The dominant meme in the blogosphere the last couple of weeks has been to say that protests about health care reform are a unique and frightening development in American political discourse. It’s never been anything like this bad before! Or so we are told.

Unfortunately, not all memories are so short. FoxNews details a protest at a Bush event even way back in 2002 (long before the war in Iraq collapsed into unpopularity) where the far left exceeded even the worst antics that they now claim to be outraged about:

When Bush visited Portland, Ore., for a fundraiser, protesters stalked his motorcade, assailed his limousine and stoned a car containing his advisers. Chanting “Bush is a terrorist!”, the demonstrators bullied passers-by, including gay softball players and a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis.

One protester even brandished a sign that seemed to advocate Bush’s assassination. The man held a large photo of Bush that had been doctored to show a gun barrel pressed against his temple.

“BUSH: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE,” read the placard, which had an X over the word “ALIVE.”

Another poster showed Bush’s face with the words: “F— YOU, MOTHERF—ER!”

A third sign urged motorists to “HONK IF YOU HATE BUSH.” A fourth declared: “CHRISTIAN FASCISM,” with a swastika in place of the letter S in each word.

Protesters slashed the tires of several state patrol cruisers and leapt onto an occupied police car, slamming the hood and blocking the windshield with placards. A female police officer was knocked to the street by advancing protesters, badly injuring her wrist.

The angry protest grew so violent that the Secret Service was forced to take the highly unusual step of using a backup route for Bush’s motorcade because the primary route had been compromised by protesters, one of whom pounded his fist on the president’s moving limousine.

All the while, angry demonstrators brandished signs with incendiary rhetoric, such as “9/11 – YOU LET IT HAPPEN, SHRUB,” and “BUSH: BASTARD CHILD OF THE SUPREME COURT.” One sign read: “IMPEACH THE COURT-APPOINTED JUNTA AND THE FASCIST, EGOMANIACAL, BLOOD-SWILLING BEAST!”

Of course, since the source is FoxNews, some on the left will claim that this is an example of news bias. But can’t the same be said about the left-leaning sources that are hyping up the faux rage about “teabaggers” and “birthers” and “astroturfing”? Rage and violence are features of both extremes, they aren’t some scary new monsters cooked up by the far right like some of the same folks who eagerly participated in anti-Bush extremism pretend them to be.

UPDATE: It looks like even some of the “Nazis” in the current protests might be left-wing plants. That would mean even part of the right-wing extremism is coming from the same left wing that invented the whole genre in the 1960s.