I was horrified to learn today that some in Congress have been at the receiving end of death threats. Naturally I was horrified that this happened at all, but a large part of my horror was that those extremists who are threatening to use actual violence will be used to discredit the entire bulk of patriotic, law abiding citizens who are determined to fight this bill.
We have available to us many different avenues of protest as Americans, the first of which is the voting booth and equally powerful, the written word. It is there that this revolution must take place and no where else. It must be a culture war of ideas and of words. It cannot be of any real violence or things will become unthinkably worse.
There are extremists in any party, who attach themselves to any movement. But those extremists should never be allowed to define the group or to carry any actual sway.
The passage of the bill violated the traditions of our representative government and as such can be, I feel, identified as tyranny. The outrage and the feeling of frustration is real and to be expected. But as Americans, we are not helpless or forced into violent avenues that other nations may find themselves in. We have the ability, in November, to peaceably vote those Congressmen out of power and to vote in those who will actually respect the will of their constituents.
I have no doubt that this is exactly what will happen and that Americans, left, right and center, will turn their backs on those that speak of violence and give them no place. We will, I'm sure, acquit ourselves with honor this fall.
Along with that, I read something on RealClearPolitics this afternoon:
"...to paraphrase (and with the deepest apologies to) Winston Churchill on the occasion of the fall of France in June 1940:
What House Minority Leader John A. Boehner has called the Battle of Capitol Hill is over. I expect that the Battle of the Electorate is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of a nonsocialist America. Upon it depends our own American way of life and the long continuity of our institutions and our history. The whole fury and might of the media and the Democratic Party must very soon be trained on the electorate.
If they can stand up to the coming propaganda, America may be free, and the life of the wider free world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if the voters succumb to those seven months of blandishments and deceptions, then free America -- including all that we have known and cared for -- will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let the public therefore brace itself to its duties, and so concentrate its mind on the true facts, that if the American spirit of freedom and dignity last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was the American voters' finest hour."
As I said, apologies to Winston Churchill for borrowing and abusing his immortal words on the fall of France and the beginning of the Battle of Britain.
And yet, for us, now and here is where we must battle for our freedom. Not, pray God, with bullets, but with words and ideas."
-Sunday's Socialist Triumph, by Tony Blankley
Darn right, Mr. Blankley... and Mr. Churchill, in a manner of speaking.
