ALIEN NATION

Rick Perlstein briefly mentioned this woman in his WaPo article but he leaves out some important information he included in his book on page 239:

On October 20, UN Day (which the far right answered by declaring "U.S. Day"), Adlai Stevenson, leaving Memorial Auditorium after giving a speech, had been clomped on the head by a yelping picket wielding a sign reading "DOWN WITH THE UN." Stevenson insisted on confronting the woman before policemen whisked her away. "What is wrong?" he asked. "What do you want?" Mrs. Cora Frederickson, forty-seven, her face contorted, responded with gnomic fury: "Why are you like you are? Why don't you understand? If you don't know what's wrong, I don't know why. Everybody else does."

Just like many of the health reform protesters, this lady is so wrapped up the conservatives' propaganda that she simply can't understand how anyone could disagree with her political views. Back in 1963, the commander of the American Legion expressed his thoughts about these people (Perlstein, page 240):

I mean those individuals who would save America by forsaking its free institutions. I mean not just Communists and neo-Fascists who openly assail our system but, more especially, those who, in the conviction that theirs is the only right view, have lost sight of—and faith in—the fundamental processes of self-government. They claim to have the one true answer to every problem. They talk of setting aside the law when the law offends them. They are quick to cry "treason," slow to admit error, and indifferent to arguments and facts that do not support their beliefs. They are not really leftists or rightists—but simply anarchists.