At a healthcare townhall meeting last week at Simpson University in Redding, Calif., a man stood up and identified himself as a “proud right-wing terrorist.”
“Amen. God bless you. There is a great American,” responded Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif. Herger’s office identified the man as Bert Stead, 67. Herger went on to say that “our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today” due to President Barack Obama’s proposal to reform the healthcare system.
Herger’s enthusiastic response, which was embraced by a crowd of 2,000, has angered Democrats and have lead to demands that the congressman issue an apology.
“People die as a result of terrorism. He needs to own up and take responsibility for that. In fact, he should condemn it,” said Bill Falzett, chairman of the Yuba County Central Democratic Committee.
Herger’s office released a statement in response to the criticism:
Congressman Herger stands by his statement in support of his constituent. Mr. Bert Stead is a taxpayer and veteran, who, like so many others, is rightfully fed up with being called “un-American”, or “extremist” or a “political terrorist” by liberals in Washington, for simply exercising his First Amendment rights. Mr. Stead served his country and therefore he is a great American. The Congressman doesn’t at all regret commending him for standing up, exercising his free speech rights, and expressing his strong concerns with the direction liberals in Washington are taking our country.
The Appeal Democrat newspaper printed a letter to the editor on Wednesday written by Maxine Elliot who said she was unhappy with Herger voicing his approval for Stead’s “right-wing terrorist” remark.
“Disagreement is very American, as is civil debate. However, praising an ‘American terrorist’ steps over the line into the dark side and into shades of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who killed many people,” wrote Elliot, a Yuba City resident.
More hate speech and incitements to racism and violence brought to by the family values crowd. When will people wake up and see these poeple for the hippocrits they are
I laugh every time I hear a Liberal saying anything negative about terrorism. They support terrorism with every action that they take and are no better than terrorists themselves.
Actually, a Liberal is worse than a foreign terrorist. A Liberal is an someone that grew up within America, received all her benefits, and still wants to see it destroyed.
The United States was formed by Liberals, the Constitution — a virtual manifesto of Liberalism — written by Liberals, the Revolutionary War fought by Liberals… while the conservatives of the day fought on the side of King George and Great Britain, and then fled to Canada when the Liberals won that war and founded the United States of America.
Today the so-called ‘conservatives’ — the pee-pants paranoid authoritarian cowards who hijacked that term simply because they like the sound of the word and not because they actually know anything about conservatism at all — reject every actual American value as expressed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights… except perhaps the 2nd Amendment, since they spend a lot of their time daydreaming about shooting those who they feel so victimized by. If passing a test on ‘Understanding American Constitutional Values’ was required for citizenship, I’d bet my Duesenberg that most, if not all, would fail miserably… but instead they’re given the Blessing of Liberty for free, and then work every day to wreck and crush Liberty itself by all means available to them.
Now Rep. Herger has long been known to be pretty slow ‘upstairs,’ so it probably didn’t occur to him at the time that he had a responsibility as a public official to condemn the speaker’s word choice. Terrorism is, after all, a very serious federal crime of violence and its just not in keeping with the responsibilities of public office to be seen as advocating and endorsing violent crime. Especially not terrorism, given our experience over the past two decades.
But, now that it has to have been explained to him — obviously not slowly enough, nor repeated enough times — he should have seen what sort of problem this creates for him, now, as a pro-terrorism public official. But instead, he has decided to ‘double down’ publicly on endorsing a self-proclaimed “right-wing terrorist” and thereby double down publicly on becoming America’s first pro-terrorism Congressman.
Way to go, Wingnuts… Pro-Torture, Pro-Terror, Pro War Crime… Pro-Death, Pro-Destruction, Pro-Butchery of the Innocent.
Here’s your bumper sticker: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
it does go to show how extremist the right wing are becoming
embracing terrorist ideology is totally unamerican and unacceptable
The guy is not really condoning terrorism…he’s alluding to the fact that both DHS and the mainstream media are calling these people at the town halls right wing extremists, and if attending townhalls angry at your government is extreme behavior he’s proud to proclaim it.
Apparently, according to talking heads in the media and the politicians, you should be happy about the mountains of debt being put on you and your children and your childrens’ children and so on. They will be carrying this burden in perpetuity…If you’re not happy about Obama, according to MSNBC, you are a racist, right wing, extremist that was a Bush-lover, and you hate poor people.
When will people realize that both parties are in collusion, and the left-right paradigm is a con job to give the illusion of choice of direction? Obama has expanded the Bush wars and continued his policies, almost to the letter…He is already threatening Iran, just like Bush.
I agree with Libertarian here. The man in question is taking on a term which will continue to see wide abuse by media and gov’t, beyond any reasonable application. If you don’t love ObamaCare, you’re a terrorist, and so on. If you didn’t love Bush’s (and now Obama’s!) wars, you were “against us” and thus on the side of terrorism. If Homeland Security — Heimat, anyone? — hadn’t slandered peaceful folks with their report, this guy wouldn’t be so upset.