On a recent trip to southern Iowa I enjoyed reading an editorial in the Albia-Union Republican newspaper. As I cannot locate the editorial on line I have decided to share the editorial by Dave Paxton in his August 13 Out On A Limb column.

Boswell comes off looking like a coward

“I like Leonard Boswell. He’s always been a kind and gentle politician, strongly supporting rural issues and viewing Washington, D.C. as most Iowans would view it – moderately and in a relative bi-partisian manner. His visit last Saturday to the community’s salute to patriotism, presenting Bob Smith his medals and smoozing with the crowd was Boswell at his best.

So it seems bizarre to use the word “coward” in describing anything this Vietnam combat helicopter pilot/farmer would do. But there is almost no other explanation for Congressman Boswell’s behavior toward the people of the Third Congressional District – unless age and ill health are determining his behavior.

After promising to vote against what more and more people are understanding to be a disastrous “cap and trade” bill, he buckled to pressure from radical left-winger Nancy Pelosi and cast a vote to essentially destroy economic prosperity in rural America by eliminating clean coal energy.

It was clear then that he had not read the bill. He then voted for Barrack Obama’s national health care take-over – which in and of itself is not a problem – until it comes time to explain himself.

And Boswell refuses to explain himself. Somehow he has adopted the strident urban left’s belief that all town hall meetings this August congressional recess are being dictated by some vast Republican/monster insurance company conspiracy to disrupt the national health care process. For the Lucas countians who attended a town hall in Chariton last Friday, that belief would have come as quite a shock. Not wanting to talk about cap and trade and health care, Boswell shoved three plants of his own from the Small Business Administration to blather on about something most of the locals had no interest in while he stood silently in the back of the room, made inaccessible by staffers.

Something is wrong. Either Boswell has become a sell-out to the Pelosi radicals of the Democrat party or he simply no longer reads or understands the bills to which he lends his signature.

If he is intimidated by the thought of the Republican operatives showing up at his town hall meetings, so what? One could easily argue that the modern Democrat party was created from the not-so-peaceful protests of the Vietnam War. Democrats have been raising hell at public meetings since the dawn of the labor movement. President Obama has as a close advisor a man in William Ayers who blew up a federal building in protest. Cindy Shehan (a one-time Democrat radical, now just as mad at Obama) and her band of anti-Iraq protestors, hounded President Bush from Washington, D.C. to Crawford, Texas. She was applauded by Pelosi and others who despised the war policies of President Bush.

A party that once embraced noisy gatherings and outright violent protest as a First Amendment right is now calling it “un-American.” It is utter nonsense.

I’m not advocating ill behavior, or mob rule or shouting people down. Civil discourse is the best way to learn and understand.

But average, ordinary lunch bucket Americans are demanding answers about a plan to dismantle the health care system and have the government take over an enormous portion of the U.S. economy. They are worried that cap and trade legislation will drive energy cost to unaffordable heights while handing China and India millions of U.S. jobs. A whole lot of Americans aren’t any more comfortable with the way President Obama is fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than they were with George W. Bush.

Boswell knows that people in these Third District town hall meetings aren’t Republican or big insurance company plants. He is simply unprepared or afraid to defend his own and his party’s decision making.

A LITTLE HISTORY, PLEASE.

Since when in the history of the United States have we demanded people exercising their freedom of speech to do it in a polite way?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Harry Reid and others gasping at the noisy, impolite outbursts at town hall meetings throughout the country, calling it “un-American” to protest in this way, are ignorant of American history and the history of their own party.

Americans have been rioting in one form or another to get their points across from the time the country was founded. Methodists and other anti-slavery zealots did all sorts of mischief in the 1840’s and 50’s. New York City melted down during the draft riots of the Civil War. The Grange was formed up in the latter part of the 19th century as farmers became sick of broken promises from Washington, D.C. Their protests were often violent and uncivil.

The American Legion was formed after WWI following nasty protests in Washington, D.C over the treatment of veterans. The Great Depression brought on a socialist fervor never before seen in the United States and as unions attempted to gain power, violent demonstrations broke out all over the country.

Vietnam came along and “Hell no, we won’t go!” became the chant on every college campus across the nation. Barrack Obama’s early career was as a community organizer, and the tactics used by ACORN and others he helped organize often included disruptive behavior.

For Pelosi and others in the Democrat party to question the patriotism and Americanism of this current crop of protestors is to show exactly how elitist and how stupid they have become.”