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August 5, 2009
I Thought that "Dissent was the Highest Form of Patriotism"
How many times during the Bush Administration did you hear that "dissent is patriotic" or "dissent is the highest form of patriotism," or some such? Too many times to count.
In my post yesterday taking President Obama to task for talking out of both sides of his mouth on single-payer, I failed to notice this tidbit from the White House website titled "Facts are Stubborn Things"
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov
Should I report myself? Or will my liberal commenters do it for me? No doubt much of what I've published counts as "disinformation" to Obama and his supporters.
At least one United States Senator, John Cornyn (R-TX) has posted an open letter to the Administration, demanding that they stop this program and asking what exactly they intend to do with information they gather about private citizens.
As I think we're all aware, citizens have been swamping "town hall" meetings set up by congressmen. Many angry comments, questions, and yelling have been directed at Democrats who voted with Obama.
Here's one in which Congressman Steve Kagen's (D-WI) "Listening Session" turned into something of a shouting session. (h/t both videos Mike's America)
Here's another, in which turncoat Arlen Spectre and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius get an earful from Pennsylvanians
Now, I'm very much against shouting speakers down. And if that occurs I condemn it. There's nothing wrong though with speakers angrily making their views known, and there's nothing wrong with a few catcalls from the audience.
Here's a DNC ad attacking these people as "an angry mob"
And indeed in a statement issued by the DNC
The Republicans and their allied groups - desperate after losing two consecutive elections and every major policy fight on Capitol Hill - are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists funded by K Street Lobbyists to disrupt thoughtful discussions about the future of health care in America taking place in Congressional Districts across the country....The right wing extremists' use of things like devil horns on pictures of our elected officials, hanging members of Congress in effigy, breathlessly questioning the President's citizenship and the use of Nazi SS symbols and the like just shows how outside of the mainstream the Republican Party and their allies are. This type of anger and discord did not serve Republicans well in 2008 - and it is bound to backfire again.
As Michael Goldfarb asks, "Am I missing something or isn't this exactly the kind of behavior that Democrats encouraged for the last, oh, five or so years of the Bush administration. ...And are Democrats really going to complain about people using Nazi imagery to criticize a sitting president?"
Only problem is that it wasn't so long ago that Obama organized just these sorts of angry mobs himself.
During the campaign Obama told his supporters that
"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face," he said.
And were told incessantly that Obama's experience as a "community organizer" uniquely qualified him to be president. Guy Benson at NRO's Media Blog links to a March 2007 story in The New Republic titled "The Agitator." From the TNR story:
...After Obama arrived [in Chicago], he sat down for a cup of coffee in Hyde Park with a fellow organizer named Mike Kruglik. Obama's work focused on helping poor blacks on Chicago's South Side fight the city for things like job banks and asbestos removal. His teachers were schooled in a style of organizing devised by Saul Alinsky, the radical University of Chicago-trained social scientist. At the heart of the Alinsky method is the concept of "agitation"-- making someone angry enough about the rotten state of his life that he agrees to take action to change it; or, as Alinsky himself described the job, to "rub raw the sores of discontent."...[Organizer] Kruglik remembers this episode as an example of why, in ten years of training organizers, Obama was the best student he ever had. He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation...he could be aggressive and confrontational.
Also linked to by Benson is a September 2008 story by Stanley Kurtz in the New York Post titled "O's Dangerous Pals." Following are excerpts:
One key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies. Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action" - organizers' term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans....And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama. When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.
In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.
More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.
Barack Obama is getting a small taste of his own medicine, and it is bitter indeed.
Posted by Tom at August 5, 2009 10:00 PM
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Comments
And let's not forget the tens of millions of dollars being pumped into the organized Obama/union effort to ram this health care bill down our throats.
P.S. I liked this paragraph from the Cornyn letter regarding Americans turning in their neighbors for disstenting speech:
"I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward emails critical of his policies to the White House. I suspect that you would have been leading the charge in condemning such a program-and I would have been at your side denouncing such heavy-handed government action."
-- Letter by Senator John Cornyn to President Obama.
Posted by: Mike's America at August 5, 2009 11:02 PM
