Bill Clinton looking back at the rhetorical climate of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to compare and contrast with 2010 Tea Parties.
Interesting but seemingly rare example of someone on the left explicitly countering RW rhetoric with a direct argument rather than mockery or silence.
In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Clinton warned of the affect that angry political rhetoric might have on antigovernment radicals like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; he pointed to Rep. Michele Bachmann calling the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress "the gangster government" at a tax day Tea Party rally on Thursday.
"They are not gangsters," Clinton told the newspaper. "They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do."
Clinton said that demonizing the government with incendiary language can have effects beyond just rallying a crowd.
I have trouble seeing the
Tea Party as a social movement as long as there are so many
anti-government radicals associated with it. Defining our democratically elected government as anti-American or making a false analogy with Britain''s King George is damaging our ability to find any common ground. To limit "American" to those on the right - or to identify the right in anti-thesis to the "un-American" left = is to spur a
fanatical patriotism for many
radical conservatives who may ultimately
choose to take violent action against this supposedly "un-American" and uber-liberal government.
There is perhaps a fine rhetorical line between advocacy for better ideas and conditions to help groups and the kind of propaganda that merely seeks to demonize and destroy groups. I think as long as the Tea Party crafts and performs a political identity from what they are against rather than what they are for, and as long as their anti-thetical demon is this administration and government, then citizens will have to be extra alert to the possibility of
hyperbolic rhetoric gone too far awry - and be prepared to speak more directly and firmly in return about common grounds and "American" values in the United States.
There can be no mere difference of opinion on this issue it seems to me. To turn Americans against one another by demarcating an "us" and a "them" and to refuse to share our common grounds as Americans is to open ourselves to civil warfare - be it verbally punishing or
physically violent.
I think that rhetorical state of affairs in the United States today is unacceptable in light of our history and traditions - and the efforts of the Founding Fathers to provide us all with a SHARED democratic republic - and an enduring plan of harmony and unity - liberty and responsibility - reason and real debate. And any useful debate on the policies and future of the United States must begin at least with the common ground and understanding that we are ALL Americans. As such we have a right and a responsibility to pay attention to our government, but to portray the democratically elected government as un-American is outside the frame of useful or rational debate. It hurts us all.
