Ah, the signs: “Jesus was a socialist,” or “Fight the man’s healthcare system” on one side. On the other, “How about you pay for your healthcare and I’ll pay for mine?”

Add dozens of “NOT TRUE!” and “YOU LIE!” signs to the screaming and booing of the audience, and you’ve got the Athens Town Hall meeting Monday night on health care reform.

Rep. Paul Broun voluntarily ventured into the most liberal section of his district to hear what people thought about his conservative ideas for health care reform.

He heard all right: yelling, screaming and booing. Residents left him stuttering on stage like a nervous farmer trying to convince a herd of squealing pigs to board a truck headed for the slaughterhouse.

A few voices rose above the squealing. One woman from Britain, invited to the meeting by Rep. Broun’s wife, was speaking in a properly convincing English accent. She said it took two years for her elderly mother to get a hearing aid in the British public health system, and more than a year for her father to get cataract surgery.

A local man held up a Ziploc bag full of his own kidney stones, and explained he’d been painfully passing them for two years without any help from doctors or drugs. He angrily asked Broun what he was supposed to do when he had little money to pay for health care.

Peggie Davis, a former Marine who now works at a grocery store, offered her dim view of a health care system being run by a government that can’t keep the post office profitable. (She later was angrily approached by a Postal Service employee eager to defend the organization.) The marine-turned-grocery-clerk later told me she was tired of seeing “people talking on cell phones, with painted nails, buying $90 birthday cakes [with food stamps]. It isn’t right.”

I was filming the chaos for The Red & Black, and as I watched these people screaming and interrupting each other, I was proud but ashamed of my fellow citizens. I was glad to see the vibrant display of democracy, but sad to see discourse dissolve into rude shouting.

Davis told the group, “We are never going to fix health care with the kind of disrespect I’ve see.”

She was interrupted in mid-sentence by a group shouting at her.

One man grumbled “get a job” each time people said they couldn’t afford medical care. A University student chortled “public option!” each time Broun tried to speak.

The student told me if the Republicans are going to yell at other meetings, he’ll yell at this one. His friend agreed the best way to provide input was to scream. “The squeakiest wheel gets the grease,” he said.

Morgan Terrell, a self-described conservative University student, said she came to hear ideas, and through the shouting was able to hear several valid points raised by people with views opposed to her own. She said she planned to research them further. Thank God, I thought. It’s people like her who will fix health care – engaged citizens with level heads.

Are there any other level heads here at the University? Can we do a better job of discussing health care reform calmly and constructively than those so-called adults at the town hall? I’d like to try.

Bobby Andres, head of the Young Democrats, and Greg Wilson, leader of the College Republicans, have both held health care talks at their own meetings, inviting experts to preach to their respective choirs. I talked to both about holding a joint debate – and each blamed the other for why it hasn’t happened yet.

Well fellas, find a time, date and place and put it on this page. I’ll moderate. If you can’t make it happen, the campus community will see who truly chickens out.

The ball’s in your courts. But, please, use sportsmanlike conduct if you decide to put it in play.

- Marc McAfee is the online editor of The Red & Black