hillary clinton in 1994 on right wing ideologues

Reporter: You told Peter Maier that there are right-wing radical ideologues who don't want people to have health care in this country. Who are you talking about? Who are these folks?

Mrs. Clinton: Well, you know I think they are a combination of the same kind of people who have been around in our country since its beginnings, the sort of ideologically-opposed who think that nobody should get anything from anybody else. And there's a streak of that in American politics. There always has been.

There are people who opposed social security, opposed civil rights, opposed minimum wage, opposed Medicare, opposed Medicaid. I mean at every step along the way, there is this small core of people who do not believe that government should do anything. Now they're the same people who drive down highways paid for by government funds. They are the same people who love the Defense Department which is funded by government money, but they have a different mind set when it comes to social policy in trying to be a compassionate and caring nation.

Then there are the people who for opportunistic reasons are opposing health care reform both because it is in their financial interest to do so because they want to be able to maintain the status quo and they are not above inciting other people to be very emotional about helping them to sustain their favored position. And then there are those who are for political reasons opposing health care reform because there are lots of people who don't want any changes and particularly don't want changes by this President to occur.

Now, most of the people I've just described are ones who pull the strings of others and inflame people by making charges of socialized medicine, for example, or the government is going to take over the health care system. And there's a very well-organized and well-financed effort to convey that message so that, for example, when you see people protesting in the streets as we saw a couple of weeks ago, as I personally saw in Seattle, they were there in large measure because they'd been inflamed by a local radio talk show host who finds it in his own personal financial opportunistic interest to take this position. I had no idea whether the man was insured or not, but he inflames people who are sitting at home that somehow the Clintons are going to take over the government and they're going to find themselves without a doctor or whatever their arguments are.

And if you talk to these people very often they don't have a clue about what health care reform is about. They are responding to these emotional kinds of attacks. And I just think that's part and parcel of what you always find when you look at moments of a lot of change converging at the same point in American history. You will find that strain of people. And I think it's very unfortunate, but it's something that is part of our political scene.

What I do not like and what I find regrettable is the amount of hatred that is being conveyed and really injected into our political system. I don't have any problem with anybody disagreeing with this President on any policy position. I don't have a problem with any member of Congress opposing health care reform because he doesn't think it's a good idea or he wants to use it as a political weapon. I mean, that's politics.

But this personal, vicious hatred that for the time being is aimed primarily at the President, and to a lesser extent myself, I think is very dangerous for our political process. And I think those who are encouraging it should think long and hard about the consequences of such encouragement. And in a free society, certainly people are free to say or do what they think furthers their political agenda.

But we have to draw the line on violence, and you have to draw the line on protests that incite violence. And a lot of the talk that is coming out is, to me, very sad, and I think we'll have very unfortunate consequences for our entire body politic and not just for this Administration. [more]