By: Timothy P. Carney
August 8, 2009
Dissent, it turns out, is no longer patriotic. President Barack Obama’s White House and his Democratic National Committee have unleashed an all-out assault on what they call “angry,” “manufactured” and “lobbyist-funded” lies about health care reform. Look closely and you realize that’s how they classify all dissent.
Obama, when speaking at Notre Dame University last spring amid anti-abortion protests, said, “When we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe, that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.”
But his record of dealing with actual dissent paints a different picture, one that suggests he has so much faith in his own good intentions and clever plans — and so little skepticism about the power of government to do good — that he sees all disagreement with his policies as condemnable…
…The personal attack on Freddoso, filled with slurs and devoid of factual critiques, illuminates Obama’s current crusade against the “mobs,” “fishy e-mails” and “manufactured” dissent against his plan for massive regulations, subsidies and new government programs in the health care industry…
…What counts as “fishy”? Is it only the e-mails falsely claiming “reform” mandates euthanasia, or is Obama also counting as “disinformation” the videos displaying his past advocacy of a single-payer plan and arguments that the plan amounts to taxpayer funding of abortions?
Obama’s attack on Matt Drudge for posting those videos, the White House’s broad dismissal of town-hall protests as “mobs” of “manufactured” dissent and his DNC’s intentional conflation of health care protesters with birthers suggests that anything rejecting the White House’s conclusions on health care counts as “fishy,” or worse, and must be reported to authorities…
…has Obama ever acknowledged that most of the people who oppose his proposed reform do so because they believe it economically harmful, wasteful, unconstitutional, immoral or damaging to families?…
The entire article is at The San Francisco Examiner
