Remember those scripted Bush town hall events, where you could get arrested for wearing the wrong t-shirt, and rarely if ever was a questioner permitted to speak without being properly vetted. Indeed, I remember most of them not for the questions they asked, but for the fawning praise and thanks they gave Dubya, as if he was some modern day Joan of Arc sent to cleanse the nation of all evil. Many of them never even asked a question, just thanked him profusely. Well those were staged events, and no “riff-raff” (i.e., anyone who might conceivably be a liberal or Democrat) who might ask an embarrassing question was allowed in for the most part. The few times it did happen, the questioners were respectful, even though their questions demanded answers that Bush was not expecting to have to give.

A far cry from the last few days when Democrats have held traditional town hall events where anyone is allowed in the doors and given a chance to voice their opinions. Unfortunately, Republicans, Tea-baggers, well funded conservative astro turf organizations, health insurers and those pushing a conservative agenda have taken advantage of the open forums which Democratic Congressional members attend, where any and all people are allowed in the doors to ask questions, shout down and intimidate anyone who dares to voice any opinion about health care reform other than their own. It’s a classic tactic of authoritarian political parties — destroy any opportunity for a true democratic dialogue through the use of bullying and implied threats, thus making it impossible for your political opponents to explain and rally support for their positions. Indeed, one Congress member, Democrat Brad Miller, has received a death threat warning him he would be murdered if he attended any town hall events in his district.

Not surprisingly, Paul Krugman has a few choice words for the Right’s open use of goons and thugs to disrupt a legitimate public and democratic dialogue on the issue of health care. This excerpt is from his column today in the NY Times:

There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind.

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

Well, we all know that the current Republican and conservative idea of America has come a far way from the one we all learned about in school. Instead of an ideal of freedom for all and respect for dissenting opinions, we learned over the last eight years that only some opinions matter and should be given deference: those of conservatives. Indeed, how often were those of us who opposed President Bush over the Iraq war called traitors and turncoats, and told we didn’t “support the troops” or the “flag” or “America” itself if we dared to express our profound disagreements over President Bush’s policies, which included the use of unwarranted searches and seizures, indefinite detentions, torture and aggressive war. The very same people who now claim that a duly elected Democratic President and Congress are traitors and America haters, and just plain evil, for seeking to implement their policies.

No, for those on the right, freedom of speech is a one way street: they’re entitled to it and you, that is, anyone who doesn’t share their opinion, is not. These recent attempts to disrupt town hall events by Democratic members of congress is just the latest manifestation of this attitude that only one vision of America is legitimate: the conservative Republican one, and literally anything goes when it comes to combating competing opinions with which they disagree: outright lies (Obama is going to take away your guns and send you your kids to re-education FEMA camps), slander (the birther movement), intimidation (the town hall incidents), calls for armed insurrection (Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachman anyone?), secession (Hello, Governor Perry) and even the outright murder of prominent (Dr. George Tiller) and not so prominent “liberals” (the Knoxville Unitarian Church members).

It is in this atmosphere of ginned up animus and thinly veiled racism that conservatives seek to conduct their political strategy of fear and rage. And there simply is no comparison to what those on the left did when Bush was President and Republicans (and their corrupt corporate lobbyist friends like Jack Abramoff) ruled the Congressional roost:p>

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.

That’s because there was none. Indeed, many “far left wackos” like Markos of Daily Kos specifically disparaged and shunned grassroots antiwar rallies and other protests. They aimed at electoral victories, and often saw any form of openly expressed dissent by the left as a distraction to what they wanted to do. That is not the case with the current crop of Republicans. They revel in the disruption they are causing. They don’t worry about whether their bully boy tactics will be seen as a distraction. Quite the contrary. They are hoping on frightening enough Democrats in Congress to scuttle health care reform legislation now and forever. They are willing to use any trick in the book, no matter how unethical or immoral, to accomplish their goals. And if a few Democratic skulls get broken in the process, so what? Their vision of the “democratic process” doesn’t forgo threats of violence and intimidation to accomplish their ends. It embraces them. And they are using the ignorance and fear of their followers to achieve those ends:

There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.

Now, people who don’t know that Medicare is a government program probably aren’t reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.

And that is the rub. For the very fact that Barack Obama is a black man with a funny name is no doubt the underlying concern of many of those who oppose his agenda for reforming our incredibly costly and inefficient health care system, one that benefits health insurance companies while providing less care, and less good care, than that provided by any other developed country in the world. These are the people who, out of fear and ignorance, have latched onto the simple minded propaganda that Republicans and conservative media sources such as talk radio and Fox News have been propagating for the last two decades. It’s a message that provides no answers for the problems we face, but it does give them one thing: a target at which to aim their anger for all the hardships they’ve endured in their lives. The tragedy is that the conservatives and their industry friends are playing them for suckers. To them its just a (profitable) joke. To the rest of us, far too many of us, it’s becoming a matter of life or death.