Barack Obama is President of the United States. Barack Obama is President of the United States. Barack Obama is President of the United States. By their conduct, apparently some Republicans need to keep reminding themselves of these facts.
South Carolina Republican Congressperson Joe Wilson screamed "you lie" in the middle of President Obama's nationally televised address to Congress. In one sense, this is a shocking lack of civility and decorum. In another sense, it is just another example of how Republicans are fundamentally unable to accept the results of the November election. It is also indicative of either their inability or unwillingness to engage in civil debate.
There are rules that have always governed the decorum that is expected when addressing the President of the United States. As a democracy that has seen seamless transitions of power every 4 or 8 years, it has always been essential that regardless of the person in the Office of the President, the office always deserves our respect. Respecting the office, if not the office-holder is what has always set our Democracy apart.
I don't know if it is because Barack Obama is part Black or because the Republicans lack any cohesive ideas with which to oppose the President or because they are taking their lead from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (while failing to realize that those guys are entertainers and politicians are elected representatives in the highest offices in the land), but Republicans have thus far been unable to conduct themselves with the slightest bit of civility or decorum.
In a prior version of this article, I got feedback from Republican friends that this is no different than what occured in the last 8 years. But this is simply not so. Democrats were critical of the administration. Sometimes individual Democrats did show disrespect to the White House. Some protesters carried poorly conceived signs comparing President Bush to Hitler, but this was not seen from any Democratic Member of Congress, and this fringe, if you can call it that, was certainly not endorsed by Democratic politicians.
And it is not just when addressing the President. The mentality that allows calling the President a liar in the middle of his address to Congress is the same mentality as screaming about death panels at town hall meetings. Republicans are seemingly not interested in an actual debate. They are not interested in hearing voices, but in supressing them.
The actions of Joe Wilson and the actions of the larger Republican community harken back to a dark day on November 4, 1995. The day that Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. That day was a lesson that political rhetoric ignored can lead to political violence. As Ehud Sprinzak wrote in his terrific book Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assasination, "it was the culmination of a process of delegitimization of the Israeli government by Israeli unltranationalists."
So what were the signs of the culmination? First their was the angry and extreme rhetoric. Yitzhak Rabin was an "accomplice to murder" in the eyes of the Israeli far-right and Barack Obama is trying to indoctrinate our children into Socialists according to the Republicans. Second, there were allusions to violence. In Israel it was the "theoretical" discussion of whether it was ok to kill someone who tried to give away "Jewish" land and in the United States it is wearing a gun to a speech given by the President all the while screaming about freedom. Political rallies where Israel's far right tried to scream down members of Israel's ruling coalition. And then of course, there are the Nazi Comparisons.
Joe Wilson's actions are the culmination of the war on our democracy that is being waged by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They are stoking the flames of the far right and the far right is stoking the flames of their elected Representatives. But Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are on TV and radio. They are entertainers, not elected representatives. The Republican party is losing sight of what it means to be a loyal opposition. Instead, they are becoming an angry mob. A loyal opposition schedules a rebuttal, an angry mob shouts you down.