Grandfather of teens who killed after breaking into a man’s house, threatening his life and health, complains that the homeowner had an “unfair advantage” in the three-on-one fight because he had an AR15:

They got into a confrontation with the man who owned the home. Moments later the homeowner’s son emerged with an AR-15 and killed all three criminals.

Now the grandfather of one of the criminals is saying it wasn’t fair that the homeowner had an AR-15.

He says that it gave the homeowner an unfair advantage.

Oh, no.  One middle-class schlub has an advantage over three thugs who came equipped to deal him a three-on-one beatdown.   How horrible.

That is, of course, the point behind “assault weapons”; to not run out of bullets before your enemy runs out of attacks.

(Disclaimer for the record:  I would never shoot a human, even in self-defense, and I’d never own a gun, because they terrify me).

SCENE:   Press conference where a Free Speech Rally is being announced for the Minnesota state capitol grounds.   A group of reporters is questioning the organizers of the rally – Madison JAMES, Tyrone JEFFERSON, and Jorge WASHINGTON.

WASHINGTON:   …So to sum up, we will hold our Free Speech rally at precisely noon.  We have our permit, and we are ready to stand up for the free speech rights of all Minnesotans and all Americans.

JEFFERSON:  Even those we don’t agree with.

JAMES:  We’ll now take questions.   (Sees hands rising, points to a sallow endomorph in his late forties with severe acne).  Yes.

REPORTER 1:  I’m Edmund DuChey, from “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”.  So your rally of Nazis and White Supremacists…

WASHINGTON:  Yeah, you can stop right there.  As noted before, this rally specifically denounces the American Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and everyone who would actively curtail the rights of others based on their ethnicity, religion or anything else.

JAMES:  And we’ve specifically disinvited them from the rally, and are ready to enforce that.

JAMES:  Next question.

REPORTER 2:  Walter Lennon-Marks from Minnesota Public Radio.  I notice that you have not disinvited people who plan on carrying firearms, concealed or openly, from the rally.

JEFFERSON:  That’s correct.

LENNON-MARKS:  Don’t you find that intimidates other speech?

WASHINGTON:  I find that it most definitely intimidates those who would threaten our rally with violence like “Anti”-Fa did in San Francisco.

JEFFERSON:  Or those who would act on those threats, as “Anti”-Fa did in Boston, and clearly plan to elsewhere.    Inducing them to keep their speech non-violent is a feature, not a bug.

JAMES:  Next question?

REPORTER 3:   Yes – Yvette Stahlen from the Star Tribune.  Why do all three of you make the scare quotes with your fingers whenever you say the “anti” in “Antifa?”

WASHINGTON:  Because they are “against fascism” in exactly the same way the Bloods are against the Crips, or the Gambinos were “against” the Luccheses.   These are two sides of the same noxious, anti-democratic, anti-freedom, pro-totalitarian coin.

STAHLEN:  But my editors’ oldest daughter is a member of Antifa, and has been ever since zhe graduated from Oberlin.

WASHINGTON:   (Walks down from the stage with a microphone, hands it to STAHLEN).  Here.

STAHLEN:  What do you want me to do with this.

WASHINGON:  Drop it for me.  I couldn’t possibly have ended this better than you did.

(And SCENE)

For years, the “Southern Poverty Law Center” has been slandering perfectly legitimate conservative organizations, smearing them as “hate groups”.

The practice hit home a few years back, when they called the “Taxpayers League of Minnesota” a “hate group”. Their “hate” was, apparently, manifested by getting lawmakers to pledge not to raise taxes – because taxes, apparently, are love.

Most slandered people can’t fight back, as I found out myself a few years back; it’s expensive, courts err very sharply on the side of free speech (which is a good thing in the great scheme of things, of course), and even if you “win” in court, the judge can rule that a retraction and apology will suffice (as I myself was told in 2012 by a lawyer, who told me I had a very strong defamation case against an online stalker – provided I came up with a $20K retainer and accepted the fact that there was a very strong chance of a legal victory with no financial payback whatsoever).  B

But with all that aside, it’s good to see someone  taking it to the fake watchdog group

On Tuesday, D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM) filed a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the charity navigation organization GuideStar, and Amazon for defamation, religious discrimination, and trafficking in falsehood. The SPLC listed DJKM as a “hate group,” while GuideStar also categorized it in those terms, and Amazon kept the ministry off of its charity donation program, Amazon Smile.

