Just who are these health care protesters? - Yahoo! News
August 13, 2009
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Nancy Snyder says she kept quiet when abortion was legalized and prayer in schools was eliminated. Not this time.
"They did it for prayer, they did it for abortion, and they're not going to do it for our health care," the 70-year-old nurse from Philipsburg, Pa., said Wednesday as she and her husband Robert, 74, a retired coal miner, waited in a long, snaking line for Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter's town hall meeting.
"We're not standing back this time," Snyder said.
Instead, the Snyders and many Americans like them are adding their voices to a populist backlash evident in the taunts, jeers and rants at lawmakers' health care forums around the country in the past week and a half. The contentious sessions highlight the difficulty for President Barack Obama and the Democrats as they push for a comprehensive remaking of the nation's health care system.
Many of those raising their voices and fists at the town halls have never been politically active. Their frustration was born earlier this year with government bailouts and big spending bills, then found an outlet in the anti-tax Tea Parties in April and has simmered in the punishing recession.
via news.yahoo.com
I am not caught up in their issues. I think something needs to be done and do not see things as black and white as they do.
I am no fan of the Tea Party types with their loud protests.
In fact, I am not fond of loud anything from the right or left.
Loud and obnoxious is usually the sign of a weak argument. It is especially unbecoming of Christians.
Name-calling, slander, gossip, mean-spirited words, and anything less than love for others is simply sinful.
However, I do love part of the new face of American politics.
It is not the rudeness, decisiveness, name-calling, motive-assigning qualities. It is something else: participation.
President Obama won the election because he knew how to manage grass-root efforts, organize people at the community level, and get more done for less money.
The right wing is doing something similar and it has some good elements. It would be better if it were more civil and less driven by slogan-mongers, but it has potential. It would be better if the left did not ridicule the right as well. Both are guilty.
But participation is good.
It is especially promising if it results in people of varying views coming together locally to communicate face-to-face over issues,to listen with an ear for actually hearing what the other is saying, and to work together for solutions.
Taking back government is neither a left-wing nor a right-wing cause. It is a contemporary trend and a party-neutral approach. It is a little messy at the moment, but if we can harness the best of it and not let the loudest mouths take charge, it might just bring government closer to the people.