The health-care debate is so serious, so crucial to our nature’s future. Many of us have serious concerns about what the mammoth bill now before the Senate would do the health-care system, the nation’s economy, and to all of us. The issues raised by opponents of the bill aren’t frivolous and deserved to be heard. That is why I am dismayed by an Organizing for America email charging that “big insurance company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the status quo.

”So I have a message for them, from all of us: Not this time. We have come too far. We will not turn back. We will not back down.” This is macho, and it is in harmony with the tone of much of what is happening on Capitol Hill. But it is not the way to discuss something this important—especially as most of the criticism of the bill has not consisted of relentless attacks but rather of please to have a real conversation.