The hot and miserable August weather has moved indoors in many cities and towns across our land.  Moved indoors and taken the form of recriminating rhetoric as neighbors and ideologies square off in shout fests billed as informational town hall meetings about changes to healthcare coverage and care.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) enjoys using the term “evil mongers’ to describe American citizens expressing their anxieties and frustrations, many times with verbal vigor and abuse, over healthcare proposals they fear will adversely affect their lives and the lives of their children and of their parents.

Reid, along with many supporters of the various healthcare bills floating around Capitol Hill, says Republican special interest groups have organized the protests.  That is the case to some degree.  But to say individual Americans who cut across generational, social, and economic lines cannot think for themselves and cannot decide on their own to attend these meetings is simply absurd and borders on the disingenuous.

These town hall demonstrators, many of them children of the Summer of Love, have taken a page out of the liberal playbook to create our current Summer of Dissonance.  Obstructive behavior to silence opposing views is not uncommon, particularly on college campuses, and the targets are usually conservative speakers. 

In October 2006, someone pulled a fire alarm at Georgetown University to stop a speech by Minuteman co-founder Chris Simcox.  A few weeks later, Columbia University students stormed a stage where Jim Gilchrist, the other Minuteman co-founder, was speaking. 

In October 2007, members of Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, among others, disrupted a lecture by David Horowitz at Emory University, a common occurrence for Horowitz.

In April 2008, dozens of lesbians at Smith College climbed through windows and stormed the podium to stop a speech by Ryan Sorba, author of the “The Born Gay Hoax.”

And last April, University of North Carolina police arrested six people who disrupted a speech by Virgil Goode, a former congressman from Virginia, who was speaking against affirmative action and illegal immigration.  A week earlier, UNC police used pepper spray on students who disrupted a speech by Tom Tancredo, a former congressman from Colorado, who was talking about his opposition to in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants.

Back when I handled communications for a university president, I crafted the school’s position regarding controversial speech on campus.  The result was a statement that said universities, by their very nature, are forums for the free expression, discussion, and debate of all views, including those that may be unpopular or even repugnant to some members of the university community or to the public.  I went on to point out that we should encourage these exchanges as long as they remain within the boundaries of the law, which is an idea essential to a thriving and open democracy and, if followed, would temper today’s tempestuous town hall meetings.

I have come to believe over the years that some people on the left of the political spectrum interpret the First Amendment to mean this:  “You can say what you like as long as I like what you say.” This is why they meet challenges to their political agenda with hateful words and ham-handed techniques.  These attempts to stifle questions and concerns end up frustrating citizens not used to civil disobedience and unruly demonstrations.

They learn fast, however, these so-called special-interest puppets and evil mongers.  They learn fast and respond to attempted censorship with shouts and jeers, chants and slogans.  They quickly become that which they do not like and do not respect.

And this why we need Atticus Finch, the quiet and reasoning father in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”.  We need to sit on the porch and listen to Atticus explain how we confuse issues and drown discourse with raised voices and angry fists.

He would begin by telling us to hold our heads high and keep our fists down.  “No matter what anyone says to you, don’t let ‘em get your goat,” he would say, adding, “Try fighting with your head for a change.”

Atticus would then raise his chin and look out over those assembled around his porch, the very ones who had been hurling invectives at each other and getting no closer to resolving the issues. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” he would say, “until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Finally, he would place his hands on his knees, slowly stand, then look down upon the upturned faces.  He would watch the thoughtful in the crowd nod their heads and walk away into the night.  Then he would imperceptibly shake his head as he looked at the remaining angry faces, and, in a quiet voice, almost as if speaking to himself, he would say, “I think I’m beginning to understand something.  I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time.”

John David Powell