But I think that the point I’m trying to make is, I like the debate. This “tea party” movement can be a healthy thing if they’re making us justify every penny of taxes we raised and every dollar of public money we spend. And they say they’re for limited government and a balanced budget; when I left office, we had the smallest workforce since Eisenhower and we had four surpluses for the first time in 70 years.
--snip--
... By all means, keep fighting. By all means, keep arguing. But remember words have consequences as much as actions do. And what we advocate commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City.
We owe it to keep on fighting, keep on arguing. They didn’t vote for me in Oklahoma in 1996. It was still a Republican state. But I loved them anyway, and I will till the day I die, because when this country was flat on its back mourning their loss, they rallied around the employees of the national government and they rallied around the human beings who had lost everything, and they rallied around the elemental principle that what we have in common is more important than our differences. And that’s why our Constitution makes our freedoms last – because of that bright line.
Just prior to this beautiful paean to the power of our freedoms to transcend the petty differences of politics, he also said the following, which puts these remarks in their proper context.
Before the bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever in America in the early 1990s. First, it was a time, like now, of dramatic upheaval. A lot of old arrangements had changed. The things that anchored peoples’ lives and gave a certainty to them had been unraveling. Some of them, by then, for 20 years. ... And there were more and more people who had a hard time figuring out where they fit in. More and more people who had a very difficult time living with confidence and optimism in the face of change. It is true that we see some of that today.
... But what we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or reduce our passion from the positions we hold -- but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike. And I am not trying to muzzle anybody.
But one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have.
Look, I'm glad they're fighting over health care and everything else. Let them have at it. But I think all you have to do is read the paper everyday to see how many people there are who are deeply, deeply troubled. We know, now, that there are people involved in groups – these “hatriot” groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the others – 99 percent of them will never do anything they shouldn’t do. But there are people who advocate violence and anticipate violence.
In other words, a certain amount of common sense should suggest to at least some people that, in w setting in which the inflammatory rhetoric of an unknown, angry citizen suddenly becomes the voice of an entire movement - how many times in recent months have we had the most extreme voices become The Voice of the Tea Baggers? - it might be wise to consider the possibility that all the talk of violence, of civil war, treating difference as moral error, obsessing on already-disproved nonsense like the Birthers and Obama's alleged socialism and ties to The Weather Underground; all of this might just lead some people to consider violence as a proper response?
This same rhetoric, turning difference in to moral error, has led to the murder of abortion providers and the bombing of women's health clinics. This same rhetoric has led to threats on the lives of law makers. This same rhetoric makes it impossible to discuss the merits or demerits of policy precisely because too many amplified voices on the right do not see merit in any policy offered by the Democratic Party. The current Republican members of the Senate display their solidarity with this view by blocking legislation and Administration political appointees. How far-fetched is it to wonder whether or not it might be possible for some who swallow whole the nonsense on the right to consider violence as a necessary evil to fight the threats to our freedoms?
Yet, Clinton here, and Obama on many occasions, and many others, have said the question is not the Tea Bag crowd, or the debate. Pres. Clinton expressly supports the Tea Baggers. I have no problem with them, either. I disagree with their policy stances, to be sure, but that doesn't mean they should be silenced; on the contrary, the more voices the merrier.
The issue is not the Tea Bag crowd and their legitimacy; it is understanding that with great freedom comes responsibility. I would add this goes for the Left as well as the Right. By highlighting the fringe elements of the Tea Party protest movement, giving the voices of racists and hate-mongers as the "leaders" of this still-nascent, coalescing movement, the Left too often falls in to the same trap. How often do we read scurrilous, sneering posts on the ignorance and silliness of the Tea Partiers? How often do we see, accompanying a story on this or that outrageous statement by an attendee at a Tea Party rally, the assumption that this voice is the voice of the multitude?
Many on the Left are comforted by the thought that, yes, indeed, these ignoramuses are all there is to the Tea Party. That makes us as much a part of the problem as those who voice these outrageous comments. We become part of what Clinton called "the echo chamber" - and to our peril.
So, responsibility extends not just to the Tea Party itself and its supporters in right-wing media. It also extends to those on the Left who get baited by instances of extremist rhetoric in to pretending, or actually believing, it is the voice of the movement itself. This further erodes the our public square, making it that much harder to hear legitimate voices of protest and questions of priorities. We can mock the Tea Party as nonsensical, violent, and extreme without considering the possibility they might have a point worth listening to.
I would extend the necessity of responsibility to those on the Left who wish to marginalize the Tea Party by playing this game. In our country, these voices should be heard and considered on the merits.
