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Libelous Left Shows
True Colors during Wisconsin Protests
Townhall Magazine...
By Mary Katharine Ham
Threats. Violence. Racism. Extremist rhetoric. Liberal activists are
doing exactly what the Left and the media falsely accused the tea
partiers of doing.
A child’s handwritten sign that reads “We hate Scott Wacre” is seen
taped to a wall in the rotunda during protests against budget cuts
proposed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, R, at the state Capitol in
Madison. The “new tone” the Left has been demanding from conservatives
was nowhere to be seen during the union protests. (Reuters/ Darren
Hauck)
Remember the days, in August of 2009, when conservatives merely raising
their voices at health care town halls portended the sure destruction
of the Republic? There were large numbers of conservatives gathering
peacefully (and, yes, sometimes angrily) to express their discontent
with Obama’s health care law. The media decided these protests were
threatening and dangerous on their face.
The mere gathering together of conservatives critical of the president
caused Chris Matthews to sputter and Rachel Maddow to whine about the
closed-minded, racist and surely violent crowds that would be the
undoing of the Union. The only problem was there wasn’t much violence
to speak of.
During the most heated month of the health care uprising, when more
than 500 town halls took place over one month across the country, there
were exactly 10 instances of documented violence. Most of them were
confined to the ripping of signs and minor tussles (though there were a
handful of punches thrown), and seven of 10 incidents were perpetrated
by ObamaCare supporters on protesters, according to photos, police
reports and witnesses.
Nonetheless, the media kept up its “Climate of Hate” narrative through
2010, tsk-tsking over the tone of protest posters, often erroneously
blaming tea partiers for Lyndon Larouche activists’ Hitler signs and
generally making a giant, scary deal out of the least errant word from
any right-leaning protester in any place at any time.
There was evidence in 2009 that the stringent requirements for polite
protest were not going to apply to everyone. Concurrent with the health
care protests that made the media to tremble with their ferocity, the
international community held the G20 gathering in Pittsburgh. There, a
collection of liberal and anarchist protesters did approximately
$50,000 of damage to local businesses, and 190 of them were arrested
for blocking traffic and rolling trash bins and throwing rocks at
police.
The CBS headline for that story? “Police fire gas on G20 protesters.”
By 2011, the “violent right-wingers” narrative took its most
irresponsible turn yet and blamed Sarah Palin’s political speech for
the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz.
Giffords is recovering, praise God, after being shot in the head by a
mentally ill man who had been fixated on her since at least 2007. To
this day, there is no evidence that he was motivated by anyone’s
political rhetoric, martial words or imagery. The 28-page federal
indictment of Jared Lee Loughner does not mention Palin’s now-infamous
crosshairs map as a cause of the incident because it wasn’t.
Nonetheless, the country was called by all of national media to a time
of soul-searching about our “tone.” There should be a new tone, they
said, and President Barack Obama echoed that in his Tucson speech
saying our rhetoric should “honor” those who had been killed while
engaging in our democratic process in that Safeway parking lot.
Several right-leaning pundits joined the call to civility, giving
credence to the idea that rhetoric and Loughner’s crime were somehow
connected -- among them David Frum, Joe Scarborough and Jeb Bush.
But the new tone didn’t last long. After all, it could last only until
it was necessary for liberals to protest again, at which point all the
rules imposed on conservative activists would be swiftly jettisoned in
favor of celebrating the “passion” of those who carry Hitler signs for
“justice.”
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