Friday Soapbox

I tried to keep it in but I have to get it off my chest. If I lose readers then that's ok, sorry.
I love the fact that we live in a country where we are free to protest. My biggest regret about college is that in four years at one of the most politically-conscious colleges in the country, I didn't attend a single protest. Bu the protest yesterday at the Capitol, and the many in the past few months, have just got me thinking.

The media coverage has been focused on those against the health care debates and proposals, against the so-called "socialized" medicine. They deserve to have their voices heard, but they aren't the only voices. And that's what bugs me the most, about some of their signs and messages, some of them acting like they speak for everyone. Some people want this! Please quit making it out to be Congress steamrolling the electorate. Some people have fought for this, voted for exactly this!

And "tea parties" where they claim they have no representation? They have representation, they just don't like what their reps are doing. (The only people who can legitimately claim no representation, are D.C. residents. And I thought that long before I became a resident and will continue to think so after.) The same people crying "hands off my health care," are probably the same ones who would shout down someone with a pro-choice "hands off my body" rally-cry. (Of course, I want government hands off my body but on my health care, so maybe I'm a hypocrite, too.)

This is what I voted for last November, so I'm happy. But I do need to try to remember how miserable I was for 8 years, and that a good portion of the country is feeling the same way now. (Of course I'd be a lot more patient and tolerant if people would stop saying the President is Hitler, the Joker, a Kenyan national, and a Grandma-killer.)

And while living a mile from the Capitol has made me less tolerant of protesters, particularly when they're exercising the First Amendment in the middle of a workweek, I still appreciate living in a country where it's at least an option. Where it's a guaranteed right in the pocket Constitutions they were waving around yesterday. Though I don't remember them doing so when freedoms were trampled on with the Patriot Act. Just another difference of opinions and perspective, I guess.