Sickly response to health care

Even as I jotted the words on my note pad, I braced for the blowback.

"Take your social justice crap and shove it Jerry!" That note was left in the online comments section by Maxima in Seattle.

It was in response to last Thursday's column about the passage of health-care-insurance overhaul.

In the column I'd quoted someone saying the overhaul is at its core about social justice, which it is.

It's not unusual for people to bring a little heat on issues they are passionate about. I usually get a range of responses, but there wasn't much in the middle this time.

Across the country opposition to health-care overhaul has gone beyond policy debate.

It's become part of a clash of ideologies that can't be reconciled, but more than that, the opposition is a vessel for the expression of anger and fears that are dangerous.

Here's part of a post from Jerry03 in Seattle: "Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh warn us every day that we are teetering on the edge of a volcano. They prove it every day. And, all the left can do is demonize them rather than address their charges. That ought to tell you something.

"This socialist scam must be destroyed by freedom loving Americans. Our liberty hangs by a thread. The Marxist/communist Cabal in the Administration and the Congress (should be) put out of office soon and destroyed. PERMANENTLY!"

When I read that someone had yelled a racial epithet at Congressman John Lewis as he walked past a group of protesters, my own willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt about their motives evaporated in steam.

Lewis is about as nice a person as you'd want to meet. He also is one of those folks who put his life on the line for civil rights in the '60s and was nearly beaten to death.

Where was the condemnation of that harassment?

Well, of course Lewis has fought for social justice for decades, which I guess makes him a bad person to some.

Several writers said social justice is liberal code for taking stuff from good, hardworking people and giving it to lazy, no accounts.

So they get heated up at the mention of social justice. Want to talk about code words? Well, when people in the tea-party movement talk about states' rights, I understand that code.

The country fought a war over it once, but some people think it's time for another.

Did you read about the blogger, Mike Vanderboegh, who urged people to break the windows of Democratic Party officials. Incidences of window breaking followed in several states.

Vanderboegh says the health-care law is unconstitutional and that there are people, "who are not only willing to resist this law to the very end of their lives, but are armed and are capable of making such resistance possible and perhaps even initiating a civil war."

A year ago, I'd have dismissed him as just a blowhard. Not now.

Our own attorney general, Rob McKenna, is one of a group of state attorneys general who are suing to have the Supreme Court overturn the law.

Legal experts weighed in saying there was very little chance of that happening. But McKenna and friends will be wasting taxpayer money in the effort anyway.

Facts don't matter if they get in the way of turning the clock back.

I shook my head reading about the Texas board of education putting together a new curriculum that would have new textbooks make history and economics lessons match their conservative politics rather than, oh, reality.

I suppose some day there'll be more than a few people wishing they could rewrite their role in this stretch of history.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.