Disguising Partisan Events as Town Hall Meetings (1 Viewer)

[danarhea]

Town Hall Meetings have been an American tradition since colonial times, and have consisted of everyone in a town showing up, no matter their political views, and making those views known to their leaders. Sometimes, these meetings we full of fiery debate as both sides made their arguments, and at other times, a consensus could be reached on an issue. But whether agreements were made or not, these Town Hall Meetings have been part of the backbone of not only free speech, but of our leaders' willingness to engage in honest and open discourse with the American people.

That is, until this administration. What are billed as Town Hall Meetings today are actually nothing more than love fests, where the attendees are hand picked, and nobody is allowed to even think differently than the president. At a Town Hall Meeting in Colorado, 3 members of the audience were detained and then expelled. Their only crime? They did not agree with the president, and they even kept their disagreement to themselves. They only attended the event to watch president Bush speak.

In the land of the free, Town Hall Meetings are no longer the opportunity to express your freedom to speak your mind, but instead, you must be in lockstep with the administration to attend.

To be fair, Bush is not the first to hold partisan events disguised as Town Hall Meetings, where everyone praises the leader, and dissent is not allowed. Others have done it too. Their names are Stalin, Kruschev, and others. The time was the distant past. The place was the old Soviet Union.

Article is here.

 

[jfuh]

Town Hall Meetings have been an American tradition since colonial times, and have consisted of everyone in a town showing up, no matter their political views, and making those views known to their leaders. Sometimes, these meetings we full of fiery debate as both sides made their arguments, and at other times, a consensus could be reached on an issue. But whether agreements were made or not, these Town Hall Meetings have been part of the backbone of not only free speech, but of our leaders' willingness to engage in honest and open discourse with the American people.

That is, until this administration. What are billed as Town Hall Meetings today are actually nothing more than love fests, where the attendees are hand picked, and nobody is allowed to even think differently than the president. At a Town Hall Meeting in Colorado, 3 members of the audience were detained and then expelled. Their only crime? They did not agree with the president, and they even kept their disagreement to themselves. They only attended the event to watch president Bush speak.

In the land of the free, Town Hall Meetings are no longer the opportunity to express your freedom to speak your mind, but instead, you must be in lockstep with the administration to attend.

To be fair, Bush is not the first to hold partisan events disguised as Town Hall Meetings, where everyone praises the leader, and dissent is not allowed. Others have done it too. Their names are Stalin, Kruschev, and others. The time was the distant past. The place was the old Soviet Union.

Article is here.

I think the most amusing aspect of this is how we used to mock the soviet union when thier entire "town hall" meetings were used to spew party kissing rhetoric, no one was disagreeing nor was there any dissent when voting time came. We used to pride ourselves in having varied opinion as well as productive debate.
We used to say to the soviets, you don't have freedom of movement, you have the KGB listening in to everything you say, you spend all your money on weapons and finally, your leaders are elected by one vote. I can't help but find a certain resonance with that in the US today. So what ideology won the cold war exactly?