Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has termed those who show up at town hall meetings and speak their mind “evil-mongers.”
Reid coined the term in a speech to an energy conference in Las Vegas this week and repeated it in an interview with Politics Daily. Such “evil-mongers” are using “lies, innuendo and rumor,” to drown out rational debate, Reid said.
“It was an original with me,” Reid said of the term. “I maybe could have been less descriptive,” he said, adding that “I doubt you’ll hear it from me again.”
Nevertheless, Reid worked in the word one more time during the interview. “I feel I haven’t done anything to embarrass [my children],” Reid joked. “Except maybe call somebody an evil-monger.”
Now, I’ve dubbed shouting down others’ free speech un-American. Twice. But evil? Really?
Stephen Green observes, “When President Bush called three of the most vile regimes on the planet an ‘axis of evil,’ the left sneered. Real evil, apparently, is to be found in ordinary Americans.” Indeed.
This just isn’t how the people’s representatives should speak about the people.
