The health care debate is testing the limits of the press and American democracy

“The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness… if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated among the people.” –Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1799.

I attended the University of Virginia as an undergraduate and one of the more idiosyncratic traditions at a school known for them is the tendency of students, faculty and alumni to refer to the institution’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, as though he still walked among us.  U-Guides can often be overheard saying things like, “Mr. Jefferson believes that…” or “Mr. Jefferson thinks we should…” in reference to this or that notion.  To be sure, it’s strange to talk in the present tense about a man who has been dead for 183 years, but Jeffersonian ideas about the role of the press and democracy continue to endure and have become organizing principles of American political life.

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think if he could observe the present debate over health care. On the one hand, I suspect he would applaud the continued relevance of town hall meetings and welcome the spirited and lively debate they engender:

“That there should be a contrariety of opinions respecting the public agents and their measures,… is ever to be expected among free men.” –Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Leesburg Republicans, 1809

Let it be said that there are a host of legitimate reasons why one might be concerned about the pending health care legislation: cost ( an estimated $1 trillion over ten years, not $1 trillion per year) and complexity (how will the health care exchanges work? who will be eligible?) chief among them. We should also stipulate that honest mistakes can and will happen when talking about an issue this complex.

But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that he would be appalled at how we can no longer disagree without being disagreeable:

“That differences of opinion should arise among men on politics, on religion and on every other topic of human inquiry, and that these should be freely expressed in a country where all our faculties are free, is to be expected. But these valuable privileges are much perverted when permitted to disturb the harmony of social intercourse, and to lessen the tolerance of opinion.” –Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Citizens of Washington, 1809.

Jefferson strongly believed that a properly functioning press could help facilitate debate and provide the citizenry with factually accurate information that they then could use to make informed decisions about the matters of the day, but it’s recently become painfully obvious that our contemporary press has failed to internalize these lessons. Instead of raising the level of debate, they’ve become active agents in its deterioration by publishing obvious falsehoods and disinformation. In regards to health care, this is especially sad since we’ve been here before and some of the same people who so casually lied about reform back then are playing central roles in the discussion once again. For example, did you know that the government is going to force you to kill your grandparents or your special needs baby? Or maybe you’ve been told that all private insurance will be banned if reform legislation passes? The government is going to take your  Medicare or  VA coverage. Oh wait…

“The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Seymour, 1807.

Hysterical claims like the above have the ability to scare people and we’re starting to see the results of these statements taking hold. It’s not pretty. People are openly saying that guns should be taken to town hall meetings. One congressman was hung in effigy and another received a death threat. Representatives are being shouted down and chased to their cars. Pro- and anti-health care protesters are being arrested. The president and his party are being compared to some of history’s most notorious villains and anti-reform forces are being called “political terrorists”.

Think about that: there are folks out there who are willing to threaten their fellow citizens with the possibility of physical violence and death over cheaper prescription drugs and better access to doctors. You can’t make this kind of stuff up.

What is going on here?  It’s easy for people to make things up when there’s no completed piece of legislation to debate (though you can read the House version of the bill here), but the deeper problem is that the press isn’t aggressively debunking falsehoods and lies when they appear. True, the internet, Twitter, email, blogs and the like help move these lies around the filters of the traditional media, but there’s simply no excuse for factually challenged material making its way into the pages of America’s most prestigious publications. The press, paralyzed by claims of favoritism, has attempted to apply a sense of  journalistic “balance”, which merely leads us to the kind of “he said she said” reporting that favors one thing, the status quo.  This media is, quite simply, abdicating its duty.

220 years ago, Jefferson said that, “People can never agree without some sacrifices.” This week, in a column about the health care debate, The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein wrote:

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society — whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off.

All these years later, it seems like we’re still trying to learn that simple lesson. If we fail to understand it, the foundations of the democracy that Jefferson helped build may start to crumble.