Civil Society, Conventional Wisdom

Let’s look at some violations of civil liberties.

  1. Secret police infiltrating crowds, provoking violence that the authorities use as a pretext to arrest and lock up hordes of innocent protesters.
  2. Dissenters are threatened with expulsion from school for voicing unpopular views, their grades suffering, their speakers barred from campuses – while mainstream “dissenters” and speakers with far more radical, divisive views are not only welcomed, but lauded.
  3. Protesters penned into tiny areas, far from the scene they’re trying to protest.
  4. Grass-roots groups forbidden from buying advertising related to their issues for weeks or months before a campaign.
  5. Protesters swept away from the locations and routes that the objects of their dissent will travel and stay in.
  6. Protesters kept across the street from the object of their demonstration, penned (under threat of arrest and incarceration) into a small, remote area, unable to make eye contact with those against (and for) whom they are demonstrating.
  7. Undercover cops and feds aggressively targeting dissenting groups who intend to commit “civil disobedience”.
  8. A right guaranteed under the Constitution is dishonored, shaved away, trampled underfoot.
  9. Saint Paul under lockdown, with any sign of political dissent seen as a cause to arrest and detain the “dissenter”.
  10. A government bureaucracy enforcing “balance” on the airwaves, forcing (under threat of governent sanction) radio stations to curtail partisan programming.

Can you tell the difference between these ten gross violations of civil liberty?

I can. 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 are things the fringe-left in the Twin Cities are positing as their worries for the Republican National Convention, which is coming up in about 18 months. All of them, in the fevered imaginations of these fringies, are like bayonets aimed at the civil liberties of left-of-center protesters who will gather in their hordes for the RNC. And all of them, as far as anyone knows, are pure imagination (beyond the measures the Secret Service takes to safeguard all presidents, regardless of their party).

2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are all real-life infringements on civil liberties that are in effect or proposed throughout and within the US right now – campus speech codes, McCain/Feingold, restrictions placed on anti-abortion protesters at Planned Parenthood clinics, gun control measures that attack the law-abiding gun owner, and the mainstream Democrat push to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine” to muzzle talk radio.

I don’t like any of them.

I just wanna make sure we’re clear on that.

———-

I’m a genuine civil libertarian. I’m a constitutional constructionist. I support all ten amendments in the Bill of Rights; hands off my speech, my church, my group, my firearms; keep your troops and unwarranted searches out of my house; don’t take my property, life or liberty without fair, due process, and keep your federal government out of my state, local and personal decisions.

I am demonstrably more fervent about genuine civil liberty than the vast majority of those who’ve been caterwauling about the issue since John Ashkkkroft was sworn in as Attorney General (before which most of them thought “libertarians” were toothless banjo-playing redneck tax protesters). I ran for office as a big-L Libertarian, in 1998). My credentials as a “civil rights first” conservative are vastly more solid than those of the “quit being rude to terror suspects” sect of the movement that’s been grabbing the headlines for the past few years.

So for the record; protest. Dissent. Go to the marketplace of ideas with vats of roiling ire.

And remember, always – your rights (like mine) end where mine begin. There is no right not to be offended (and have no fear, I’ll mix it up with any of you, and win every time, rhetorically speaking), and I certainly don’t ask not to be. Neither should you, of course.

———-

It should come as no surprise that the St. Paul City Council – dominated by a hard-left faction that makes Paul Wellstone look like Barry Goldwater – has officially rolled out the welcome mat for the demonstrators:

The St. Paul City Council says protesters will be welcome when the Republican National Convention comes to town.

The council agreed the city should greet protesters “with the same respect and honor accorded to conventioneers.” It voted unanimously Wednesday to create a special committee to oversee demonstrations.

I’m not aware that any convention city has ever passed a special resolution welcoming protesters – which, if true (please let me know if it’s not) sends the message that the City Council is partial to the protesters rather than the conventiongoers.

Which (take note, potential RNC delegates) should surprise nobody in this town.

But you’ll note that the resolution doesn’t differentiate between civil, peaceful protesters and the other kind; the kind that thinks violence is, itself, a statement; the kind that, awash in outrage at the Administration, thinks the ends justify the means; the kind that shows up at WTO meetings throwing rocks (like girls french soccer players) and trashing stores.

In fact, if you talk with the fringe-left as they voice their concerns for their own civil liberties, you’ll note that they never acknowledge that these people exist. Neither, for that matter, does the mainstream media in covering the “Anti-war” protest movement.

It’s almost as if they don’t want to know they exist.

You’d be forgiven for asking at this point “do they?”

Let’s talk about that tomorrow.

18 thoughts on “Civil Society, Conventional Wisdom

  1. The thing to remember is that the left has pledged violence against the delegates. Remember in NYC a lefty got a hold of the delegate list and where they are staying. Distributed it and encouraged his comrades to attack delegates. The same will happen hear.