“We embarked today on a journey to right a terrible wrong,” Dr. Frank Wright, president and CEO at DJKM, said in a statement Tuesday. “Those who knowingly label Christian ministries as ‘hate’ groups, solely for subscribing to the historic Christian faith, are either woefully uninformed or willfully deceitful. In the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center, our lawsuit alleges the latter.”

The SPLC has labeled DJKM an “anti-LGBT hate group” for its opposition to same-sex marriage and transgenderism.

I’m hoping Kennedy wins and wins huge.

If I can find a place to donate to the legal fund, I’ll post it after I donate.

It’s not quite a Berg’s Law, but it’s getting close; if violence breaks out between the left and the right, and the media claims not to know who started it?  The left started it.  And if they claim the right started it, without absolute dead to rights evidence?  The left started it.

Maybe a corollary to Berg’s Seventh Law.

Was Charlottesville painstakingly engineered by Charlottesville’s Democrat government?  .

Maybe.  I am not quite ready to nail this down into the “Setup” category – I’d like some on-the-record sources.

But as Joe Doakes noted the other day, the “Anti”-Fa had a demonstration permit – that they had to violate to attack the “White Supremacists”, who were apparently in their permitted area.  Because that’s why they give out permits for demonstrations; to keep them apart.

So if “Anti”-Fa had a permit, they broke the rules to get to the “White Supremacists”.  And if they didn’t, they broke the rules to get to the “White Supremacists”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Logical argument does not persuade people. We know this from conversations with Liberals in everyday life. They are motivated by rhetorical and emotional appeals.

That’s why this new campaign is so effective.  Somebody borrowed the anti-fascists slogan to use on posters.  The posters have an emotional impact that turns people against the slogan.  “Punch a Nazi” becomes synonymous with domestic abuse.  It makes clear that all people who employ violence are evil-doers.

 

Genius

Joe Doakes

Interesting – just as I opened Joe’s email, I was thinking “perhaps ridicule is the answer to “Anti”-Fa.

But Joe’s right.  It is an ingenious campaign.  Or will be provided that Big Left doesn’t excuse domestic violence “for all the right reasons’ too…

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air live from the Minnesota State Fair!

Today’s  show isn’t just big.  It’s not just huge.  It’s bigly yuge!

Today on the show:

• Jennifer Carnahan, Chair of the MNGOP
• Bridget Cronin of the  Ars Bellum Foundation, which works on providing art therapy for wounded warriors
• Dave Osmek, candidate for Governor
• Jake Dusenberg of “Action for LIberty”
• Twilia Brase of the Citiziens Council for Health Freedom
• Jason Flors of Americans for Prosperity.

Too much program for two hours?  In the lands of a lesser host, yes, but not me.  Tune in, or join us at our studio at the Fair, on Machinery Hill (Underwood just south of Murphy, two blocks south of Hoyt).

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

What happens when you try to solve a problem by creating a bureaucracy full of rent-seeking, graft-splitting government sinecures designed mostly to provide a steady income to unelected members of the political class?

Well, the problem doesn’t go away, if that’s what you’re wondering about.

After fifteen years of exquisitely expensive “effort to address the achievement gap” in the Saint Paul schools…

…oh, do I even need to say it?

Fifteen years into a nationwide push to provide every student with an equal education, Minnesota schools have grown more segregated and the state’s nation-leading academic achievement gap refuses to close.

Minnesota now has more than 200 schools where students of color make up 90 percent or more of the enrollment, state data shows. That’s more than double what the state had in 2002, when the federal No Child Left Behind Act reinvigorated the national campaign for school equity.

If it doesn’t involve blowing up enemies or prosecuting offenders, then everything government does pretty much involves transferring money to bureaucrats.

Reuters calls “Anti”-Fa “Peace Activists”:

It appears @Reuters has deleted their PEACE ACTIVIST tweet. Internet is forever. What will they now label their heroes? #Phoenix #Trump pic.twitter.com/csP24qlcKt

— Kristine ❀♡❀♡ (@KristineAz) August 23, 2017

Reuters: rapidly catching up with CNN at introducing Duckspeak to their style guide.

UPDATE: The tweet was apparently spiked. Which tells us as much as the original tweet…

It’s quiz time!

Is the following passage one of my hamfisted parodies of Minnesota “progressives?”  Or an actual bit of “Progressive” content?

