House Democratic leaders are joining a handful of rank-and-file members in casting aspersions on the patriotism of citizens who have shouted down members of Congress at health care forums across the country.
"[It] is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., wrote in a Monday op-ed in USA Today. "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American."
The word "un-American" is notable in the nation's history because of its place in the name of the witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee, which was the model for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., during his leadership of the Red-baiting Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the early 1950s.
And its use is a surprising turn for leaders of a party that has uniformly decried back-bench Republican lawmakers for challenging its members' patriotism over Iraq war dissent and other issues.
During last year's presidential campaign, for example, Pelosi took umbrage at assertions by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., that Barack Obama, then the Democratic nominee, might harbor "anti-American" views and that there should be an investigation into whether individual lawmakers are "pro-America" or "anti-America." Bachmann's comment "dishonors the position that she holds" and "discredits the person who is speaking it," Pelosi said at the time.
Now, Pelosi and Hoyer are calling into question the patriotism of unelected American citizens.
Accusations of "anti-American" behavior were hurled across the House floor in the last Congress by Republicans Reps. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Ted Poe of Texas.
Is "anti-American" a harsher charge than "un-American"? Perhaps. But "un-American" has been a synonym for "traitor" since the late 1940s, when a freshman congressman, Richard M. Nixon, used his assignment to the House Un-American Activities Committee to become a national figure.
The whole discussion raises the question of whether Democratic leaders are playing directly into the hands of protesters who want to knock them off message on the health care overhaul.
Last week, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., quickly apologized after calling protesters "un-American."
In her apology, she said "Although I do believe that some of these protesters are disrespectful of other citizens in the audience who truly want to ask questions about health care, I shouldn't have used the term 'un-American.' I support the right of every Arkansan to speak out and have their voices heard."
But some Democrats, including now Pelosi and Hoyer, say protesters have crossed a line of legitimate expression by attempting to derail discussion of the health care bill. A spokesman for Pelosi, Brendan Daly, said in an e-mail that "[t]he Speaker and Majority leader did not call protesters 'un-American.' The op-ed very clear[ly] stated that everyone has the right to be heard, and disruptions that don't allow everyone to speak are un-American."
Ironically, the protesters are using tactics adapted from Saul Alinsky, the legendary radical Chicago community organizer whose work inspired organizers like Obama.
Here are Alinsky rules of power, provided by the National Education Association's Web site:
- Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
- Never go outside the experience of your people.
- Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.
- Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
- Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
- A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
- A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
- Keep the pressure on.
- The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
- Major premise for tactics is development of operations that will maintain constant pressure upon the opposition.
- If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
- The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
- Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
The modern-day conservative protesters -- Republicans, Democrats and independents -- are heavy on numbers 2, 4, 11, 12 and 13.
Republicans were quick to jump on the Pelosi-Hoyer charges and one made by Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., that protesters are "political terrorists," sending out releases to swing districts highlighting the accusations.
Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, said the op-ed was offensive.
"There is nothing more American than letting your elected representatives know how you feel about important issues facing the nation," he said on Fox News, according to a transcript provided by his office.
As the two parties and their allies debate the policy of the future, they are mired in the tactics of the past. It's hard to see how any of this helps the president or the Democratic leadership in advancing health care legislation.
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Comments
Well, it's been a while since I've read Rules for Radicals, so I don't know if you're numbering of the townhall protesters' tactics is right. But its definitely Alinsky-esque.
Against the protesters' view, most rational people would say trying to pass healthcare reform isn't the same thing as, say, the University of Chicago trying to bulldoze the surrounding slum, and doesn't warrant the same sort of civil-disobedience response.
This is because the healthcare debate is operating within a participatory, public framework, unlike the high-handed, closed-door, corporate, private, moneyed, elitist and clearly oppressive actions Alinsky fought.
So protesting some corporation that shut you out is different than going into a townhall and shutting down democratic debate.
Yet. Calling the protesters, or even just their actions, "un-American" is a dangerous stretch: it's a matter of interpretation. It's better to just call them rude and unethical; Why won't they let others talk? That is the key question.
Similarly, the key responsive tactic is stony silence, even the disbanding of the meetings. If asked why, just say " They weren't letting me get a word in edgewise, so there was no point in staying."
The Democratic overreaction to an inflammatory yet fundamentally benign form of disruption is embarrassing, and it shows that the pro-industry side in this conflict is absolutely using an Alinsky-esque approach: do something to throw the opponent off, then let them overreact, then use the opening their overreaction created to further attack. That further attack is yet to come, though. Honestly, I think a lot depends on whether the townhalls have air conditioning: heat leads to escalation, with its attendant risks.
This is a very fun conflict. It's a shame it's taking place over a set of reforms that are eminently moral and, in any democracy that could be said to function, were established long ago. Sigh.
Posted by: jamdox
| August 11, 2009 12:20 AM
Ah, Nancy and Steny: how well I remember the left
shouting "dissent is patriotic" whilst back stabbing American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and belittling President Bush. And weren't most of those anti-war demonstrations "organized" by Move On.org, ACORN, ANSWER Coalition, and other leftist fronts?
I do agree that opponents of the radical health care remedies should allow others to speak and be respectful. Just keep your union thugs under leash!!
Many (most?) Americans are mad because they see that the various plans will all lead to a single payer system sooner than later. And that would be a final nail in the coffin of America. It would totally destroy the "social contract" that our Founders and most Americans subscribe to: individual responsibility, family responsibility, limited government, free enterprise, mass support of private charities for the poor.
Posted by: Felix335
| August 11, 2009 5:11 AM
Comparing the Town Hall protestors- middle class, politically efficacious and well-organized partisans- to the politically disenfranchised slum dwellers that Alinsky organized is simply deceitful.
Unlike the slum-dwellers who had a postive and constructive program, i.e., voting rights and an end to housing discrimination the Town Hall protestors are agitating to maintain a system of privilege and advantage based on class.
The apporpriate authority to invoke is Popper who wrote extensively about the pre-War political extortion in Germany.
It is vital to protect society and democracy from bullying. The difference between bullying and dissent for those like Felix, is that dissent arises when the government uses its power destructively and violently.
Bullying occurs when the government tries to expand the rights and liberties of its citizens.
Comparing, as Felix does, the antiwar protestors dissenting against the INVASION of Iraq with protestors trying to destroy the extension of health care insurance to the 47 million uncovered Americans carries on in the proud Bushian tradition of moral clarity.
Moral clarity as Bush constantly defined it, means that the government's duty is to protect the connected and powerful from the legitimate aspirations of the poor and weak.
Town Hall protestors are clearly in favor of enhancing their position in society without regard to the continued suffering of the poor.
Posted by: Robert Chapman
| August 11, 2009 9:34 AM
Felix writes that the following are "good" traits: individual responsibility, family responsibility, limited government, free enterprise, mass support of private charities for the poor.
As my father-in-law would say: "What a crock!" It's thinking like that that will keep us mired in the 19th century.
Good lord: Are these people serious?
Posted by: Carl Childress
| August 11, 2009 9:49 AM
If anyone has or would read Sean Wilentz's "The Rise of American Democracy" this is nothing to get so excited over as to be diverted from the critical need for health care reform. Arguing over the opposition tactics as un-American is ludicrous because if nothing else it is unequivocally American.
Posted by: Prisilla
| August 11, 2009 12:54 PM
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