    I may volunteer at the convention. If I am attacked and injured, can I sue Thune and the rest the dumbfucks on the St Paul city council?

  2. Go for it, Chuck.

    Mitch, I agree with everything you wrote except when you mentioned throwing rocks (like girls). Like Ann Coulter, who would never denigrate gays by comparing them to John Edwards, why denigrate girls by comparing them to leftist protesters?
    As a girl, I could be very offended but as a conservative, of course I am not.
    In the future, you may want to consider comparisons such as “like monkeys”, “like wussies”, “like eunuchs” or “like frenchmen” and leave us girls out of it.

  3. Oh dear, I think Chuck is frightened! Some anarchist may put out his eye with a hacky sack.

    Pussy.

  4. I don’t think you have to worry about being blind-sided, Chuck. From what I hear about these folks you will smell them long before they get into striking distance.

  5. First of all kids, I was being a little dramatic, not really worried about my safety. More just making a point about the moonbats on the St Paul city council inviting in potential domestic terrorists. And in Thunes case, saying he’ll joing them. Maybe if the NAACP ever meets here, Thune can invite and join Don Imus.

  6. Mitch:
    “all of them, as far as anyone knows, are pure imagination”. You are going to have to rethink 1 and 7 at least.

    From the March 25, 2007 NYT
    “For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

    From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show. ”

    As for #2, you got a case in mind?

  7. RickDFL, if this was the 1950’s/60’s, would you oppose Fed’l agents from going undercover to try to head off KKK violence?

  8. #2 – the history of campus speech codes is crawling with examples.

    As to #7 – gathering intelligence on people who have stated an interest in disorder – listening to them, in other words – is one thing. #7 is about the paranoid delusion that undercover cops are going to be setting up groups to get taken down before the convention.

    Big difference.

  9. RickDFL, your reading comprehension skills need work.

    “Secret police infiltrating crowds, PROVOKING VIOLENCE that the authorities use as a pretext to arrest and lock up hordes of innocent protesters.”

    Where’s the provocation in observing public meetings? Given the violence exercised by some of these nutjobs in the past, a little reconnaissance gathering doesn’t strike me as a violation of any civil right.

  10. Apologies, RickDFL. I see you were commenting on #7. Now it’s my reading comprehension that’s being called into question.

    I would still argue that sitting in on public meetings doesn’t = “aggressively targeting.” Keeping tabs on groups who have historically viewed “civil disobedience” as an opportunity to throw stones through shop windows and go looting still stikes me as a logical course of action.

  11. It’s like this, Rick. If a breakaway NRA sect called for “civil” disobedience to include seriously disrupting the lives and activities of people not party to their demonstration, I’d expect the police to at least *pay attention*; in fact, I’d expect there to be major repercussions if they hadn’t.

    You do get the distinction between “listening” and “actively conniving to entrap, provoke or ensnare them”, don’t you?

  12. “Apologies, RickDFL. I see you were commenting on #7. Now it’s my reading comprehension that’s being called into question.”

    No problem.

  13. “But you’ll note that the resolution doesn’t differentiate between civil, peaceful protesters and the other kind; the kind that thinks violence is, itself, a statement; the kind that, awash in outrage at the Administration, thinks the ends justify the means; the kind that shows up at WTO meetings throwing rocks (like girls french soccer players) and trashing stores.”

    Meh. If you’re suggesting that a failure to include a caveat along the lines of, “Welcome everyone– except criminals!” means that the city council is somehow endorsing criminal behavior, I think your logic is pretty Nick Coleman-ish. When Bush says American troops are doing a great job in Iraq, failure to say, “Except that one who raped that girl and murdered her whole family,” doesn’t mean he endorses that behavior. Rejection of criminal behavior is implicit to legal authority.

    As far as the WTO– ever been to a WTO convention?

  14. Meh. If you’re suggesting that a failure to include a caveat along the lines of, “Welcome everyone– except criminals!” means that the city council is somehow endorsing criminal behavior, I think your logic is pretty Nick Coleman-ish.

    You actually have a point there – at least, in terms of what the public publicly knows about what the City Council knows.

    When Bush says American troops are doing a great job in Iraq, failure to say, “Except that one who raped that girl and murdered her whole family,” doesn’t mean he endorses that behavior. Rejection of criminal behavior is implicit to legal authority.

    True.

  15. As far as the WTO– ever been to a WTO convention?

    “You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.”
    — Samuel Johnson

  16. Saint Paul fought hard to get the RNC because of all the money the fat-cat delegates would bring to town. Which is a canard – conventions never bring in as much as people expect and nobody ever measures the losses to everybody else in town – but that’s the “conventional” wisdom (pardon the pun).

    If some protesters turn destructive and violent, I expect the city council’s final accounting will consider that to be the Republican delegates’ fault. Violence follows these guys everywhere so it’s their fault that our city is in flames. It’s certainly not our fault for rolling out the welcome mat for protesters we had every reason to expect would be destructive and violent.

    Mark my words.
    .

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