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August 17, 2009 in Opinion
Leonard Pitts Jr.: Artificial outrage cloaked as patriotism
“Fear is the most powerful enemy of reason. Both fear and reason are essential to human survival, but the relationship between them is unbalanced. Reason may sometimes dissipate fear, but fear frequently shuts down reason.” – From “The Assault on Reason” by Al Gore
“I’m afraid of Obama!” – Woman at a town hall meeting on health care reform
I have no opinion on H.R. 3200. Mainly because I haven’t read it.
Pardon my presumption, but chances are beyond excellent that you haven’t, either. The PDF file of the bill, otherwise known as the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, clocks in at 1,017 pages of often-dense legalese and jargon. I’d like to read it, but I’d also like to have a life, and the two are incompatible.
So excuse me, beg pardon, but it would be really valuable to hear an explanation of the bill by those who presumably have read it, followed by vigorous questioning. Instead, the circus has come to town.
I refer, of course, to the chaos that has erupted at town hall meetings as Democratic lawmakers try to sell the bill. The New York Times reports shouting matches, fistfights, threats, injuries and arrests. Georgia Congressman David Scott says he’s had death threats and a visit from vandals who painted a swastika outside his office.
If you wonder what the Nazis have to do with this, join the club. It’s an incoherent protest and where there is incoherence, naturally, there is Sarah Palin. The former governor of Alaska weighed in on Facebook with a claim that Democrats were proposing a “downright evil” system in which the fate of the elderly and the disabled would be determined by “death panels.”
She said she was referring to Sec. 1233 of the bill, so I read it. It would require your doctor to regularly consult with you on the need for a living will and advanced care directives, i.e., decide ahead of time if you’d want to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. The requirement may or may not be a good idea, but it’s hardly “downright evil” and it bears no resemblance to the image Palin conjures: Granny forced to justify her continued existence before a panel of men in black hoods.
Conservatives would have you believe this pandemonium is spontaneous. Truth is, it’s about as spontaneous as a shuttle launch. The Times account tells us a banner appeared on the Web site of Fox News host Sean Hannity inviting people to “Become a part of the mob!” A group calling itself Tea Party Patriots advises its members to pack the hall and “yell out.” This is manufactured outrage.
And that’s fine. If people choose to become part of a synchronized protest, they have every right to. Nor is there anything wrong with dissent. As many of us pointed out when George W. Bush’s enablers sought to silence his critics, dissent is patriotic.
But shouting down those who disagree with you is not. Neither is threatening, shoving, hitting, painting swastikas or otherwise rendering reasoned debate impossible. That’s not love of country, it’s not dissent, it’s not even civilized. It’s boorish, oafish and crude, the rantings of people panicked beyond reason.
In other words, conservatives. OK, not all of them. But too many of them? Definitely.
By now, it has become reflex, this instinct of theirs to manipulate the debate and muddy the waters by stoking people’s primal fears, whether of gays, Muslims, Hispanics or now health care reform. “I’m afraid of Obama!” screams a woman. And doesn’t that just say it all? Doesn’t that speak volumes about the intellectual bankruptcy and decayed moral authority of the political right? With apologies to Franklin Roosevelt, the only thing they have to sell is fear itself.
And no, that’s not patriotism. It is the cynical behavior of people who have little faith in their ability to win the debate. So they pick a fight and try to win that instead.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His e-mail address is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
A hypocrite by necessity 
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horse_feathers on August 17 at 3:49 p.m.
Sounds like Mr Pitts is the one who is creating fear.
Sounds to me like he wants us all to be afraid of free speech when it does not agree with his certain point of view.
Nicotinegun on August 18 at 1:43 p.m.
Pitts is Pre-Empitively Approving of Obama. He’s one that approves immediately if the Great Barack Hussein Obama wants it done. He is a typical Left Wing sycophant that most likely got his education at some Liberal Arts Re-education center.
Bob_Knows on August 19 at 7:44 p.m.
“Artificial outrage”? Obviously our writer has no clue.
Neither has he a clue about the obvious parallels between the German National Socialist Labor Party and the new Democratic Socialist Labor / Obama party program. Both parties moved rapidly to take over banks, industry, the information media (including Pitts and the SR), and medical care. The Obama regime is so much like the National Socialist Labor Party takeover in Berlin in 1933 that thinking men ought to be terrified.