DISSENT or DESCENT

Well, hallelujah...a reason that old age is our friend. We remember things (usually).

I can recall Bill and Hillary in the old days. They were in the streets as hippie activists.

And how about our current President? Barack Obama's resume was full of words like "community activist" and "million man march". So perhaps hitting the streets to express participation in our republic is not such a frightening thing. That's what the Tea Party Movement is doing...

Yet the ex-President outrageously uses "tea party movement" and "Timothy McVeigh" in the same talk he gave yesterday down in Florida. Comparing peaceful dissent to McVeigh? Think back to what motivated McVeigh. Was it words or actions? Wiki records:

"McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use a necessity defense, but they ended up not doing so,[52] because they would have had to prove that McVeigh was in "imminent danger" from the government. (McVeigh himself argued that "imminent" did not necessarily mean "immediate.") They would have argued that his bombing of the Murrah building was a justifiable response to what McVeigh believed were the crimes of the U.S. government at Waco, Texas. The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidian members."

Please do not misunderstand. McVeigh's actions were indefensible. But to insinuate a link between tea parties/talk radio and a deranged act, ex-President Clinton steps over the fact that McVeigh was responding to Janet Reno (HIS Atty General) sending tanks into a compound that resulted in many deaths.

Additionally, it's just a big bite to swallow when ex-President Clinton points that finger in our faces to caution Americans about domestic terrorists when he was president when we were bombed at the first World Trade Center, the Cole, the Khobar Towers, the African Embassy, and the Saudi Arabian Embassy. How did HE respond to REAL al Qaeda terrorism?

But we can cut the former President slack when he calls for measured words. Everyone should be held accountable for the tone of their words. Back when Hillary was running against President Obama, Clinton called Barack Obama a "Chicago thug". Well, that was just jive campaign talk. But as Bill Clinton said, words are provocative and do incite. Some examples that come to mind are BHO's friends...Bill Ayers (re the Pentagon bombing..."sorry we didn't do more"), and Jeremiah Wright ("gdamn American"). Those ARE pretty provocative words.

Tea party demonstrators are peacefully meeting to speak for less government. If the tea party movement seems angry, it is because they are either totally ignored or mocked by our leader. The President has control over that response. In the last Pew Research Center's poll, it recorded that 80% of Americans do not trust Washington and have little faith that it can solve America's ills.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jd_jiGbsExSJ0dfp1Na1YjnRJsfgD9F608UG0

I heard a man today say some powerful words. He cited the movie "Braveheart", when William Wallace stood at the table to plead with the lords. Wallace said "if you will just LEAD us, we will follow".

I believe that the reason Bill Clinton and President Obama have such a terror about the tea parties...is that they know the tea parties capture the country's longing to follow a leader who would know the way back to our founding.