The iconic image of a New England Town Meeting was painted by Norman Rockwell in his World-War II-era Freedom of Speech illustration. The 1943 painting, inspired by a Vermont town meeting, shows a plainly-clothed working man speaking up while his white collar neighbors look on.

The working fellow delivered an unpopular opinion, but no one objected to his remarks.

Now, roll the clock ahead 66 years to last week's two raucous Rhode Island gatherings on national health care.

Boorishness and shouting have replaced respect and civility. The meetings with members of the state's Washington delegation were magnets for a grab-bag of unfocused rage, much of it aimed at issues far afield from health-care.  There were folks protesting abortion, illegal immigration, the banking and auto company bailouts, socialism, President Obama and even the end of the gold standard.

The sight of zealots last Wednesday at Warwick City Hall screaming at Congressman Jim Langevin, a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic, wasn't pretty. And it wasn't civil or respectful.

What too often passes for public discourse has become so coarse that Rockwell and his World War II generation wouldn't recognize it.

People attend public meetings with the state's highest elected oficials _Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse also held a meeting last week _ and act as if they were auditioning for slots on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News shoutfest. Get in line, grab a microphone and maybe you will be the next Joe the Plumber.

It made one think of former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, who once said, "If you think the politicians are bad, well let me tell you, the people are no bargain."

On health care, most of the foolish behavior this time has come from the right, conservatives who do not not want further public involvement in health care or are still steamed about Obama's election.

But politicians always reap what they sow. For too many years, Democrats and liberals ran campaigns designed to scare the elderly against voting Republican, asserting that Republicans would toss Granny off Medicare and confiscate her Social Security check.

Now, Republicans and the right have adopted these Mediscare tactics, telling the infirm that their very lives will be in jeopardy if a Democratic health care overhaul becomes law.

At the meetings there were far too many rants and personal anecdotes and far too few intellectually honest questions. Some us would like to know what the government intends to do about the fact that, according to the federal CDC, thousands of  Americans die every year of hospital-acquired infections and medical errors that could be mitigated. Or, as an article in this month's Atlantic Magazine points out, why we have almost one health insurance company employee in this country for every two doctors.

An one has to wonder: How can the government can control costs when history shows that we have developed a bureaucratic system where medical services and provider reimbursements are negotiated with little regard for patient needs by government, large private institutions, insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants?

New England Town Meetings were designed to make decisions, the essence of participatory democracy. As Frank Bryan, a University of Vermont professor and Town Meeting expert, says, "The historical moral voice of town meeting comes not from citizens meeting to give advice or render opinions. It comes from people trusting themselves to govern themselves in person, to render collective decisions and to do it openly and face to face."

Thoreau called town meeting "the true congress...the most respectable one ever assembled in the United States."

At both gatherings in Rhode Island last week, a majority of those in attendance supported the Democratic health care plans. But you wouldn't have known that from the decibel level of the debate. Or the television coverage that focused on noisy confrontations.

So call these events anything you want. But one would be smart not to draw any cosmic conclusions from them. And please don't label them town meetings.

Scott MacKay's essay will run on Tuesday this week on Morning Edition instead of its usual Monday Morning Edition slot.