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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 anybody left or right staging a peaceful protest. I am totally against anybody on either the left or the right being violent or threatening violence in an attempt to shut down free speech.
Judithann,
I doubt that Robert is calling you a “gelding,” since that’s a castrated male “horse.” He does seem to be running through the list of castrated farm animals in what’s becoming a tiresome series of metaphors, though. Here’s a helpful reference list (in several languages) in case he comes up with any more with which to insult his fellow members, should one of the mods not get to them first.
Thanks, She ;)
Being “Alinsky’s acolytes” may work in the same way a cathartic might, but who’s gonna deal with the mess if we buy in, too?
You insulted them.
You insulted them.
Obviously, my instincts are with She on this, but I have to say that I’m intrigued by the counter argument. Do you mean that you literally believed that more than one person you were arguing with had been castrated? Have you had any contact with them off of Ricochet on which you based this belief?
Who is as violent or threatened violence at Trump Caesar? I saw the video and I didn’t see any of that.
Moderator Note:
Oddly enough, an insult elaborated can still be an insult.[Redacted.]
This is an example of why I think the moderation here is not good.
You should take a break from moderating. Of course the other time I said this, my comment was deleted within a couple of minutes, so this may be pointless feedback.
I didn’t see any of that, either. I thought the whole point was that it’s rude to interrupt a play that features assassination-porn of a republican president, and so conservatives shouldn’t do it, because civility.
When did it shift to using violence to suppress free speech?
So far, the violence always or virtually always comes from the left, but there are those who seem to be saying that conservatives should become violent as a way of fighting back; I am against that, though I acknowledge that at this point, violence on the right is almost totally a hypothetical. I believe that law enforcement should come down hard on leftists who try to shut other people down, and if conservatives start trying to shut other people down, then law enforcement should come down hard on them too.
I haven’t seen the video; it’s only a couple of people who tried to shut down the play, right? And because it was only a couple of people, what they did was only rude, though I have to admire them: they have guts, considering that there were only a couple of them. But if this sort of thing becomes popular, we could be dealing with whole stampedes of people storming liberal events, and at that point, it’s more than just rude. I am very aware that leftists do this all the time: I want law enforcement to come down hard on them. I believe in the rule of law: we shouldn’t throw out the rule of law to pit our mob against their mob.
I agree with you in principle, Judithann. But we’re not going to get law enforcement to come down on leftists. Their political masters think it’s cute when the left does it. They might give them a ride downtown and book them for disorderly conduct or something, and a leftist judge will give them a 30-day suspended sentence and 20 hours of community service (which they’ll serve by volunteering for some leftist outfit), if she doesn’t dismiss the charge completely (innocent due to the purity of their intent) and then they’ll get invited onto all the leftist “news” shows to discuss how “brave” they are.
If some right-wing protesters start disrupting things, maybe we’ll start seeing some teeth in these sorts of laws, because then it’ll no longer be cute.
That’s what the assassination-play protesters did. They didn’t suppress speech. They used it. They should be commended.
I understand what you are saying, but don’t count on it. One of my parents’ pro-life friends used to routinely get arrested in Operation Rescue protests: from what I could tell, it was always a slap on the wrist. She was arrested 17 different times, and met her second husband while being handcuffed to him.
Although, when I talk about law enforcement, I am thinking of people burning things down, smashing windows, etc….Those crimes should definitely come with more than just a slap on the wrist.
You used the plural. Did you intend to refer to just one person?
And, just to be clear, you’re claiming that you’re sincere in your testimony that you earnestly believed this?
What portion of Americans who advocate decency do you believe have been castrated? Are we talking about a million or ten million?
Yes, they should, but they won’t as long as it’s leftists doing the destruction. What was it the Baltimore mayor said? “We gave them space to destroy?”
I’m not calling for destruction from the right, but I am afraid it’s coming. Tut-tutting about a couple of right-leaning people interrupting a leftist orgy of anti-conservative “art”, as Henry is doing, makes it more likely that things will boil over into actual violence, IMO.
I believe the whole Trump phenomenon is largely due to a large segment of the population getting fed up with their concerns being shouted down or ignored by the cultural gatekeepers of both the right and left. There was no respectable outlet for their frustrations, so they elected Trump as a big middle finger to the oh-so-respectable, self-appointed cultural elite.
The respectable conservative opinion-makers are finding themselves listened to less than ever. If they want to make themselves even less relevant, a sure-fire way is to fall on their fainting couches at the slightest sign of incivility on the right, as the OP does.
I supported Donald Trump almost from day one. When I first saw him coming down that escalator, I didn’t think he stood a chance. I don’t remember when I actually started supporting him, but it didn’t take long. I have also lost all use for respectable conservative opinion makers, and I really do not like being grouped with them: I am coming at this from a different place, and while I cannot speak for @henryracette, I suspect that he is probably is too.