Lefse and kale wraps, kombucha tasting with Garrison Keillor and an artisan-crafted hotdish featuring organic, locally sourced tofu are just a few things that could bring people from Minneapolis and Los Angeles together. Are there more? You betcha. Both cities are filled with creative, progressive people who make their communities better and more inclusive for everyone. We have a lot in common.

It’s never been more important for all of us to work together—in cities all over the country. Whether you’re a Minnesotan who immigrated to Los Angeles or a native Angelino who happens to know the Twin Cities as some of coolest places on Earth, I hope you’ll join me for a fundraiser supporting the reelection of Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges. She’ll be there, along with Mayor Eric Garcetti and David Stone from William Morris Endeavor, who are the co-hosts for this event at the Wilshire Country Club.

Answer:   It’s an actual bit from Betsy Hodges’ website.   So it’s not, technically parody.

Technically.

(Thanks to Swiftee for the tip)

This email was circulated at Berkeley earlier this week, according to an acquaintance of mine:

 “Dear Students, Faculty and Staff,

This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways. Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and mayhem, make the issue of free speech even more tense. The law is very clear; public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view. The United States has the strongest free speech protections of any liberal democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious, and the courts have consistently upheld these protections.

But the most powerful argument for free speech is not one of legal constraint—that we’re required to allow it—but of value. The public expression of many sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university. The philosophical justification underlying free speech, most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions. The first is that truth is of such power that it will always ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent. Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it.

Berkeley, as you know, is the home of the Free Speech Movement, where students on the right and students on the left united to fight for the right to advocate political views on campus. Particularly now, it is critical that the Berkeley community come together once again to protect this right. It is who we are.

Nonetheless, defending the right of free speech for those whose ideas we find offensive is not easy. It often conflicts with the values we hold as a community—tolerance, inclusion, reason and diversity. Some constitutionally-protected speech attacks the very identity of particular groups of individuals in ways that are deeply hurtful. However, the right response is not the heckler’s veto, or what some call platform denial. Call toxic speech out for what it is, don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech. Respond to hate speech with more speech.

We all desire safe space, where we can be ourselves and find support for our identities. You have the right at Berkeley to expect the university to keep you physically safe. But we would be providing students with a less valuable education, preparing them less well for the world after graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find wrong, even dangerous. We must show that we can choose what to listen to, that we can cultivate our own arguments and that we can develop inner resilience, which is the surest form of safe space. These are not easy tasks, and we will offer support services for those who desire them.

This September, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos have both been invited by student groups to speak at Berkeley. The university has the responsibility to provide safety and security for its community and guests, and we will invest the necessary resources to achieve that goal. If you choose to protest, do so peacefully. That is your right, and we will defend it with vigor. We will not tolerate violence, and we will hold anyone accountable who engages in it.

We will have many opportunities this year to come together as a Berkeley community over the issue of free speech; it will be a free speech year. We have already planned a student panel, a faculty panel and several book talks. Bridge USA and the Center for New Media will hold a day-long conference on October 5; PEN, the international writers’ organization, will hold a free speech convening in Berkeley on October 23. We are planning a series in which people with sharply divergent points of view will meet for a moderated discussion. Free speech is our legacy, and we have the power once more to shape this narrative.

Sincerely,

Carol Christ

Chancellor”

Twin Cities far-left doesn’t trust the left-wing media, creates its own.

Distrust of the news media has permeated recent protest movements in Minnesota and nationwide. It’s changed the way groups spread their message. When organizations like Black Lives Matter have something to say, they’ll put it on Facebook or Twitter instead of going to a news outlet.

On social media, there’s little filter of information, [Hah Hah Hah – Ed.] and the groups can control the entirety of their message instead of handing it off to a reporter to present it.

Activists say news organizations have a history of unequally or inaccurately representing minority groups, which they say contributes to systemic oppression. That makes nontraditional groups like Unicorn Riot an easier source for social justice movements to trust.

There’s no question that the local mainstream media favors the big, institutional left – read “DFL”.

I suspect that’s more a matter of convenience (and the fact that most activists are terrible sources).

