"Give me my health insurance or I will die," said the perfectly healthy working age Democratic woman to the Republican Representative. With cameras rolling, the media feeding-frenzy was like sharks in the water smelling blood. TV news likes to show visual stuff: house fires, car wrecks, brawls on airplanes, and lately, elected representatives being scolded.
Such is the predictable outcome of socialism. The liberal elite are laughing in their champagne as they gather at their private parties to giggle over how well they co-opted the U.S. health care system under Obama. They created a whole new class of Democratic voters who are more dependent on big government. It doesn't matter that Hillary lost. The hidden IED's, the exploding land mines of gleeful bad publicity, will continue in perpetuity. The liberal media will keep cutting the legs out from under conservative Republicans.
This was predictable. When a perception is created that you want to take away a benefit that is now viewed as an entitlement, its beneficiaries tend to get angry. It doesn't matter that the Democrats passed Obamacare without reading it. They had created a costly Rube-Goldberg healthcare contraption destined to self-destruct. It was always unaffordable.
When I was a boy, I foolishly played with fire. I set out to burn some trash without adult supervision. A grass fire got out of hand. "It wasn't my fault! The wind did it!" I protested. The second time I learned why you should never pour gasoline on a fire. I had no idea a flame could travel upwards through the air. The third time, some of us kids lit a small camp-fire in the center of the woods, but when we left, we didn't douse it properly.
The next morning I was shocked to see a thin trail of smoke rising into the sky from the woods. The fire had burned down into the ground, into the dried peat of a drained cypress stand, creating a cave of smoldering embers like wallpaper decorating a pit in hell. We couldn't put it out. It burned for a month.
What happens when the wind fans the flames of a small fire? Can it create a wildfire? Folks in Florida and California know that it can. The fire will spread and cause destruction. When a man in St Louis, lamenting the death of his son, shouted to an angry mob, "Burn it down!," they did just that. Fires are easy to start but hard to extinguish.
When University of California students learned that a conservative was due to speak, they fanned the flames of outrage. "We must not be exposed to different viewpoints!," they could have chanted. "We must not be required to think rationally for ourselves!" Being educated freethinkers feeding at the trough of liberalism, they smashed store windows and burned cars until the free speech event on campus was canceled. Patrick Henry rolled over in his grave.
The major network news outlets have lined up like a chorus to the drumbeat of "Trump is illegitimate." "Trump is upsetting Muslims." "Trump is taking away our rights." Is it any wonder the fire of unrest spreads, being pushed by the hot wind of ignorant rhetoric? At what point does a nation become ungovernable? Isn't inciting to riot still a crime?
-- Ron Wood is a writer and minister. Contact him at [email protected] or visit www.touchedbygrace.org. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 05/17/2017