Here is a really great set of videos from the Townhall on Healthcare reform that turncoat Arlen Specter held in Philly this weekend. Every time he talks about the standard Obama method (exaggerate the crisis then pass legislation that spends a boatload of taxpayer money, and do it so fast that congress can't even read the bill) the crowd went nuts.
I wonder if they get it that it takes an awful lot to get people like this out there. ACORN and the SEIU are basically professional protesters so they're always out at events like this. They are the kabuki theater of democracy. But to get these people out there, real people, you have to get them really riled up. Movements in support of the individual are notoriously disorganized.... everyone involved is by definition an individual so they don't join up well.
But here you see a large group of them shouting down two of their rulers. So if those rulers still have the 'audacity' to do this thing over the directly voiced objection of their constituents, at least they will know that the masses aren't happy about it. And when that same crowd all show up with torches and pitchforks demanding Arlen Specter's head, at least he won't be able to claim to be surprised.
Personally I think it's only natural that some of the contempt that our elected officials have continually shown for us, now be reflected back at them. Wouldn't it be great if we could get the media to quit taking sides and cover it too?
5 comments:
Is the shirt finally for sale?
Why or why not?
When?
Sure it's for sale...its a Glenn Beck thing. I'm sure you can find it on his website somewhere. My wife bought me a mug with a RadioFree NJ logo on it, but I don't have any t-shirts at the moment.
Gee, I don't think you have so much to be cheerful about.
It looks and sounds to me like there's a group of maybe only 20-30 people booing and mooing amid Specter's audience of, what, 1000? The rest of the crowd actually looks embarrassed, not proud, whenever the shouting breaks out--especially that one obnoxious guy who sounds like one of the typical bussed-in rabblerousers.
You wrote about a convergence of Left and Right on the issue of financial regulation--both far-leftists and far-rightists ignorantly fear financial complexity, and neither possesses the sort of disciplined open-mindedness which we need to defend against the collectivist impulse and a maintain free enterprise system. And in the midst of all the recent financial "confusion," we've seen conservatives and liberals alike trying to nationalize everything in sight!
Even if I accept your assertions about the toxicity of leftism and welfare-statism and the depredations ACORNers and liberals have visited on the rest of us, seeing shout-downs like these isn't at all encouraging, because rather than fight for, say, freedom of healthcare choice and personal liberty, they sell out to the precedents that the radical protesters have used before them.
So instead of having a bunch of people reasoning the healthcare plan to death, we have a bunch of fools shouting at it. Those who choose the brawl over thoughtful argumentation and debate will always be prone to sell out to whatever mob notion becomes fashionable, whether it's of the left or the right. I think contempt for elected can be useful--contempt, and rage, of the witty, calculating, reasoning, self-controlled kind. These clumsy stumble-bums make fools of themselves AND make it easier for those who toe Obama's line to attach charges of stupidity to those thinking people who differ. They might just ruin things for those of us who would seek to derail Obama's monstrous version of health care reform with fastidious explication and carefully adduced evidence.
Which brings me to another point: the people doing the important things to block Obama's plan ARE thinking, reasoning people, who point out evidence that it's claims of cost-reduction and care-improvement are false and unsupportable. Greg Mankiw (you've no doubt checked out his blog?), Keith Hennessey, Martin Felstein, Gary Becker, Douglas Elmendorf--THESE are the people whose important work and public writings are exposing the objective details of our healthcare system and the reasons why ObamaCare won't help.
For somebody who enjoys reason and logic, your admiration for these slobs seems to me undue. After all, who are these pitchfork-wielding revolutionaries without a John Adams, a Thomas Paine, a Patrick Henry, a George Washington, or a Thomas Jefferson among them?
Well Mark I think we have two different ideas about how America’s political process really works in the 21st century. Like you I think the people that are actually doing the nut and bolt picking apart the rancid stupidity of collectivist social policy is important. But I don’t think a single Congressman or Senator has ever changed his vote on an issue because of it. No one in Congress cares about whether a piece of legislation will be a good thing or a bad thing for the country. (That may be unfair… there may be a freshman congressman from some rural district who still does, but the system will either beat it out of him or he’ll fail to be re-elected because of it.) The only thing our elected officials of both parties care about is whether something is popular and is therefore good for them… and the country be damned. John McCain is a perfect example. There was no domestic policy idea so stupid that he wasn’t perfectly willing to adopt it as part of his platform if it tested well in the focus groups.
The good news about ‘the right’ is that the best thinkers are all a part of it. All the good ideas (or at least all the ideas which aren’t already thoroughly demonstrated as being awful) all come from the right. What the right has always lacked are people on the ground. There is no ACORN for the right…. No grassroots collection of worker bees to go out there and make a public nuisance of themselves. Great thinkers are great, and important, but only in as much as they dominate the water cooler discussions. Until the idea becomes popular and part of ‘the conventional wisdom’ you aren’t going to change what a congressman is going to do. But once that happens, if you then get a screaming mob to chase him down the street howling in his face about this or that, then he’ll stop and pause for a minute at the very least.
These healthcare town halls are supposed to be more kabuki theatre democracy. They are all packed to the gills with bussed in ACORN people and are supposed to be forums for the Democrat faithful to preach to the cheering crowd for later regurgitation by a complicit news media. But instead you are getting enough people out there to throw them a curve ball. And as much as I admire the guys and gals doing the thinking and writing, for someone like Specter I think that’s much more persuasive. I may be wrong of course, but I think if this bill is going to be stopped it won’t be by Thomas Sowell appearing on Charlie Rose but by Ann Coulter appearing on Glenn Beck. (And Glenn will probably be wearing lederhosen.)
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