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is looking through the stacks at Midway Used Books.  G. Wellington BENBRIDGE-GELLER – better known to his social circle and fellow ‘Anti-Fascist Action Macalester” colleagues as “Wookie” – comes around the corner.  BENBRIDGE-GELLER, age 25, a graduate of Carlton College (BA Anthropology and Women’s Studies), is dressed in black from head to toe, including a black hoodie splotched with home-painted slogans, over a “Che Guevara” t-shirt – the only color in his mien.  He carries a gas mask and a bottle of bear spray in an NPR tote bag.  

BENBRIDGE-GELLER:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:  Uh, hey, “Wookie”.  What’s up?

BENBRIDGE-GELLER:  Fascist symbols are, themselves, a threat of violence to their targets, and thus justify violence in response.

BERG:  Meaning what?

BENBRIDGE-GELLER: It’s time to Punch a Nazi.

BERG:  Huh.  And you can tell Nazis by…

BENBRIDGE-GELLER:  Swastikas.  Brown shirts.  Make America Great Again caps.  GOP elephants.

BERG:  So, pretty much anyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi, so you feel you have leave to punch pretty much anyone.

BENBRIDGE-GELLER:  Yep.

BERG:  That means if anyone sees you, as you are an immediate threat to them, they can respond violently to you, then, as you are an immediate threat to them?

BENBRIDGE-GELLER:  Nope.  (Stops for a moment).  Hey – aren’t you a conservative talk show host?

(BENBRIDGE-GELLER winds up to kick BERG, but BERG reacts first, emptying a container of CS spray into his BENBRIDGE-GELLER’s face.  The younger guy falls to the floor, screaming, as BERG squirts the last remnants of the bottle at BENBRIDGE-GELLER’s head.  He tosses the empty bottle container, hitting the younger man in the face, and then grabs the reading stool and brings it down on BENBRIDGE-GELLER’s solar plexus before turning to walk out of the store.  A couple of patrons look at him, shocked)

BERG:  What?  You’re expecting a mildly sarcastic comic send-off to the bit?

(Bystanders go back to shopping as BERG pays for a couple copies of King and Country, and leaves store). 

And SCENE.

Moms Want Action has been doing its research:

Only five go go!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The starting pay for order takers at Minnesota fast food joints will increase to nearly $10 per hour next year.

In completely unrelated news, fast food joints are replacing order takers with touch screens.  Customers like them better.  And they’re cheaper long-term.

Proof that Liberals were right all along – raising the minimum wage does not loweremployment rates.   For the people who make touch screens.

Joe Doakes

Unfortunately, that’s not the lesson that’ll be broadcast…

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is waiting to speak to a manager at O’Gara’s about some entertainment business.  

Avery LIBRELLE walks into the bar, holding a tin cup, seeking donations for Carlton students with “Triggering Fatigue”.  LIBRELLE notices BERG.

LIBRELLE:  MERG!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Avery. How ya doing?

LIBRELLE:  Fascists are launching that wave of violence.

BERG:  Actually, it’s “Anti”-Fa’s blackshirts that are actually doing the violence.

LIBRELLE:  Har di har!

BERG:  Remember that episode last March, where a permitted group of Trump supporters were…

LIBRELLE:  …where they encountered a group of anti-Fascists who were just minding their own business, and the blame was on both sides.

BERG:  That’s your story, and you’re sticking with it?

LIBRELLE:  Of course.  It’s settled science.  Neil DeGrasse Tyson says so.

BERG:   Yeah, not so much.  One of the snowflakes involved in the attack took the deal.    And as part of the deal, he had to admit on the record what happened.  Here, let me read fro this bit from Alphanews:

Sagermerek, who initially pled not guilty during his first court appearance, told the court he “maced someone” and had intentions of disturbing the peace when affirming he would plead not guilty.

However, when Taheri and Sagermerek went over the events of the March 4 Trump rally, Sagermerek contradicted himself by stating that he intended to counter-protest peacefully, though he later admitted to carrying mace in his pockets.

Describing Trump supporters as protesters and the alt-right, Sagermereck told the court he was covered head-to-toe in black, wearing a studded jacket and bandana over his face, that he arrived with several other people.

Acknowledging Trump supporters had built a wall to keep counter-protesters away from their event, Sagermereck told the court that is when he grabbed the canister of mace and “sprayed it at one of the Trump supporters.” He announced the attack to be one that was “unprovoked and not in defense.”

Seven other counter-protesters have been charged and are currently awaiting trial.

LIBRELLE:  Ah.  So the Trump supporters tried to keep the counter-protesters…

BERG:  …in their bandanas and blackshirt-wear…

LIBRELLE:  …away from their demonstration?   Well, there you go.  Hate crime.

