FreedomWorks Against Democracy

FreedomWorks is a conservative non-profit organization that recruits activists to agitate for less government, lower taxes and “more freedom”, according to its website.  Led by former House Majority Leader turned lobbyist Republican Dick Armey, whose firm represents major pharmaceutical companies, FreedomWorks is responsible for recruiting the wild-eyed agitators who have prevented the exchange of information and ideas at numerous town hall meetings across the country on health care reform. The crazed and confused riffraff have become increasingly belligerent in approach like the French revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille.  Highly susceptible to propaganda from rabble rousing talk show hosts, the angry mob, who undoubtedly campaigned fiercely against President Obama, and who worship at the alter of Fox news, have more on their mind than defeating health care reform; they hope to bring President Obama down with it.  I would not be the least bit surprised if a significant number of these anti-democratic Jacobin rebels also identified themselves as  “birthers” who refuse to accept the legitimacy of the Obama Presidency, on the grounds that he is not an American citizen, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Far from creating more freedoms, the mob has been working to reduce them by interfering with our constitutional rights as citizens to free speech and peaceful assembly.

Why do so many fear health care reform?  Who stands to benefit most if there is no reform?  Certainly not those of you who can’t afford health care, or the many millions whose premiums continue to rise year after year while the drug companies Dick Armey’s firm represents continue to profit.   The “public option”  is nothing to fear and it will not be the only option.  Keep your own plan if you want.  Buy into the public plan if you don’t have insurance at all.  What’s so awful about that?  And don’t forget that medicare is a government run program and it works.  Would you like to eliminate that?  If you are on it, I doubt you would.

Down with the angry mobs.  Let the democratic process decide the fate of health care reform.  Democracy requires dissent, but dissent that is strong, passionate and respectful, not disruptive; peaceful, not violent.   The days of Robespierre are long gone.  Reform, not revolution.