ATLANTA— ABCNews is reporting that the government is increasingly concerned about the threat of fringe, right-wing extremist groups using the recent debates over health care and the broader debate over the role of government in our lives to attract members and potentially advocate for the assassination of the Barack Obama. Evidently, there has been a sharp increase in such activity in recent weeks.
This creates a dangerous new twist to the ongoing healthcare debate. Clearly, such elements are on the extreme fringe of American society and we certainly reject that line of thinking here. While we significantly disagree from a political standpoint on just about every one of Mr. Obama’s policy initiatives, we nonetheless acknowledge the excitement of his election as our first African-American president and we too hoped that this is a sign of the progress of race relations in this country.
Our goal on this site is to debate the issues and only the issues. As an example, we think healthcare in this country is broken and Barack Obama has a wonderful opportunity to fix it, particularly with so much of the healthcare industry on-board with the idea of reform. It is the specifics of Barack Obama’s proposals, including his historical advocacy for single payer healthcare, that we staunchly oppose. We fear the public option is the first step in this direction. We believe that such an option is suspect from a constitutional standpoint and will be devestating to our nation’s finances.
We believe there are better options to reduce health care costs from the bottom up, including allowing cross-border competition among health insurers among the states, instituting tort reform to place responsible limits on malpractice liabilities, and emphasizing the continued emergence of basic care providers that by-pass insurance companies and give care directly to the individuals like these guys in Seattle.
All the same, the emergence of racist groups that are using this debate to increase membership and threaten Mr. Obama personally on the basis of his color is an awful development. It is a double-edged sword. The overwhelming majority of Americans reject these types. But the mere fact that these types exist and are using the healthcare protests to fuel the flames of their bigotrous lunacy gives cover to extreme-wing liberals who prefer to paint all healthcare protesters with this broad brush of Nazi, racist, fringe groups that are out-of-touch with the mainstream.
This healthcare debate is passionate and divisive. It is singularly important to the fiscal health of our nation- and to our ongoing debates over the proper role of government in our lives. Unfortunately, it may be fueling anti-Obama racism in some of the far reaches of the American political spectrum.
We support the efforts of law enforcement agencies to track down and disrupt these fringe racist groups and we hope no lasting harm is done by any of them. But we also hope extreme-wing liberals do not use their threats as cover to paint all conservatives, Republicans and independents who oppose the bills before Congress as being racists and bigots themselves.
Such opportunism by the political left to try and turn the tide of political opinion back in favor of this train-wreck of a healthcare proposal would truly be a shame.
TennesseePaul
Stephen VanNuys
Brooklyn Daniel
The Freedom Thinker
I agree with you. Unfortunately any opposition to Obama, or disdain for his policies, or critique of his person is being called racism. This poisons the well of politics and infuriates people.
Agreed, BC. I think we’ve seen that play out since well before the election. I remember when he was tanking briefly back in August/September of last year, people began running all these stories about how America was quietly racist and that was the only reason people weren’t supportive of Obama.
True healing will come when people recognize we can openly disagree with the policy initiatives of someone of another race without any form of clandestine racism playing a role.