Unlike the union or ACORN thugs that Democrats use to intimidate attendees, those giving their Congressman an ear-full show up in wheelchairs or using walkers

Seasoned Protesters

By Alan Caruba
Friday, August 7, 2009

Have you taken a close look at the protesters showing up at the town hall meetings being held by the horrified members of Congress? These folks are often quite OLD.

Unlike the union or ACORN thugs that Democrats use to intimidate attendees, some of those giving their Congressman an ear-full show up in wheelchairs or using walkers. The healthier among them seem quite at ease raising their voices and why is that?

Being among that generation, it occurred to me that they are the same people who showed up for the Civil Rights marches and at the Vietnam War protests in Washington, D.C when I was a young man. I was there, too. I saw these folks show up to demand President Nixon resign after the Watergate scandal got too big for him to silence.

Many of them--often quite liberal--continued showing up for environmental causes or for a march to find a cure for breast cancer. These are seasoned protesters; often liberal in their youth and just as often now conservative in their older years.

This generation of elder protesters has had plenty of practice and now has plenty to protest about. They aren’t a bunch of kids with no knowledge of history. These people lived history!

To begin with, they don’t want the government messing around with their medical insurance plans and they don’t want the government telling their doctors what they can and cannot do to ensure they get the best medical care available.

Those liberal programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, plus the prescription add-ons, may be socialism, but they like that kind of socialism; it’s the kind that helps pay their bills. Beyond that, they want the government to butt out.

Crazy schemes to sell carbon credits in order to limit carbon dioxide seem like the most absurd notions to the elderly, many of whom moved to warmer climates in Florida and Arizona to get away from the cold winters of the northern states. Global warming? They’re for it!

Like the rest of the population, they know that the weather has turned cooler all around the nation and those that keep up with such matters know there is no “global warmingâ€