DemNotesBlog for Colorado Democrats by State Party First Vice Chair Dan Slater

Whatever happened to the old addage, “You can disagree without being disagreeable.”?

I was having a debate at last week’s Drinking Liberally here in Canon City with an officer of the local Democratic Party. He argued that public discourse had fallen off in the past couple of years and become increasingly nasty. I pointed to the unbelievably nasty (even by today’s standards) back-and-forth between supporters of John Adams and supporters of Thomas Jefferson in the early stages of our republic as proof that our Nation has always had a degree of vitriol in its political debate.

But that doesn’t excuse what happened in the wee hours of this morning at 777 N. Santa Fe.

This morning, a cowardly thug — there really isn’t much better phrase to describe this guy — decided to pound holes in the windows of the Colorado Democratic Party headquarters in Denver with a hammer. Thankfully, one of Denver’s Finest was driving by at the time and chased the guy down, arresting him. But the damage was done — at least $10,000.00 in damage, with nearly every one of the windows broken.

Now, being the easy-going guy I am, I might be willing to attribute this guy’s actions to a drunken rage fueled by love for the San Francisco Giants and anger at the last-minute beating they took at Coors Field around Midnight. But doing that would ignore the facts that the strikes of the hammer and shatters of the glass came right at every poster and symbol in the window of health care reform and our President. And it would ignore a poster apparently contemporaneously glued to a post comparing the President’s attempts to provide health care opportunities for all Americans with Nazi Germany. (And, yes, this guy is apparently not a student of history and what happened with Kristallnacht, and the eerie similarity to his own actions.)

Everybody on our side should realize that the vast majority of people who oppose the President’s efforts to change our health care and health insurance system are hard-working Americans with genuine beliefs about where this country should go. And they express their views in a calm, reasoned manner. But we should also no longer ignore that there is a segment of the Republican hierarchy that is doing everything it can to stir up anger and emotions in a way that they cannot control.

America voted for Change last November. We can debate that change without shouting at one another. We can debate that change without name-calling. And we can debate that change without breaking windows when we don’t agree with somebody.

Can’t we?