BERG:  Of course it is.

But LIBRELLE has already walked to the other bar to try to order a gluten-free diet Pepsi. 

And SCENE.

The builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline are suing the racket of “environmental” groups that spent half a year obstructing their work:

From last summer through the first couple of months of 2017 there was an all-out assault on the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Protesters, summoned to rural south central North Dakota by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and a myriad of environmental groups, blocked roads and set fires and harassed pipeline workers all in an attempt derail the project.

It didn’t work. Oil flows through the Dakota Access Pipeline today, but the State of North Dakota did run up a $38 million bill for the law enforcement response.

Anyway, today Energy Transfer Partners (the company behind DAPL) filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing some of the environmental groups involved in the protests of racketeering.

For all the fawning coverage MInnesota Public Radio gave the protests and protesters, I’m almost amazed they weren’t named as co-respondents.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’ve used the Uber ride-share app. I like it. Uber sent me an email to reassure me that they were standing up against hate, in accordance with their community guidelines. Here’s what the community guidelines say about discrimination:
“Discrimination

Uber has a zero tolerance policy towards discrimination of any kind. This means you will lose access to your account if you are found to have discriminated against drivers or other riders based on their race, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, gender identity, age or any other characteristic protected under applicable law.” (Emphasis added.)
Their company, their rules; but I don’t think their standards give them a basis to deactivate anybody’s account based on marching in a permitted parade in compliance with the terms of a federal court order. It’s creeping totalitarianism. We won’t do business with people whose opinions we don’t like.

Ritual posturing. Virtue signaling. Annoying. Enough to switch to Lyft?

Joe Doakes

I switched to Lyft for many other reasons – the rates are competitive, they screen their drivers better (and pay them better to boot).

But if I wanted another reason, I got one.

…but it’s not.  It’s really not.

If only it were.

On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will arrive mid-morning on the coast of Oregon. The moon’s shadow will be about 70 miles wide, and it will race across the country faster than the speed of sound, exiting the eastern seaboard shortly before 3 p.m. local time. It has been dubbed the Great American Eclipse, and along most of its path, there live almost no black people.

Dum Dum DUMMMMMMMMM…

Presumably, this is not explained by the implicit bias of the solar system.

Whew.  For a moment there, I thought the “writer” might be deranged.

It is a matter of population density, and more specifically geographic variations in population density by race, for which the sun and the moon cannot be held responsible. Still, an eclipse chaser is always tempted to believe that the skies are relaying a message.

Yeah.  We are.

As the “Writer” – one Alice Ristroph, who is apparently a law professor, and no, I don’t believe that’s a real name either – notes, there’s a message.  But he got the wrong one.

Not only did the eclipse pass through mostly white country – it passed over relatively few liberals.

It’s a sign.

(Does anyone else remember when the Atlantic wasn’t screamingly stupid?)

A judge in Steubenville, PA was ambushed outside a courthouse – and returned fire:

[Jefferson County Common Pleas Judge Joseph ] Bruzzese was shot in an ambush-style attack outside the Jefferson County Courthouse on his way into his office Monday morning.

County officials said the courthouse, which was closed today as the investigation progresses, will remain closed Tuesday.

Mavromatis said the family of the shooter, who was shot and killed by a probation officer who happened upon the exchange of gunfire between the shooter and the judge, has been notified.

The shiooter was counting on the judge being a helpless victim.

It’s so fun when they’re wrong.  Not for them, of course.

Good thing the professionals cover the news.

Like the Associated Press:

Great balls of incompetence.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Trump said only one side had a permit to be at the rally in Emancipation Park.  The Left jumped all over that – it’s a lie, the counter-protesters had a permit, too.

No, they didn’t.  Their permit is for two different parks, a couple of blocks away.  When they left their permitted area to go to the other side’s permitted area, they were acting without a permit, exactly as Trump said.

Trump is correct.  The Left is lying.  Again.

Who’s got my shocked face?  I need it back.

Joe Doakes

When the left started jabbering that the “counterprotestes” had a permit, my BS detector started howling.   Permits exist to prevent confrontations.  That’s why protests are supposed to get them.

