Town hall eruptions show larger problem than health care reform
August 12, 2009 at 10:28 am by Ben Luongo
By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor
Our debate on health care reform has been a disappointing state of affairs. Stories of town hall meetings turning violent and reports of organizations planting disruptors are hardly proud examples of a successful democratic process. It speaks volumes of how political a society we have come to be.
Click after the jump to watch what has been happening in Florida.
The purpose of the town hall meetings have been to discuss the future of our health care system – whether it needs to be reformed, what kinds of reform, etc. However, while our current health care system may be flawed, the discord and violence at these town hall meetings have exposed a more urgent concern – the politicization of the issue, the disregard for mutual understanding, the heightened emotions and lack of reason mark our inability to constructively exchange ideas for the discovery of a better way. Our ability and need to deliberate on the issues rationally and without agenda is somehow overpowered by the political animal in us that is all too quick to leap to action.
Rather than being used as a forum of public discourse, these town hall meetings have been used as a place of protest. Is this the new way of American democracy? Is the town hall meeting still a public square and a market place for ideas, or sadly, do we make up our minds at home and treat the town hall as a fighter’s ring only to gratify our political nature.
It is important to remember that basic tenets in democracy, the right to speech, the right to press, the right to assemble, are not merely ends in themselves, but are meant to promote an exchange in society. John Stuart Mill believed that such an exchange could lead to the discovery of truth
“The peculiar evil in silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth.” – On Liberty
For John Stuart Mill “we can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion.” However, these town hall meetings turn loud and violent, where the freedom of speech is abused and seen as an instrument to stifle others. The exchange of error for truth could never happen in this environment and we walk away from a missed opportunity to find a better way.
Democracy requires deliberation, which means that the ideal of free speech does not only grant us the right to speak but also obligates us to listen. More importantly, both sides have to enter discussions with a desire to learn the truth (in this case the truth would be the ideal American healthcare system), which would require us to abandon any preconceived notions of the truth (such as partisan views of healthcare held to be true without good reason).
It is not an easy lesson but America must learn that a healthy democracy is one where its participants calm their political animals and inspire in themselves a desire to listen and learn from each other.
