Raising hell in defense of liberty

All during the eight years that the appalling cowboy-frat-boy sat in the White House letting the vice-genius pull his strings like a brilliant but evil puppet master, we heard how dissent was patriotic.  Funny how things change.

I realize I’m not the first to make this point, but it’s an important one, and deserves to be made again.

Conservatives like myself have been having a field day since the Obama White House, in an attempt to stem the tide of protest against the health care reform bill, posted this on its blog:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Conservatives point out that this sounds very much as though the Administration is asking people to rat out anyone propagating “disinformation” (read: criticism of the health care bill) through forwarded e-mails or even in private conversation.  And, naturally, though it must have been too obvious to add, blog posts.

So go ahead, if you feel you must. Report me to the president’s minions, because I’ve written plenty that the folks at the Obama White House might consider fishy.

What many on the right consider fishy is that an American president would ask (by means of his staff) American citizens to report “casual conversation” that “seems fishy”  to the White House. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for example, wrote to President Obama,

You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.

I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward emails critical of his policies to the White House. I suspect that you would have been leading the charge in condemning such a program — and I would have been at your side denouncing such heavy-handed government action.

Can you just imagine the outrage on the left at the prospect of the demonic Mr. Cheney collecting “fishy” e-mails and comprising an enemies list of which another diabolical Dick back in the pre-internet dark age could not even have dreamed.

There is little outrage from the left at this, since, as Lisa Falkenberg writes on her blog,

The fact is most of us forward dozens of e-mails and links every day. It hardly seems as contemptuous to the Bill of Rights as, say, warrantless wiretapping during the Bush administration.

Ah, yes.  Tapping the phones of people (most of whom were not American citizens) whom the FBI had good reason to suspect were engaged in terrorism and might cause the deaths of thousands was far worse than asking Americans to turn in their friends who make “fishy” comments in e-mail or casual conversation.  Because dissent, you see, is only patriotic when there’s a Republican in the White House.

Back in the bad old Bush-Cheney days, Code Pink activists were considered heroines for their disruptive protests against the war.  Now, in the more enlightened Age of Obama, conservatives are protesting the attempt to ram a 1,018-page bill through Congress before all of its potential ramifications and unintended consequences can be considered. For this, they are being vilified.

Many Democrats are decrying the incivility with which they conduct their protests — unlike the ladylike behavior of the Code Pink protestors, and the genteel manner of left-wing protesters in general.  Others object that the protests are “Astroturf” rather than actual grassroots activity. I beg to differ.

Most astonishingly, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, the two top-ranking Democrats in the House of Representatives, call the protesters “un-American.”  Perhaps they have forgotten true blue liberal Barbara Ehrenreich’s quote, so often repeated by “progressives” during the awful Bush years:

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

I guess hell-raising is okay if you’re wearing a pink t-shirt and shrieking at army generals, but not if you believe the Congress is about to destroy the American health care system and plunge the American government into a fiscal abyss which our grandchildren will be hard pressed to claw themselves free.

In that case, it’s just plain fishy.