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This Is What We Should Not Do
This is an example of what I don’t want.
Protesters disrupted a Shakespeare production in Central Park on Friday night shouting, “The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands!” and “Stop leftist violence,” according to reports.
A woman identifying herself on social media as Laura Loomer jumped on stage shouting, “Stop the normalization of political violence against the right,” and, “This is violence against Donald Trump.”
Fellow protestor Jack Posobiec, who taped her from the audience, then shouted, “You are all Goebbles,” referring to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Loomer was arrested following the incident when she refused to leave the scene, The New York Times reported. She posted video of her protest on Twitter.
We on the right should not be breaking the law in order to shut down what we consider to be offensive speech. That’s the left’s shtick. We need to be respecting the right of free expression, even when it offends us — and then using that right to push back against the left.
Rather than trying to shut down the juvenile assassination-porn the left enjoys, let’s say some things that we believe, but that we know offend the left.
In my case, that means saying things like “the trans movement is nonsense, an unhealthy pandering to emotionally challenged individuals who need counseling, not surgery.” Or “men and women are different, and feminism has tried to fool women into believing that that isn’t true, depriving them of their uniqueness in its efforts to persuade them to be ersatz males, men-lite.” Or “the Black Lives Matter movement is ugly racism founded on a lie about the nature of anti-black violence in America, directing attention away from the real crisis of violence in the black community by scapegoating police instead of acknowledging the disintegration of the black family.” Or “same-sex marriage is legal, but it isn’t normal and it isn’t ideal. Children benefit from having good role models of, and the support from, both a father and a mother.” Or “the Russia story is a nothingburger, a desperate effort to deprive the people of the choice they made in a fair election because that choice offends the leftist establishment.”
Etc.
Don’t suppress speech. Use it.
Published in General
I have no problem with what the protestors said: I totally agree with what they said, but even if I disagreed with it, I wouldn’t discourage them from speaking. I disagree with what the protestors did. See, I make a big distinction between words and actions; you seem to blur that distinction quite a bit.
It gets into a gray area. I’ve been at public events where there is information saying that people who do X will be asked to leave. I imagine the organizers of such events like to reserve the right to file charges, too, if state and local ordinances permit.
But it gets to be a contest. If they come down too hard on the protester, they end up looking like bullies and alienate support they need. If they don’t come down hard enough, it makes it hard for them to please the majority of their customers. The protesters also have to decide how far to go. If they disrupt too much, they end up alienating support for their cause from quarters whose support they need. If they handle it just right, they call attention to their cause and perhaps draw sympathy. There are as lot of factors that can work either way, so the outcome is risky. There is no clear, hard line. This is perhaps as it should be.
No charges were filed against the two Trump assassination protesters for their protest. That could be because there was no basis for filing charges, or it could be because the people running the show thought it would be counterproductive. But after they left the theater, one of the two protesters refused to leave the area, and I guess that crossed some line. She was arrested. Maybe she was trying to figure out what to do to get arrested; I don’t know if anybody has asked her that question. There is some evidence that the two were hoping to play the martyr, and the play owners were trying not to give them that satisfaction. Like I say, it gets to be a big game. There is no bright line dividing legitimate from illegitimate protest. And how could there be?
When I was bitten by a dog in March, the animal control officer told me I could come down hard on the owners if I wanted, but it would mean a misdemeanor charge and a criminal record. (It was the second time the dog had come after me.) I didn’t want to do that, since the owners are people in my own community, and I’d rather that we work these things out. The owner promised me personally that I can ride my bicycle past his place without having to fear that the dog will come after me again. Today when I rode past there was no sign of the dog, but I had my little container of dog mace ready just the same, as I have each time since that day in March. As in the case of the assassination protesters, we work these things out without resorting to strict lines of legality.
That bothers some people’s sense of aesthetics. For that, I recommend counseling.
That’s fine if you disagree with their actions. I’m cool with that. What’s not so fine is insisting that everybody else should disagree, too.