As someone who enthusiastically supports Donald Trump, I am not concerned about incivility and I don’t own a fainting couch :) But when conservatives start talking about giving liberals a taste of their own medicine, that is going into a very dark place, way beyond incivility, and I won’t be associated with it. Just because I like Donald Trump doesn’t mean I am going to join the dark side :)
I’m sorry if I offended you, and thanks for the explanation. I guess where we disagree is that I’m afraid it’s going to be necessary to give the left a taste of it’s own medicine. As long as they get to act however they want, secure in the knowledge that not only will their political leaders refuse to hold them to account, but that also we’ll refrain from responding in any effective way, they will continue to roll over us.
They’re bullies. I dealt with enough bullies in my youth to know that the only way to stop them is to give them back what they’re dishing out. As long as it’s all gain with no pain, they’ll never leave you alone. This goes double when the Principal refuses to punish them for their behavior.
This isn’t a freedom of speech issue. It’s a political battle. Tit-for-tat is fair play. Maybe this tactic won’t work for us as well as it does for the left, but if someone is willing to try it, I’ll cheer them on until it becomes obvious that it’s not working.
This made me smile: no worries, you did not offend me, at all :)
No one here wants to use violence except as self-defense. That is the only proposition towards violence that I have seen uttered here. While it is danced around in abstract ways, only once was it directly said (he knows who he is =p) There is some push by the ones calling for a fight for people to recognize the danger and to prepare themselves for a very real reality that it may actually come to defending themselves from violence with violence. Because it hasn’t been directly said, there’s a lot of insinuation going on that is not warranted.
What I want (and I think others as well) is for us to figure out how to marginalize the left’s speech the way we have marginalized a portion of the right. And we have done it… with the Left’s help. We did it the same way the left did it – to people too far right for our own tastes.
We did it to Birchers, we nearly did it to Goldwater supporters, we are currently doing it to the alt-right. Same exact tactics that the left uses to marginalize main-stream conservative thought, we use to marginalize those.
What I want to see is us turn that on the left.
These protestors did that. They didn’t use violence. They were assertive and spoke up. For that, we are marginalizing instead of backing up their assertion. And the assertion is that this play is distasteful and out of the realm of civility. But us simply standing on our soap boxes in our blogosphere, forums, and choirs isn’t going to do anything. They took the message directly to them in a manner that was quite hard to ignore.
Learn.
@terrymott: you are talking as though we lost the election. You seem to think for some reason that we are on the losing side, and you believe that violence is working for the left. I am mystified by this. We just destroyed them in an election. Why are you so convinced that we are losing and that what they are doing works?
Our elected officials are acting like they lost the election because they still kowtow to the left. They are more concerned about how the media will paint them than actually acting like people voted for them.
Which is odd, because the media hasn’t let up on conservatives in 10 years, yet they keep winning elections. You’d think at some point, they’d figure out the people voting for them aren’t paying much attention to what the mass media is saying.
That play was marginalized from its inception: it was destined to be marginalized, it was marginalized before those protestors came along, and it would have continued to be marginalized without any help from them. Yes, the protestors took the message directly to liberals, but liberals aren’t listening. Liberals really, seriously don’t get how marginalized they are becoming, and that’s ok. We don’t need them to understand.
In comment #48, @robertmcreynolds said that he wanted to give liberals a taste of their own medicine. That sounds like more than self defense to me.
I don’t see Donald Trump kowtowing to the left: all in all, I am happy with him. I can do without Paul Ryan, would like to see him replaced with somebody like Tom Cotton. But we should be devoting our energy to putting endlessly more and more pressure on our elected officials; we should not be devoting energy to “taking the message” to a bunch of totally clueless liberals.
In previous comments he has stated that how that looks is responding directly to violence directed at him. That is self-defense. He pretty much laid it out.
That’s what the counter-protestors have been doing at Berkley. They look like they are being the aggressors, dressed up in reinforced sports helmets and pads, holding sticks and garbage can shields, but the violence they have largely engaged in has been in direct response to violence initiated by antifa Fascists.
The only reason why they are there is to protect the unarmed, unprotected people trying to attend rallies while the police just stands there and watches antifa throw bike locks at people’s heads.
That’s another thing – that professor who threw the bike lock? The only reason why he is being punished for it is because some of the people we have marginalized hunted the guy down and turned his information to the police and publicized it on YouTube. The professor would have gotten away with it otherwise.
There are portions of the alt-right which should be marginalized. Is the alt-right prepared to marginalize its own dregs in order to win mainstream support?
It’s simply unreasonable for people of goodwill to support the alt-right if the alt-right isn’t prepared to do this.
Hey look!
What about that free speech?
Stina: I think you are getting very caught up in a sideshow. We are fighting for America here, not Berkley. There are lots of ways to deal with what is going on at Berkley; showing up there with a stick is I think not a good way of dealing with it and will not make anything better.
When is the last time you called or wrote to your elected representatives, or showed up at a town hall meeting, or attended a Trump rally? Doing any of these things is, I guarantee you, far more effective than cheering on misguided people who show up at riots to defend themselves.