First and foremost faydean, Peggy Noonan, despite being a rather intelligent conservative thinker, manages to boil down very complex issues into ridiculously incorrect simplifications that serve no use in civil discussion. Her, and I assume your, arguments equate to the following:

- The bill is over a thousand pages and has multiple versions
– The Conservatives are not well dressed and not orchestrated by the Republican powers that bee
– The anger shown at the townhalls shows that people don’t want healthcare
– Obama is asking for citizens to report against each other to the big scary federal government
– These debates need civility.

Now, despite the contradiction of calling for civility yet praising the raucous bunch of protesters showing up at the town halls, this debate should be exactly that, a debate about the future of the country, done with genuine discussion between citizens and their leaders. When you actively disrupt this process from occurring, and yes im looking at people in your camp faydean, you aren’t being civil.

Now for my line by line analysis of Faydean’s article

–The bill is big
GIVE ME A BREAK, its a massive attempt to overhaul american healthcare. It should be a hefty bill, changing healthcare requires a lot of changes to the U.S.C. Attacking the healthcare bill on this front is just a poorly done scare tactic to make people question the “big scary federal government”. More importantly, most important bills, like the big spending bill, which is actually 13 big bills put into one piece of legislation, are far larger than this bill and get passed every year. This complaint is honestly akin to crying over your dirty windows when your house is on fire.

–The demonstrations represent honest individuals who are not funded by the RNC or any other Conservative think tank
I am more than sure that some of the individuals at the townhall are just that, honest individuals, with honest questions, and skepticism towards obama’s healthcare plan. That’s absolutely fantastic and there isn’t a problem. It is also not a problem to protest Obama’s healthcare plan. IT IS a problem to instruct large masses of individuals to protest in the middle of a town hall by shouting down a representative or senator* I might add, this hardly sounds like civil discourse*. Here are some reasons why this is not acceptable behavior
1: When you encourage people to, without a protesting permit, protest inside a small area with political tensions running high, you have an almost guaranteed result of people violating public safety laws.
2: The supreme court makes it clear that citizens DO NOT have a right to protest wherever and whenever they please, meaning that if you wish to exercise your right to free speech, that you must comply with certain government restrictions that do not intend to limit the content of free speech. These exceptions are called time, place, and manner restrictions. Essentially they say that you CANNOT protest in non public areas, you aren’t allowed to protest at irregular times, and you cannot protest in a way that is likely to cause harm to others (an extension of this is called the clear and present danger test, which means that you cannot use your right to free speech, if that exercise will likely result in harming others, such as yelling fire in a crowded building).
3: Furthermore, its hard to claim that you want to have your voice heard, when you do so by simply being the loudest person in the room. By denying anyone else their right to be heard the protesters at these townhalls epitomize the destruction of the very freedoms they are exercising. The end result is that the protesters at these town halls are more akin to thugs than they are civil protesters. By shouting down anyone that disagrees with them, the protesters are not interested in discussing or changing minds, but are more interested in being disruptive, and that is not something to be encouraged.

–Anger at the townhall shows that America doesn’t want “obama care“
This is absolute tripe. Its called politics, ten to five and pick the day, at least 20% of the people in this country are going to disagree with what a politician says. Having a bunch of individuals that disagree with the proposed healthcare legislation just evinces the most boisterous of the conservative voice. That does NOT mean that suddenly the country shifted and now thinks that Obama is all wrong on healthcare. IN FACT, his numbers are still around 50% on healthcare polls, and the country overwhelmingly supports healthcare reform. I don’t see any bills from the republicans so i guess all I can choose from is the Democratic plans, granted, a fine selection for me.

- Obama is asking you to report against other U.S. Citizens
Jees, really? Itmakes good sense to get the details of misinformation, considering its best to fight against the Republicans’ lies by first KNOWING WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS’ HEALTHCARE PLAN. How this is anything close to something like HUAC (House Unamerican Activities Committee), President Bush’s wiretap program, or good old fashioned “tattling on your neighbor” is beyond me. Not to mention there are plenty of times when we DO ask citizens to report their neighbors when something fishy is going on: Domestic abuse, robbery (hello Mr. Gates), suspicious behavior at an airport, and cable theft; hardly the paragons of Gestapo tactics.

–Where oh where is my civility?
it is really hard to claim any kind of moral high ground based on civility when its the conservatives who are disrupting the town halls. Civility is the polar opposite of disruption. If you do not get the inherent contradiction in this position then there is no combination of words or pictures I can synthesize to make my point any clearer.

Bottom line, America needs a good debate on healthcare. That debate is stiffled and destroyed when individuals disrupt the civil process by denying everyone else their need to hear about the healthcare issue. For the above reasons, faydear, you and peggy noonan are just wrong.