Please remember the antecedents to the current turmoil, and also the imbalance in the power relationships. Furthermore, if you’re going to let the behavior of people at a town hall meeting determine your support of a bill divorced from content, then you are just looking for excuses to anesthetize your powers of reason

1) Neither the President nor Congress presented a coherent bill that they opened up for discussion this spring. Instead, they have been all over the board promising every interest group to fulfill their demands, even though logically satisfying them all is impossible without a massive increase in spending in the order of trillions – or massive tax increases. We’ve run out of “someone else” to pay.

2) When challenged, the answer is that there is no definite bill and that therefore criticism is unfounded. But once they would construct a bill, then they would pass it without any discussion or deliberation, as happened with the stimulus bill, the budget, and Cap and Trade (House) – and (sadly) with TARP under the Bush administration. Repeating a precedent doesn’t make it right.

3) Again, instead of sponsoring townhall meetings the spring and public hearing to compose a bill for debate in the fall, instead the President and Democratic leadership pulled all possible stops to pass a bill before the August recess. It thus is chutzpah to hear complaints about the lack of civil public discussion by the very agents who did their hardest to preempt public debate.

4) That is, the effort of the administration and Congress was to preempt public debate by making the health bill a fait accompli before they were to face their constituents.

5) And it is undeniable that the leadership has made every effort to poison the well by immediately and continually escalating ad hominemattacks upon critics, as RedState here has documented, while denying any validity to opponents’ arguments.

You effort to create an equivalency between some rowdy members of the public and the leadership of this country who have almost total control of Congress falls apart – with power comes responsibility to not use that power to suppress dissent. Especially with the media platform that they are provided. And especially given the source of the existing level of violence, and the 180-degree reversal of the standards of decorum.

So if you want to base your position on process, take a look at the whole picture. Take a look at who is systematically been trying to suppress debate and speech.

Will your stand with those who imperfectly at times are trying to speak truth to power, or will you stand will power as they roll over dissent with steam rollers?

And what “heath care” do you want to get passed anyway – and do you really expect to be heard over the hecklers vetos of Big Pharma, Big Insurance, AMA, AARP, Hospital adminstration, Big Unions – all of whom are cutting deals to try to enlarge their piece of the pie.

Follow the money – and it sure isn’t coming from those citizens who are protesting at the town halls. What else do they have than their voices?