In My America

I believe in the freedom of speech. I believe that one of the things that makes America the “shining city on a hill,” as Ronald Reagan once called it, is the right of every American to believe what he or she wants, to say what he or she wants and to try to rally other Americans to his or her cause. I believe in the Enlightenment principle that holds that we should try to encourage free and open discussion of all issues because competition among ideas in the marketplace of ideas is the best way to insure that truth wins out overall.

So great is my belief in the freedom of speech that I have no problem with American Nazis, parading down the street in an American Jewish community, so long as the march is conducted in a peaceful way. I believe that protesters should have the right to burn American flags or even to advocate, in a peaceful way, for the overthrow of the government. I also believe that Ku Klux Klan members should have the right to burn crosses on their own property so long as they comply with regulations designed to make the activity safe to others on surrounding property. However hard it may be to stomach these noxious activities, you simply cannot believe in freedom of speech unless you also believe that the freedom extends to the speech you hate.

As a political scientist, I think it is a good thing for people to become passionate about social issues and to participate in the political process. I want more people voting, more people writing to Congress, more people discussing politics, more people signing petitions and even more people taking to the streets to demonstrate their support or opposition to governmental actions or inactions. Democracy is, in the end, a fragile thing that cannot survive without constant exercise.

But what is going on right now is shocking and frightening. The New York Times reported on Friday that

The bitter divisions over an overhaul of the health care system have exploded at town-hall-style meetings over the last few days as members of Congress have been shouted down, hanged in effigy and taunted by crowds. In several cities, noisy demonstrations have led to fistfights, arrests and hospitalizations. . . At an appearance at a grocery store in Austin Tex., on Aug.1, Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, was drowned out as he tried to speak on health care change. One opponent had a mock tombstone with Mr. Doggett’s name on it . . .This week, Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, said he had received a death threat about his support.

Shouting down? Hangings in effigy? Taunting? Fistfights arrests and hospitalizations? Personalized tombstones of living people? Death threats? This is not my idea of freedom of speech, and it is also not my idea of America.

The health care delivery system affects every American in an intimate way. It is a participant when we are born, we look to it when we are must vulnerable, and it is present when we die. It currently accounts for twenty percent of all the goods and services our country produces in any given year, and if the government fails to “bend the cost curve “ downward, it will account for more than that in the future. It is therefore no surprise that any discussion of changing the health care system arouses high passions in the public. There is a reason it has taken over 60 years for our country to have reached a point at which the adoption of a universal health care plan has finally become a real possibility.

We should, therefore, fully expect for frightened and angry people to show up at public forums where they emotionally confront their representatives with their concerns about any change. That’s completely fair game in our system. But that is not what is going on.

Leaving aside the allegation that the people who are showing up as opponents of change at these meetings have been incited and even organized by right wing organizations with political axes to grind and by business interests that have a stake in the status quo—they’re entitled to free speech as well—what’s disturbing are the tactics these people are employing. These people are not engaging in debate. Rather than competing in the marketplace of ideas, they are trying to shut the marketplace down.

At this point, there is no single bill upon which Congress is preparing to vote. Neither Congress nor even the party that controls it have yet to come to agreement on the plan’s key elements. Legislators are doing their duty by attempting to go back to their constituents to discuss the ideas Congress is currently debating. At this point everyone should be doing a lot more listening than shouting.

But, some of the health care opponents who have been attending these meetings aren’t interested in listening: they think they already know all they’ll ever need to know about this issue. Fair enough.

Far worse, though, they don’t want anyone else to learn anything that might dispose an undecided listener to support reform. They’re not interested in fair competition in the market of ideas. It would be facile to say that they know that their ideas cannot prevail in any other way and so they seek to impose them by force or default; in fact, they probably believe that they hold a monopoly on the truth, that anyone who disagrees with them is a dissembling traitor to the nation and that further discussion is just a waste of time. They know they are right; they’re just worried that further discussion can only trick the unsophisticated masses into supporting legislation that is, in their view, clearly contrary to the common good.

So, instead of wasting time trying to enlighten their fellow citizens through reasoned discussion, these people are trying to make discussion futile. They’re trying to drown out discussion. They don’t want to know what their representatives have to say. Instead of giving people on the other side of the controversy the benefit of the doubt, they’re behaving as if anyone who disagrees with them is evil and not worthy of a public forum. Rather than seeing their opponents as citizens equally concerned about the public good who simply hold a different view of the proper means to accomplish it, some of the health care reform opponents are treating their fellow citizens as enemies who should be delegitimized, dehumanized and ultimately destroyed.

In my America, we respect our fellow citizens and their opinions even if we disagree with them. In my America, we take it as a given that all of its citizens love their country, see it as a “shining city on a hill” and want it to survive into the future, prospering in the community of nations. In my America, we believe that decisions affecting the public welfare should be based on facts and on logic discovered through careful thought and deliberation and that all decisions should be based on what is best for country at large while still giving great deference to individual rights. In my America, we don’t hide from the truth, but rather, we seek it openly and honestly using the best human means with which we have been endowed. And in my America, we trust democracy.

When a faction of our citizens believes that the best way to engage in public discourse is through disruption, threat and intimidation, tactics the world has just seen used in Iran to brutal effect, and the rest of us tolerate it, is this still America?

As always, your comments are welcome.