Traveling Road Show

The purest form of democratic governing is practiced in a Town Meeting. In use for over 300 years and still today, it has proven to be a valuable means for many Massachusetts taxpayers to voice their opinions and directly effect change in their communities. Here in this ancient American assembly, you can make your voice heard as you and your neighbors decide the course of the government closest to you. Massachusetts Citizen's Guide to Town Meetings

During the August recess, members of Congress have been meeting with constituents. President Obama (D) pretends the meetings are town meetings:

"I know there's been a lot of attention paid to some of the town hall meetings that are going on around the country, especially when tempers flare."

Or did the President slip by conflating 'town meeting' and 'city hall'? 'Town meeting' as in a form of government where people meet locally to voice their opinions and vote directly on what the local government will be doing vs. 'city hall' as in "You can't fight city hall"?

Americans across the country have been vocally expressing their opposition to government healthcare (Youtube example). For daring to disagree, or for having the "audacity of hope" that they could actually get a Senator or Congressman to listen, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) "accused the protesters of trying to 'sabotage' the democratic process."

Nancy Pelosi (D) doesn't like listening to taxpayers disagree about government healthcare either. She thinks it is "un-American." In an OpEd piece, "'Un-American' attacks can't derail health care debate," written with House majority leader Steny Hoyer (D), they write:

"However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue."

Pelosi and Hoyer explain that they will allow taxpayers to speak, but that the members of Congress are there to elucidate, not contemplate. Their minds are made up:

"This month, despite the disruptions, members of Congress will listen to their constituents back home and explain reform legislation. We are confident that our principles of affordable, quality health care will stand up to any and all critics."

So Americans who not only oppose a government plan, but who actually dare to speak their disagreement, are to be contemptuously thought of as saboteurs, disrupters, and un-American, according to Reid and Pelosi.

On August 14, 2009, an ABC News article goes even farther as it tried to preempt the debate, changing it to a battle of racists and hate groups opposing the forces of good:

"Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges."

Perhaps if the traveling road shows were real town meetings where citizens actually had a say in the matter, things might be less antagonistic. Henry David Thoreau, speaking at an Anti-Slavery Celebration in Framingham, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1854 saw the value to be had in town meetings where local people governed themselves:

"When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States."

Instead today, citizens must swallow what they're fed or be criticized for having an independent opinion and daring to question their masters.

Similar frustration over powerlessness in America's past resulted in revolts in the 1770s and again a decade later in the 1780s. Both led to "real change" in government.

Tar and feathers anyone?