Shouting down and intimidating someone from speaking their mind is not exactly a Vermont town meeting value, nor should it be an American town meeting value.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You can't run this nation like a town meeting.
Special interests and opponents have figured out how easy it is to disrupt town halls and get their own message out. The days of the truly free-form town halls may be over.
So, for me the town hall meetings are really an opportunity to engage in two-way dialogue with people, and they've been very helpful.
Most of my town hall meetings had always been love fests, and some of my guys used to complain: 'I'd like for somebody to yell at you a bit.'
At town meetings, you can see the shy folks, the ones who have trouble sounding off in public, leaning against the back wall or bending over their knitting. On talk radio, those people are invisible, but they're there. It's a mistake to think that the blowhards who call in speak for the nation.
My town hall meetings are with friends and neighbors, fellow Americans. We engage.
Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.
When you sign on to be an activist in northwest Montana, people in the grocery store will avoid eye contact, particularly if they're hanging out with outspoken opponents to your views.
Any confrontation, such as a verbal one with the United States, would be harmful for everybody.
This isn't the best town for what we're doing. Too many other things to pull the crowds away.
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