Does Hate Speech Have Limits?

Excuse me if the sight of folks with guns outside a presidential appearance doesn't automatically make me think "Second Amendment." I have nothing against guns. My oldest brother has a very big one. He last used it to shoot a moose.

Yes, it's legal to carry a weapon, but is it the best way to encourage debate on health care?
Outside Barack Obama's New Hampshire town hall, a man with a gun carried a sign, "It is time to water the tree of liberty!" referencing the Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

In Arizona, near the Phoenix convention hall where the president was speaking, about a dozen protesters carried weapons. Do they carry them to the playground and the supermarket? When I lived in Arizona, I rarely saw folks packing.

Politics Daily's Carl M. Cannon makes the case that negative protest surrounding issues and presidents is nothing new, and is not owned by one party or position. He does allow that verbalized rage can lead to action. He is measured, as he always is, even when discussing emotional reactions. I can't afford to be.

When I see the faces of fury, I wonder why protesters with a point -- and there are a lot of them -- and politicians who agree with them don't denounce the ones on the fringe with signs spewing racist slogans that have nothing to do with health care.

It's not paranoia but history that fuels my trip in the way-back machine every time a town hall protester starts to yell. Undefined anger plus weaponry always makes me shudder.

I flash back to how my parents' mood turned from joy to panic when they came home from a church dance to learn my brother had been arrested during a sit-in. Every member of my family felt the fear each time older siblings ventured out to march for civil rights, protected only by an armor of calm and a sign reading "We Shall Overcome." Hecklers felt no such restraint, and the police charged with protecting the marchers weren't always sympathetic to the cause.

Protesters' cries of "taking our country back" remind me of an incident I'd add to Carl's historical touchstones: the coup of a legitimately elected government on U.S. soil. In the Wilmington, N.C., race riot of 1898, whites violently seized power from an interracial coalition that advocated democratic reforms. With the cooperation of state agencies and publications, it signaled the establishment of Jim Crow racism in North Carolina and throughout the country. After more than a century of history obscured, the state issued its official investigation of the incident in 2006.

Connecting these particular dots should not be dismissed as political correctness or the figment of a fanciful imagination, particularly when a man at a town hall destroys a Rosa Parks poster.

In a post on the Root, Sherrilyn A. Ifill made the point that "the rage-filled, inconsolable opponents of the current health care reform bill certainly seem to be more concerned with the legitimacy of the messenger rather than the message about President Barack Obama's need for comprehensive health care reform." Why, she asks, is Rep. James Clyburn's comparison of the conduct at town halls with the hate the South Carolina Democrat encountered during the civil rights movement dismissed as "bigoted and elitist" by a representative of the Republican National Committee?
It might be clear to those who want to take back our country what they want to take it back from. Nostalgia for the America of our founders is not shared by all. As Tim Wise, on Daily Kos, said: "They seem to think there was once a time of innocence when oppression wasn't happening, or that we can easily extract from our accounting of those crimes the great and noble things about our forefathers and view them in some patriotic vacuum. But we can't."

When it comes to matters of race, I often find it useful to turn the situation on its head. So, for instance, what would the reaction be if the angry crowds filling town hall meetings, screaming and interrupting, confronting elected officials nose-to-nose, hanging them in effigy and painting swastikas on their doors were overwhelmingly black and brown? What if the backers of health care reform acted out in exactly the same way as its opponents?

Would their protest be praised as democracy in action?

During the civil rights movement, even though they were breaking segregation laws, the men and women who marched and joined sit-ins could claim the moral high ground because of their dignified behavior. They sat – quietly and respectably – seemingly oblivious to the law-abiding chaos around them.

Using civility and the power of ideas -- that's something gun-toting protesters might want to consider.