Civic Involvement Decried
Paul Krugman among others are fully handwrought over the latest expression of American democracy, decrying the fact that citizens are involved, that they give a damn what their government is doing, that they are mad as hell, etc. Krugman wants to know whatever happened to Rockwellian democracy.
There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind.
That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.
Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison.
I guess he doesn’t know about Code Pink.
But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.
And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.
So this is something new and ugly.
Again, Paul, you’re not looking at the right issue. It’s called “The War on Terror,” and it drove thousands of Americans out of their minds. Apparently Krugman missed the kind of vitriol and disruption that was directed at the last president of the United States. I don’t recall that protest being reported with the kind of alarm and tutting disapproval I’m hearing now, even when protestors engaged in outrages outside military hospitals, and bared their breasts at a U.S. senator who is now secretary of state. The difference of course is, more people, and more ordinary people, and more people of both parties, are angry about this.
But let’s a little dig deeper. There’s a now-quaint, but not terribly Rockwellian period in American history I like to call “The 1960s,” when a pal of the sitting president and his associates were setting off bombs, trashing public buildings, killing cops, in a spirited exercise of free speech. Hey, one angry protestor from that time who tried to kill a president is about to be released from prison.
How soon we forget. It’s more protest as we say, not as we do.
In fairness, protesting against efforts to entirely reorder our economy and drive up taxes are completely different from protesting against the defense of one’s own nation, so we can’t blame Krugman for avoiding that recent example of wild-eyed, frothing American dissent. Let’s dig deeper for a more relevant example. Not the draft riots and rank racism in New York during the Civil War, that doesn’t quite work. How about the tax revolt of the 1770s? Let’s see, large crowds, check. Hangings in effigy, check. Death threats, check. Americans even went further in their rage against having mandates and dunnage shoved down their throat. Tarring and feathering of tax collectors, insurrection, war, declaration of independence.
This is one Nobel Laureaute economic who either isn’t doing his homework, can’t count, or has chosen to narrowly restrict the focus of his research in order to support his thesis. The term “intellectually dishonest” comes to mind. But if all he wants to do is look at recent Congressional economic initiatives, I’m not sure why he’s complaining. I thought the big complaint for some time has been that people aren’t interested enough in their own fiscal future.
Comparisons of the fervor aside, of course, this isn’t 1776. America actually voted for this president and this Congress. What do you do when the elected bodies ignore, stifle and misrepresent dissent in their own ranks, as well as the dissent of the people? So far, the best news out of this period of Democratic dominance has been the great difficulty the party in power has in actually achieving in consensus and getting anything done … at least without heavily bribing its membership.
One minor nitpicking point. Norman Rockwell’s depiction of earnest homespun civic involvement depicts at acutal town meeting, a fine though sometimes raucous, discordant New England tradition. Town Meetings are an actual formal part of participatory government up here. (I’ve attended a lot of them. There is a lot of freedom of speech in Town Meetings, though I’ve never seen it express itself in quite the quasi-religious way that Rockwell depicts it, with all the admirational onlooking … contrary to Krugman’s claim that the depicted person is expressing an unpopular opinion to the respectful disapproval of his neighbors. At real Town Meetings, there’s usually there’s more rattling on, exasperation, sniping, looks of annoyance, yawning, etc., and sometimes shouting, gaveling and angry storming out). The events Krugman and others are refering to as “townhall meetings” are something different. They are actually partisan political events designed to drum up support for a partisan agenda.
Here’s a big roundup of handwringing commentary, denunciations and alarmed news reports, as well as some voices that try to cut through the efforts to suppress American dissent. Memeorandum. Just one other bit I want to pull out, for a closing question. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:
The early reports are sketchy. But apparently a mob of teabaggers began to riot after some were not able to get into a townhall meeting in Tampa.
For his next column, Krugman might want to look at the deterioration of political discourse in certain quarters, where concerned citizens are routinely described with vile sexual terms, and profanity has become a substitute for actual reasoned argument. Another subject for Krugman. The revival of American civic involvement and the death of apathy.
Topics: America, Norman Rockwell, Obama, media, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:46 am on Friday, August 7, 2009
8 Responses to “Civic Involvement Decried”
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August 7th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Haven’t Krugs and Boxer done enough for Teh One to warrant ambassadorships to Guam and Granada?
Jourtegrity takes another huge hit today.
http://www.jourtegrity.blogspot.com
August 7th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
How soon they forget:
“After being denied entrance to the “Town Hall Meeting”, we massed right outside Blair High School and let the President know – through our chants and signs – that we oppose his effort to replace the federal government’s most successful program with a stock-market gamble that would impoverish seniors and explode the national debt.”*
Hundreds of social security protesters interrupting a “town hall” meeting with their “chants and signs.” Huh. Howzabout that?
The biggest difference, of course, is in how the protests are covered. Michelle Malkin has repeatedly documented how liberal protests are cleaned up and made fit for public consumption by a helpful mass media. Conservative protests seem to inspire the opposite treatment.
* http://progressivemaryland.org/page.php?id=1049
August 7th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
And, like all good liberals, Krugman has to subtly inject an accusation of racism into the discussion:
“But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.”
Of course! They’re all rrrrraaaaaaaaaaaccists!
Krugman’s memory must be really poor if he forgets that Americans were equally as unhappy about HillaryCare in 1993.
August 7th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Calling Paul Krugman intellectually dishonest is like calling Niagara Falls a trickle.
Apparently, he also suffers from an unfortunate brain disorder that doesn’t let him correctly interpret facial expressions.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
[...] about the stunning ignorance and arrogance they’re seeing from their members of Congress and, as has always happened in our democracy, anger translates to lots of noise that eventually gets the attention of the elected officials. [...]
August 8th, 2009 at 9:31 am
This seems relevant:
“But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” - Barack Obama
In other words, SHUT UP. You in the brown jacket? Sit your a** down before something unavoidably ugly happens. Keep your “fishy” comments to yourself, or else.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:21 am
[...] that he saw at his town hall meeting is how democracy has always been done in this country. Jules Crittenden reminded me of that this past week. The notion of the bucolic New England town hall meeting was never true. They have [...]
August 10th, 2009 at 8:29 am
[...] that he saw at his town hall meeting is how democracy has always been done in this country. Jules Crittenden reminded me of that this past week. The notion of the bucolic New England town hall meeting was never true. They have [...]