Kaszycki: Vicious political dissenters a sign of healthy democracy?

Danger, danger, all around!

Liberal media sources were atwitter as Democrats… Danger, danger, all around!

Liberal media sources were atwitter as Democrats pushed back against public outrage over the passage of President Obama’s healthcare reform bill, claiming a rash of incidents of vandalism and intimidation.

Whether the various claims made are true or not remains to be proven. Assuredly, some of them are true, but some of them have been misconstrued: a coffin placed near Russ Carnahan’s office, far from being a death threat, turned out to be from a pro-life prayer vigil representing a burial for aborted children, causing news sources, including Politico, to retract the initially lurid story.

Acts of intimidation are indefensible, but so too is the attempt to exploit them to smear those who dare dissent. The Democratic leadership has been guilty of this offense.

The reason Democrats have been seizing on these claims and producing a narrative of a “dangerous climate” is because they are afraid, not of vandalism or intimidation, but of electoral defeat. According to a Ramussen poll, 55 percent of Americans want the healthcare reform bill to be overturned, and a poll revealed a marginally negative bounce in President Obama’s approval rating.

Thus ushers in the narrative of the unhinged protestors, with the inference that all of the opposition to Obamacare is grounded in such levels of political involvement. The goal is to discredit the entire opposition by clinging to the most extreme acts that can be claimed. And the intended effect is to squelch dissent: “What, you don’t support Obamacare? You must be one of those crazy people hurling racial slurs and making threatening phone calls.”

Of course, there’s little recognition of the reality of similar acts against Republicans. Recently Norman Leboon, an Obama donor, was charged with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., The Washington Post reported. The office of Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, received a call referencing a road accident she had, saying, “You should have broke your back, b*tch.”

In 2004, multiple Bush/Cheney re-election sites were vandalized. One in Tennessee was riddled with bullets, and anti-Bush protestors stormed an Orlando office, injuring two people. Bill Maher even expressed remorse that an assassination attempt against Dick Cheney failed, and author Michelle Goldberg referred to the day when Cheney dies as a “blessed day.”

Did the national media push a narrative of a dangerous political climate? Nope.

The Tea Party Movement has been subjected to a steady stream of virulent attacks, routinely being called racists by defenders of President Obama. Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy opined that he wanted to “knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.”

Surely, the same media sources that obsessed over supposed incidents of intimidation against Democrats were quick to spotlight and bemoan these incidents. Well, not exactly.

I could take those incidents and others and spin together a narrative of a climate of fear driven by left-wing extremists imperiling the country, but that would not be fair. Nor has the recent framing of isolated incidents initiated by fringe figures.

In truth, there is a rather repulsive double standard in American media circles. In spite of the fact that more major political assassinations than not within the last hundred years of American history have been the work of deranged leftists, liberal media sources continue to force-feed the public the myth of the “dangerous right.”

Both left and right have a very small percentage of unhinged people on the fringes of their movements who stoop to actions condemned by all reasonable people. Both movements condemn these people and would rather they stay home under the safety of their tin foil hats.

But the Democrats’ derision of dissent is in its own way unhealthy for democracy. We champion the notion of deliberative democracy, the concept that matters are discussed cogently and with conviction. Also, that proponents of causes stand steadfastly behind what they believe in and unwaveringly support their views through the strength of their argumentative power in the public sphere or through various other civil means of political action.

Civil, not violent or intimidating — the Democrats should be concerning themselves with answering the overwhelming majority of civilly raised concerns about Obamacare instead of disregarding them and reprimanding the response to the passage of the bill as one of intimidation.

Vilifying dissent goes against this principle. It diminishes public debate and cheapens discourse — call it the Alan Grayson, “die quickly” brand of politics.

Nancy Pelosi’s crew needs to realize that public outrage over the passage of a broadly unpopular healthcare bill is a sign of the health of the democratic state, not its weakness. They would prefer a blindly supportive, unaware or simply acquiescent public. But the day the public is too scared or disinterested to voice its objections to a bill, we will have lost our democracy.

E-mail Steve at sdk13@pitt.edu.