Who is to blame for health care town hall violence?

Health care protests have taken a turn for the worse.  AP Photo Nati Harnik

Increasingly the health care town halls are going from heated arguments and shouting to outright fisticuffs.  With the eruption of violence has also begun the blame game.  Both sides of the debate are desperate to be painted as the good, peaceful citizens who was beaten up by the bullies on the other side.  Where does the truth lie?

I am uncomfortable in putting all the blame on one side but very comfortable in putting some blame on extremists from both sides.  From my personal experience I have witnessed members on both sides of the debate engage in behavior which was meant to incite and agitate the other side to violence.  Some of the protesters on both sides have become so emotionally involved that they see only black and white with no shades of gray.  This sort of thinking promotes no effort to understand the other side's argument and leads to general shouting war.  I have also seen more moderate and sensible members use prudence is walking away from a conflict or even pulling members away from a potential fight.

All protesters need to stop listening to extremist argument from their respective side of the debate.  Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh do no help to the cause by comparing health care reformers to the Nazis.  Other conservatives have taken the Nazi analogy cue and adopted as their own.  Such arguments serve to demonize the other side and raise the emotions of people to an unhealthy level that stokes violence.  Democrats are also ill-served by arguments comparing conservative protesters to the "Brownshirts" of the Nazi era.  As I have written before, the Nazis explicitly advocated the superiority of a master race who would rule the world.  The Nazis started a global war and were responsible for systematically killing millions from targeted ethnic groups.  Anything short of those evil acts do not warrant the "Nazi" label.

Both sides have also been guilty of advocating everything leading up to violence including advice to "yell them out" and to "get in their face."  Protesters take this advice and what results in continual escalations of two individuals screaming at each other while their faces are only inches apart.  Do we really expect fights not to erupt when people get face to face with each other screaming at the top of their lungs?

I have not hidden what side I have taken on the health care debate in previous pieces.  Despite my pro-reform stance I do not think the other side is "evil" or "Brownshirts" or even that they intend to let people die without health insurance.  I believe the protesters have good intentions.  I just also believe they are factually wrong about what reform would do.  I would urge reform opponents to give our side the same credit.  We do not want to take over the world with a communist revolution through reform.  We do not want to kill old people or to destroy the economy.  We want to make health care more affordable and available to all.  We can disagree about whether reform does this and have civil arguments without calling each other Nazis or telling the other side they want to kill old people.

In the future, unfortunately, I believe the town halls can be nothing but destructive.  Conservative groups will continue to exercise their democratic rights in showing up to these meetings.  Liberals will continue to respond by sending their own people.  The extremists elements of both sides will yell at each other effectively shutting down every meeting and even leading to more violent episodes at many town halls.  We are missing people like the civil rights leaders of old who taught their protesters how to be civil and non-violent even in the face of agitation and violence.  Sadly, what should be a wonderful exercise of democracy is impossible because of the behavior of some.