I read your entire comment, and I agree: it gets into a gray area, determining when laws are and aren’t broken, when rights are and aren’t abridged.
But the presence of that gray area in, say, the case of the play in the park does not, of course, mean that it’s always gray. We have many examples of leftist protesters clearly breaking the law and infringing on the rights of others. We have Berkeley and Middlebury, to pick two recent examples, as well as Ferguson Missouri and, from a few years ago, a lot of World Trade Organization protests that turned ugly.
I’m perfectly willing to agree that there’s a blurry area between simply being loud, outspoken, and rude — behavior with which I sometimes approve — and actually infringing on other people’s legal rights. As long as we agree that we tolerate the former while condeming — and trying to avoid — the latter, I’m okay with that. Life is messy, and I get that. But there’s a big difference between making an occasional mistake and innocently crossing a line, on the one hand, and setting out to return tit for tat to people who clearly cross it with pride and, too often, impunity.
What I really want is for conservatives to start saying things to which liberals respond poorly, even violently. I have no problem at all with the left demonstrating their poor self control in response to verbal provocation.
That is a good point. I had been thinking of how to say something like that, but then just left it out.
Don’t start agreeing with me and being all buddy-buddy. I have my bona fides as a cantankerous old coot to maintain, and I need to keep up a head of steam.
I am not insisting that everybody has to agree with me; I am just saying why they should :)
There is place for civil disobedience; Martin Luther King comes to mind. But he and his followers were very, very, very disciplined and totally committed to the principles of non violence. It is likely that these two protestors at the play in NYC were also similarly committed to the principles of non violence, but clearly there are many who aren’t, and given the general atmosphere, I don’t agree with what they did.
I used to take acting lessons, and one of my professors had a saying: “Never break a rule unless you know exactly what you are doing.” MLK knew exactly what he was doing. Yes, he broke the law, but he did not do so lightly. Leftists break the law lightly. We should not be following their example, and if we do, we will be helping to further undermine the rule of law.
You have yet to show anyone’s first amendment rights being deprived.
If that’s how you choose to characterize it, that’s up to you.
Yeah, I support the protest too but not enthusiastically and not without limit. As I argued on the first page of comments.
Not to brag, but I was that even handed way back on the first page. Welcome to the position everyone else has been occupying, Henry.
Except that not everyone else has that position: did you read what @skyler said in comment #320? He isn’t advocating unprovoked violence yet, but he may do so in the future. You seem to be highly offended by the assertion that some of the comments on this thread seem to endorse violence; the people who actually made those comments do not seem to be offended by that assertion, and with the exception of Skyler, they have not yet accepted our invitation to clarify their meaning. Considering this, I don’t understand why you are so upset with Henry and Jamie and me.
I’m not offended or upset. Just pushing back on the broad brush and leap to conclusions based on this incident.
The leap to conclusions, as you put it, is not based on this incident; it’s based on what some people are saying about this incident, and given what some are saying, it’s not much of a leap.
Thank you. I haven’t actually changed my position, for what that’s worth.
As Judithann observes above, not everyone who has commented here does in fact share that position.
It’s American and it’s pathetic, as many things are (e.g. John Kerry). It was pathetic when the lefties were disrupting Trump rallies, and it’s pathetic when righties disrupt lefty events. That you favor interrupting lefty gatherings (freedom of association), interrupting their speech, then say
boggles the mind.
I’ll also note that Trump won, not despite the lefty interruptions, but because of the lefty disruptions, and the BLM and OWS protests of the preceding six years. If you want Trump to win again, you’d personally donate to the play, and live-stream it for all to see. This kind of stuff should be considered an in-kind donation to the Trump 2020 campaign.
The left’s embrace of violence in the sixties cost them five out of the next six Presidential elections. From 1968-1992 the left’s main victories were Nixon’s government agencies, Roe v Wade (3 Nixon justices approved), losing Vietnam, and HW Bush’s taxes. That’s it. They didn’t make progress in the “culture war”, and the only gains they got came from Republican failures. Why we’d look at that record and say “yeah, let’s try those tactics” is beyond me.