The reaction of progressives to the health-care protests that are taking place around this country is surprising in one sense but not in another. It is surprising in that it is bound to backfire—which calls the intelligence of progressives into question. Americans do not take kindly to being abused when all they are doing is exercising their right to speak. Elected representatives serve us; we do not serve them. Town-hall meetings are designed to bring representatives and citizens together, so that the latter can express their views and values. Calling them terrorists, Nazis, racists, and mobsters, or implying that they are shills of the health-insurance industry, is simply stupid. It will antagonize people and make them more likely, not less likely, to vote during the midterm elections of 2010.
The reaction of progressives to the protests is not surprising in another sense. If you've been paying attention for the past 20 years or so, since Robert Bork was destroyed by lies and innuendos, you know that progressives will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. Anyone who stands in their way is to be destroyed. There are no opponents in the eyes of progressives; there are only enemies. Either you're with them or you're against them, and if you're against them, then there are no limits to what may be done to you. Ordinary Americans who haven't paid much attention to politics are learning about progressivism. It is vile and detestable. I have personally been victimized by its exponents, as many of you know. My crime is to have deviated from progressive orthodoxy. I am a heretic, an outlaw, a traitor, an apostate. That I am well educated, knowledgeable, and articulate merely compounds the heresy.
Keep it up, progressives. You are proving that you cannot be entrusted with this country. When you are deprived of power by those who gave it to you, it may be a generation or more before you get it back.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 