by Pa Rock
Political Observer
William Kostric showed up packing heat outside of the Obama town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, yesterday. He was carrying a sign that read, "It's time to water the tree of liberty." That sign was a response to a quote by Thomas Jefferson that the know-nothings like to belch - "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." (Of course Jefferson, a slave owner, was obviously not talking about everyone's liberty.)
So Mr. Kostric shows up at an event featuring the President of the United States, and he is carrying a visible weapon - something that is legal in New Hampshire - and he has a sign calling for watering the tree of liberty, something that is accomplished through a blood offering - and he doesn't go to jail. Chris Matthews asks him later on Hardball, "Why did you bring a god-damned gun to the event?" and his response is that the proper question would be why aren't more people coming to these events armed?
Why, indeed?
Representative Steve Cohen (D, TN) had an armed teabagger baboon walk into a town hall meeting that he was hosting two days ago in Memphis. The man was promptly escorted off of the premises.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ) had an angry individual get so flustered at one of her town halls a couple of days ago at a Safeway in Douglas, Arizona, that the genius forgot and left his gun in the room when he exited.
The health care industry has ginned up these events and bussed in loads of "spontaneous" and "ordinary" citizens with printed instructions on how to disrupt the meetings. They don't come to listen, or learn, or ask intelligent questions - they come to make noise, and disrupt, and keep listening and learning from taking place.
Some unions have belatedly and begrudgingly started to send counter-protesters to drown out the lobbyist rabble, so the circus is growing exponentially. Yesterday a caller phoned the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and left the following message:
"I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights. That, or you all are going to come up against the Second Amendment."
I guess the difference between disturbing the peace and exercising First Amendment rights depends on which side of the room you are standing on. I guess the difference between armed intimidation and the exercise of Second Amendment rights depends on which end of the gun that you are facing.
Somebody is going to die. Maybe several innocent people will be trapped between the righteously incensed shooter and his target, and lots of blood will be spilled. That's what will happen, and it will happen very, very soon. The shooter has been primed with bullshit stories of grandmothers being euthanized, death panels, and forced abortions and sex-change operations. His gun has been cleaned and oiled, and he has plenty of ammo.
But it isn't the death of individuals that we must fear, it is the death of democracy itself. When the lives of citizens are put at risk for participating in the democratic process, that very process is also put at risk. Government by intimidation is nothing more than a rancid dictatorship. We aren't North Korea - we are the United States of America - a place where everyone has the right to speak (not scream incoherently to keep others from speaking) and to listen. I am certain that Mr. Jefferson would agree that we need to calm down and return to civil discourse - before we damage our country beyond repair.
2 comments:
There is a difference between being a patriot and being a deluded wing nut. Likewise there is a difference between being free and being licentious. I could be wrong but I believe Mr. Kostric may, for each case, represent the latter and not the former.
Mr. Kostric disregarded accepted rules and standards for exercising political speech by accentuating his statement with a pistol while in the vicinity of the President. He did more to truncate Second Amendment rights than to advance them.
Kostric’s shenanigan occurs as the GOP’s angry army of malcontents has hijacked the Congressional summer recess.
It appears the same bunch of lunatics lost in their bloodlust for slain abortion providers has turned their lethal sites on Democratic members of the Congress.
Kansas' Dennis Moore reports two death threats. One was by way of a phone call to a district office. The second, more chilling threat, is of a nature about which Moore declines to openly speak. His town hall meetings have been canceled.
In is this atmosphere of predictable violence Mr. Kostric’s stand is dangerous because it invites more, not less, extreme conduct.
The nexus between the anti-abortion crowd, the tea bag society, and the hijackers of town hall meetings includes Dick Armey, his hired guns, and other right wing groups pretending to be spontaneous grass roots movements. Mr. Kostric finds himself in the company of thugs, not an independent and well regulated militia.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s radical elements of American liberalism ran amuck with violence. They too garnered the national spotlight taking the air out free and open debate.
Today a fire of unfettered extremism burns on the turf of American conservatism. No doubt the voters will punish conservatives by banning them from elected office. That’s the same sentence the liberal crowd got!
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