Many people seem to be under the impression that most people are idiots. They aren't. This is getting to me lately, because I'm observing some people on the left throw the term "idiot" around like confetti, and others on the left are growing incredibly condescending about how the country is responding to health care reform.

Let's start out with the reason that tons of people my age came of age feeling distrustful and wary of our fellow citizens: George W. Bush. How could we possibly elect this guy, much less re-elect him?

There was at least one perfectly valid reason to vote for Bush in 2000 - he appeared to be a very genuine guy, and I think history has borne out that he is (though I can't say the same for nearly anyone he hired). Preferring politicians who seem to be themselves, and are not simply pandering, is a smart trait for a populace to have. The problem is when we place too-heavy reliance on it, above all other factors, and that's a fair criticism; simply mass-labeling Americans as idiots is not.

And re-electing him in 2004? Americans were scared of being attacked by terrorists again. This is not a stupid fear. We had been attacked only 3 years prior, and lots of people died. I recently had a nightmare that I was at Ground Zero during the attack. It was terrifying. If John Kerry failed to convince America that he would be strong on terrorism, and that he was being himself and not "flip flopping", that's Kerry's fault. The "Republican attack machine" is good (as was Obama's attack machine at equating McCain with Bush), but like any political messaging, it's only good at exploiting concerns people already have.

To vote for Kerry, you had to realize that the one huge comforting thing about Bush's platform was outweighed by all the less comforting good things about Kerry's, no matter how good they all are for America when added together. The fact that some slim, slim majority of our population didn't put aside their fears and do that calculation is not enough to convince me that we live in a country of mouth-breathing sloths. It means we have some work to do on balancing our hearts and minds - and I don't know about you, but I have a lot of work to do on that front myself.

So it seems more than a little dishonest to me that the left is perfectly fine calling out these disruptive town halls for what they are (orchestrated political assaults, organized by extremists and special interests), and insisting that it is not representative of the American people in general, while somehow getting more pissed off at the American people in general!

Conservatives and health industry forces are exploiting a latent concern that American citizens have about heavy government interference in their lives. This is a smart concern for a population to have, and it's why Total Information Awareness got unpopular and was canned even when Bush had an 80-90% approval rate in early 2002. We're only going to get health care reform through that is both liberal and popular if we can address that concern in an emotionally compelling way, instead of getting angry at people who respond to other emotionally compelling words like "socialism", "fascism", and "death panel".

This is our responsibility. The more of us who write off our population, the more we abrogate this responsibility, and the more likely we are to stay the same.