What Country Is This?

This past weekend, history was made with the passage of the Health Care Reform bill which had been making the rounds in Congress for months now. While not everyone is too thrilled with the passage of the bill for various reasons, it's the reaction in some parts of the nation that has me a bit confused and concerned about the state of my nation. Firstly, while I agree that everyone has the right to protest the actions of their government, I think there's a way to go about doing it. The so-called Tea Party Movement which has been gaining steam since the election of President Obama seems to be at the forefront of the movement afoot to cause as much trouble and raise as much awareness as it thinks it can without much thought given to how it goes about getting the message out.

All weekend there were news reports about the protests and counter-protests in DC regarding the passage of the bill and it was with some surprise that I awoke Monday to hear that the bill had passed, but what surprised me even more were the reports coming in that members of Congress (largely Democrats since no Republican voted for the bill) were being heckled and harassed to the point of threat. Reports started coming in about African-American congressional leaders being called racist names or being jeered about their sexual orientation. Tea Party sites were listing the home addresses of Congressional members who had voted in favor of the Health Care Reform Bill. Virginia Representative Tom Perriello's brother reported to the authorities that someone had come to his Charlottesville home and cut the line to the propane gas grill in his backyard. Now some might argue that this isn't proof that someone is attempting to sabotage or attack his family but it's a bit hard to argue against it when you hear that the address to the house was given out on a Tea Party website encouraging Tea Party followers to go to his house and "express their thanks for his vote".

Now I am all for freedom of speech and freedom of expression but I didn't know that these freedoms also included threatening others and insulting them in public like this. Sure we've had leaders we didn't like but I can't recall a time when there was this much anti-government sentiment being spewed and I can't help but feel that a lot of it not only has to do with what actions the government is taking but also due to the race of the current President. Now I'm sure many people won't agree with my saying that but it's the truth. The automatic assumption that many people make is that whatever decisions that Obama or the government is making is solely motivated by the desire to make the government take control of the country thus promoting socialism. They point to things like the bank bailouts or automotive industry bailouts as prime examples but wasn't this one of the last things that President Bush did before leaving office? If it was acceptable then why do these bitter members of American society now object?

I'm not blindly supporting or standing against the President based solely on his race or his attempts at improving the state of the nation but what I try to do is to educate myself on what these new bills or efforts by the government really mean. For Republicans to stand up in Congress and accuse fellow Congressional leaders of being "baby killers" (despite attempting to argue that they were talking about the bill rather than the actually congressional leader) is really repulsive to me. It seems that many leaders from the GOP are reverting to becoming children and attempting to spread lies and falsehoods in an effort to garner favor with an increasingly radical support base. I'm sure if similar actions had been taken against the Bush Administration in their run up to the war, protesters would have been lynched and hung in order to show that if you aren't with the country then you're against it. So then I ask again... what country is this because it certainly isn't the America I have grown up in.