Obviously, it would require thousands of man hours to read the thousands of pages of the bills presented in the House of Representatives. To handle this situation representatives employ office staff whose job it is to read all of the bills. Staffers read them, then provide the representative with a condensed report—an executive summary, if you will. It is the only way that the job can be done.

The urgency felt by so many congressmen during the last session arose from their sense that if the bill was not voted on quickly, organized groups opposing the bill would have time to apply political pressure to defeat the bill. This is exactly what the “tea-baggers” have been attempting to do through a campaign of disinformation.

The sad fact is that most citizens do not have the time required to read enormous bills such as HR 3200. Neither do they have staff people to read the legislation for them. They must form an opinion and belief about the legislation from what they hear about it. Consequently, many of them believe the disinformation spread by the teabaggers.

I have read the bill. Every word of it (HR 3200). All 1000+ pages. None of the frightening things said about that bill are true. No death panel, no rationed care, no enslavement of doctors, government bureaucrats are not poised to pull the plug on grandma just to save a few bucks. All of those things are make believe. They are made up just to frighten folks, and sadly they often do just that.

The point of my article was twofold:

(1) To call attention to the fact that over the past several days numerous town hall meetings around the country have been hijacked by loud, vulgar and threatening crowds of people who would like us to believe that they are simply citizens concerned about health care reform. These meetings were, for the most part, organized by local civic organizations for the purpose of allowing their membership and members of the general public to hear from their elected representatives about the various health care reform proposals under consideration in Congress and to ask questions about such legislation. Because the organizers, elected officials and the audience who came to hear their representatives were all drowned out by crowds of shouting agitators, and in some cases subjected to threats of physical violence, the meetings were, of necessity, stopped. As as result of some of these “takeovers,” law enforcement officers had to intervene to restore order and protect public safety. Those who came to hear their representatives and voice their own concerns in a civil and productive way were denied all opportunity to do so.

Bad behavior, Robin, is bad behavior. It isn’t an expression of conservatism, it’s just bad behavior. It’s rude, it’s offensive, it can be dangerous in a public forum, and it does nothing to advance the debate about health care reform. It is the behavior of spoiled children and bullies. Conservatism doesn’t regard such behavior as admirable or virtuous, and our mothers certainly would not approve of it!

(2) To call attention to the disingenuous and bombastic rhetoric to which some public figures have dishonestly turned in order to win people over to their side in the current debate. More, particularly, the article focuses on recent statements of Sarah Palin in which she refers to a “death panel”, representing that “death panels” will be created by the President upon passage of the proposed legislation. The legislation, of course, creates no such thing, and you and I have enough sense to know that. On the other hand, there is more than a small number of impressionable people who do not know that.

Mrs. Palin, and others, use such scary language for the express purpose of frightening those impressionable people, causing them to believe something that a reasonable person knows isn’t true.

As I’m sure you know, I strongly support health care reform. Further, I strongly support HR 3200. I have little patience or respect for those who, through selfishness and greed, oppose health care reform solely because they are unwilling to contribute anything of their resources to the health care needs of their fellow citizens. On the other hand, I recognize that there are numerous criticisms which may be legitimately made to any particular bill. We can debate those issues—unless, of course, we are shouted down and driven away from the debate by those unruly mobs of fake conservatives and loudmouth agitators.