What we saw April 15 on Legislative Mall in Dover was perhaps the best demonstration of the wisdom of the men who drafted our Constitution — and particularly the First Amendment — more than 220 years ago.
Delawareans came to Dover to exercise their rights of free speech, peaceable assembly and to ask the government to address their grievances, in this case, the taxation and spending policies of the Obama administration.
The five “Tea Parties” held in Delaware — symbolically on the day federal income tax returns were due to the government — and hundreds of others held throughout the nation were the topic of the day on the nightly news and on radio talk shows. There’s no doubt those in the Obama administration got the message that a lot of people are not real happy.
How those policy makers inside the Washington, D.C., beltway take that message, however, could be another story.
The significance of the nationwide event was diluted somewhat by indications these efforts, advertised as grass roots demonstrations were organized from the top down. And, more seriously I think, the message was thrown off kilter by a very small minority who chose to attack the president personally instead of concentrating on his policies.
Here and there — not in Dover, fortunately — people were holding signs comparing Obama to Adolph Hitler or Mao Zedong. Some pasted the president’s face onto an image of Osama bin Laden.
Others dredged up long-debunked accusations the president is not a U.S. citizen or that he’s a Muslim.
These people, who obviously cannot let go of their own dislike of Obama, preferred to attack on a personal level in addition to their frustration with the country’s economic problems.
It always has been my experience that calling someone names doesn’t accomplish much. In a situation as important as piling up trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future, it’s a petty act. There needs to be a laser-pointed focus on the nation’s problems and how to solve them. Once people realize that, perhaps something tangible may get done.
*****
Like many others last week, I was the recipient of a mysterious email asking me to take part in a “Delaware Issues Survey.” It appeared mysteriously out of the blue on my office email with no indication as to who it came from or what its purpose was. Even after completing the survey, the only clue to its origins was a group calling itself the Delaware Issues Forum.
