Democracy is Inclusive: Do Health Reform Opponents Hate Democracy?

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12 August 2009 :: Webb Tisch

It is a mystery to many people why certain political fringe elements are so violently enraged by the idea of extending healthcare coverage to all Americans. Some individuals have made racist and degrading remarks about Pres. Obama and his administration; some suggest that there is “evil” behind efforts to expand healthcare coverage to those who don’t have it; some say things like “then there’s the illegals, they shouldn’t even be here!” shouting in anger.

Some Republican lawmakers have openly asserted that people who don’t have coverage are probably guilty of something that means they “don’t deserve any”, in part because these ideologues base all such claims on the idea that “decent” people pay for things through private business (though 47% of the nation is covered through government-run plans).

Democracy —”government of the people, by the people and for the people”— is inclusive of all people, even allowing for differences of ideology and agenda. So the question we need to start asking is: do these opponents of comprehensive healthcare reform legislation hate democracy? Is that why the idea of expanding coverage to people they do not imagine are in any way like themselves provokes such apocalyptic ire and vitriol?

Or: is there something more subtle taking place? Maybe it’s the disinformation campaign, which is centered around putting into people’s minds ideas that are genuinely odious and contrary to the principles of open democracy. Maybe it’s the people behind that disinformation campaign who are opposed to open democracy, opposed to the rights of the people, not only to decide what their government does but to take control of their own destiny.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have called the mob-scenes orchestrated to disrupt explanatory town hall meetings and public debates about healthcare reform “unamerican”, prompting conservatives to define democracy as “rooted in dissent and protest”, something they not only advocated against just a few years ago, but openly sought to detain people for, going as far as to argue before the Supreme Court that opponents of the president could be held without charge as “enemy combatants”, based on nothing other than the president’s own determinations.

In another healthcare town hall meeting, the president was subjected to an angry woman screaming at him: “No socialized medicine! And keep your hands off my Medicare!” She wants socialized medicine for herself, subsidized by everyone else and taken for granted as a natural fact of life, but she wants to deny everyone else in the country the same privilege. Is she confused? Or is she easily given to hatred of her fellow human beings?

There is mass confusion at work, clearly. There are probably only a few people who have actually read the legislation that is being treated with such hostility by these groups opposed to reform. The confusion is made evident by the fact that some of the people expressing hatred of the president or the Congress and portraying proposed healthcare reforms as the “death” of American democracy or the betrayal of “Constitutional values”, would actually be helped significantly in a direct and personal way by the reforms.

Are people really so blinded by partisan rancor, blind-faith ideological bias or by fear and dislike of their fellow citizens that they are unable to see that the reforms as currently proposed would actually work to their own benefit? Apparently, yes. When such a specific contradiction arises, it is necessary to ask: do these people hate democracy as such? are they incapable of participating in an open debate on actual issues that will affect real people?

Democracy is inclusive of differing views, differing interests, differing minorities. Even the most uninformed, irresponsible, incapable-of-reasoning radical fringe groups have a voice in American democracy, because freedom of speech is paramount to all other civic values. What is instrumental in this perversion of free speech enacted by radicals pushing to kill healthcare reform, however, is that they are spreading overt lies, defaming public figures, in some cases threatening public figures, and falsely claiming that reform is an attempt to erase American democracy from history.

To claim that legislation designed to give more choice to more people, to curb the power of interested healthcare profiteers or to prevent innocents from being sent to their deaths by for-profit firms that deny them the right to treatment, is somehow designed to “destroy the Constitution” or to institute a “Soviet-style” totalitarian regime, is to lie with the specific purpose of spreading hate and confusion.

That some or most of these people are honestly reacting to information they have heard which is flawed or totally fabricated, that they may be confused by a disinformation campaign, is not an excuse for their hate-filled rhetoric or their spreading of lies. They can read the entire House bill at OpenCongress.org; they can find out for themselves that there is no “death panel”, that there is no mandate to buy a government plan, that there is no fine for staying with their own insurer.

That they would rather express hate and spread lies than research the truth for themselves is testament to their own deeply flawed character and their own lack of devotion to the democratic, Constitutional process of government. That a bill that makes no mention of undocumented immigrants is being used to spread fear and hate of “illegal aliens” is a sign of how deeply some people want to spread fear and hate of illegal aliens.

It is 100% absolutely incumbent upon every citizen to take an interest in their democracy deep enough to do their own research. Reading the Club for Growth’s abstract, theoretical position on healthcare reform, or treating bullet points from the Republican National Committee as if they were the equivalent of reading the bill, is to surrender one’s power as a citizen and sign over one’s civic consciousness to the interests of those groups. It is not to do research; it is not to take a stand.