.
I fail to see how offering government run insurance will result in a b-movie dystopia. The government controls air traffic, protects our borders and national security and ensures us protection under the law.
If you really think that government is inept, ask yourself, “Did I get my stimulus check?”. I did and spent that sucker as soon as it was deposited right into my account along with my tax return.
Vivo is the every day troll. Whoever shouts the loudest, wins. Eh?
23. Jim Baker:
You lazily call ‘troll’ anyone who has a different viewpoint. I don’t shout, it’s your brain exploding with the shock that there is a better world out there . . .
Mr. Adams thank you for the refresher course in American History.
Americans who are protesting Obama’s “shovel ready health care” are exercising their Constitutional right to speak their protest and disagreement. They are impassioned and rightfully so. The more the media and the left try to shut them up, the more dissent will raise it’s voice.
The left and the media have wrongfully believed that the American people are stupid. Some voters were naively bamboozled by the media and by Obama’s campaign rhetoric, posing as a centrist and uniter.
The scales are falling fast from many American eyes with the hot white light of the truth now exposing Obama for the inexperienced, egotistical, punitive, leftist agenda driven politician that he is. For those who were duped, their passion is all the more fervent.
This burning love of liberty in the hearts of Americans will not be doused by a bunch of spoiled, elitists thugs and liars in the media and Washington.
As a left-wing troll (as opposed to a right-wing a-hole), I love it when rightists celebrate the “passionate opponents” who disrupt town meetings and shout down speakers. I never get tired of shoving in their faces a quote from one of their own, Bill O’Reilly, which was recently reprinted in The Forward:
“This is exactly what the Nazis did — they disrupted rallies, they came in and shouted people down,” O’Reilly said. He was speaking in 2005 about Connecticut students shouting down a right-wing lecturer. His words are still true.
#16: ““Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?”
Never mind “loud” and “scruffy.” It was instructive when John Stewart ran a clip of a couple who were arrested at a Bush rally just for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.
These mobs that show up at these town halls are people recruited by political or medical industry operatives to be used as pawns purely for political spin doctors. I know because I am behind the scenes and my friends make a living orchestrating these publicity stunts purely for Fox News snippets.
You just confessed to being the kind of person who either gets paid to show and put on a political dog and pony show or at the very least you are the one who does the paying. But can you prove that the people in this “mob” were paid to be there? Do you have actual proof of what what you’re saying? Or are you just another knee jerk viscerally motivated liberal who doesn’t believe that proof of your statements is necessary? I challenge you or any other liberal to back up anything say with factual evidence that can stand up to scrutiny.
To Not a Fool at #28:
Then where’s my check?
Nobody’s been sponsoring me.
Fool!
I have thought experiment for you: Let’s compare the crowds that have shown up at the Tea Party events with those that have shown up at G8 and G20 events. Can you you produce one frame of video footage that shows any violence at all during the conservative rallies? No! But we saw over 500 people gleefully displaying peace signs despite the encumbrance of handcuffs as they were getting hauled of to jail in Toronto.