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09.30.2009 0

ALG in the News: The upside of down with

  • On: 10/16/2009 10:20:13
  • In: Conservative Movement

  • ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured commentary by Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe, Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson is quoted on an interesting piece about happiness and protesting.

    The upside of ‘down with’

    Protesters’ secret: they’re out there because it makes them happier

    By Drake Bennett

    We’ve grown used to hearing that ours is an age of political apathy, but it hasn’t felt like it recently. Throughout the summer, the news was splashed with images of disgruntled Tea Partiers and seething town hall meetings where constituents harangued their congressmen and fistfights erupted in the parking lots. With the economy still far from robust and the Obama administration pushing ambitious changes on fronts ranging from health care to the war in Afghanistan, the stakes are high, and emotions have run high, too. A few weeks ago, at the conservative 9/12 rally in Washington, tens of thousands marched on the Capitol, many brandishing homemade placards labeling President Obama a liar, a fascist, a villainous Joker, or a Communist. One sign handed out at the rally exhorted Congress to “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy.”

    It’s a feeling that today’s activists would well understand. Bill Wilson is the president of Americans for Limited Government, a fierce critic of the Obama administration.

    “A significant percentage, they get to that point, I don’t want to say addicted, but it sort of is that,” he says of his fellow activists. “The serotonin, all the chemical reactions of the body, it’s pleasant. People want to do it.”

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