Dissent is Patriotic!

The last several years you could not drive around town without seeing a Prius with a bumper sticker declaring “Dissent is Patriotic!” These same cars of course ended up with stickers such as ‘Obama 08,’ ‘Hope,’ and my favorite ‘Change.’ I will devote a more thorough look into that one at a future date.

Anyway when protesters interrupted then President Bush with chants of anti-war slogans the media and members of the political left like Pelosi and Reid were quick to defend their right to dissent and to carry on as they were. When liberal activists shouted down speakers at colleges they were quick to defend them. When Code Pink interrupted Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee they thought it was a great show of good old American protest. Even when a non American threw his shoes at President Bush, even though it was an insult to the country not just the man, they were quick to defend his actions as just and right.

Fast forward to today and their opinions seem to be slightly different. Angry Americans at townhall meetings on the proposed health care reform bill are being lambasted by the media and Pelosi as un-American. Pelosi likens them to ‘astro-turf’ saying they are fake grassroots protesters that are instead being bused in as plants by the right, or the insurance companies. And to be honest there may be some plants in there. I mean all those guys in the AFL-CIO jackets are just volunteers right? They are not intentionally trying to block people from getting to the microphones. And the members of ACORN that have been coming to some of the meetings are just concerned citizens, they couldn’t possibly be plants. Saying Pelosi and her ilk are hypocrites is like saying that the night is dark.

But she doesn’t stop with just calling the protesters un-American. Oh no she has to go on and call them ‘thugs’ and ‘Nazis,’ referring to some of the signs that protesters have brought that show a swastika with a big red no sign over it. She and the left accuse the GOP and other groups of using ‘brownshirt’ tactics in coming to these meetings and shouting down the ‘true’ citizens, while ignoring the fact that the ACORN and union ‘volunteers’ are the ones blocking the mics and sometimes the doors.

The videos I have watched have shown well reasoned and thought out questions being asked and only after the congressman essentially refuses to address the question, or in a few cases just ignores it, has the shouting started. Shoving and fighting has broken out a few times as well and honestly from what I have seen it always seems to start from the supporters, not the protesters. But Pelosi and Co says that the protesters are the ones using ‘thug’ tactics in these cases.

It seems to me that in the left’s eyes ‘Dissent is Patriotic’ only applies when it agrees with them. Who is un-American again?