Back in the eighties, I interviewed a group called the “Backroom Anarchist Center”. They were a bunch of dissipate university students who had a clubhouse in South Minneapolis, and used to roam about demonstrating against stuff – provided it was conservative stuff. I booked several of their leaders on my old KSTP show, which ran from 2-4 AM on weekends. Their phone numbers were all – every last one – from the nicer parts of Edina, Minnehaha Parkway and Woodbury. These “anarchists” were inevitably the children of immense privilege; their parents were professors, non-profiteers, insurance salespeople – *not* hot tar roofers and truck drivers. I never kept track of any of ’em, but I suspect they’re doing just fine socially and financially today.

The President took a lot of flak after his first response to Charlottesville for criticizing all violence at the riot, “right” and left.   “Don’t lump Nazis together with “Anti”-Fa”, Big Left bellowed in unison.  “They’re good kids, and they mean well, and they’re attacking evil people”.

I didn’t vote for Trump – and I’m going to criticize his false equivalence in this case.

“Anti”-Fa is much worse than the Nazis, is a much greater danger to our society, and deserves far greater condemnation.

There are three reasons:

• “Anti”-Fa has a long history of violence against peaceful demonstrators
• “Fascists” are the fringe of the fringe (rhetoric aside)
• “Anti”-Fa actually has power.

The Road Goes On Forever, And The Party Never Ends:  If your entire awareness of the battle between “far-right” lunacy and left-wing violence started with Charlottesville – and for many, it clearly did – you might think that both sides are about the same.

Of course, there’s a long, ugly history of “Anti”-Fa attacks on “fascists”.

Unfortunately, in most of those cases the “Fasicsts”, weren’t, outside the “Everyone we don’t like is a “fascist”” sense of the term.   They were Trump supporters (no, not the same thing), Republicans, even left-leaning college professors who made the mistake of standing up for free speech.

The bottom of the barrel – so far – came in Boston over the weekend.  About fifty people – bipartisan free-speech advocates who had expressly disinvited all extremists – held a free speech rally at Boston Common.  They were by thousands of “counterprotesters”, led by a gang of blackshirted “Anti”-fa screaming “F**k Free Speech”.  Violence was had.

The media didn’t care, naturally.

It was similar to the March 4th Trump rally at the Minnesota state Capitol, where “Anti”-Fa blackshirts came to a peaceful, permitted rally with masks, mace and weapons at the ready;  they attacked the crowd of  middle-aged, workadaddy, hugamommy Trump supporters; they sucker-punched a seventeen year old girl, they hit an older woman in the head with a burning smoke bomb, they bear-sprayed a group of people resisting them in the face.

This, of course, put a lot of people in a mind to either avoid rallies, or to meet fire with fire – both of them goals of all extremists.

There’s been a sold year-long buildup to the idea of fighting back against the Blackshirts.

The Blues Brothers Said It Best:  This may be the only time I ever compliment Hollywood.  Ever.

In the wake of the 1979 Nazi march through Skokie – home of thousands of concentration camp survivors – Hollywood responded, unintentionally but brilliantly.    In the original Blues Brothers movie, the Nazis chasing Jake and Elwood Blues were lampooned to a fine sheen; portrayed as bumbling, deliusional, and just a tad closeted before plunging to ignominious doom.

If you remember the movie, you remember the scene.

They could never make it today.

“Nazis” and “White Supremacists” are, precisely, the hapless losers that Kevin Williamson depicted in NRO last week.  They have a fraction of the numbers they had when The Blues Brothers was made (or had a fraction; the lavish publicity the mainstream media has given them this past nine months certainly has to have added a few, even if you filter out the Southern Poverty Law Center’s partisan hysteria).

“But those symbols are themselves weapons, because of what they mean and the history they bring up”.    Symbols truly do have meanings. The First Amendment gives you the same power to exhibit your own symbols, and to show them (so far, anyway).

In 1978, the Nazi Party marked in Skokie, Illinois – a town where a sixth of the people had survived concentration camps.  After several court battles, the Nazis prevailed with the help, inevitably, of the ACLU.

On the day of the parade, 20 Nazis showed up – and were met by thousands of Jews, who shouted them down  (without a punch being thrown) and humilated them, rending them a punch line for the next forty years.  They didn’t erase the swastika’s symbolism – but they did take its power away from them.  Their symbols – the Star of David, the Stars and Stripes – represented the victors; victorious, prosperous people; the Swastikas, the losers.

My biggest concern is that we’re giving them that power again.  Indeed, I think giving them that power is the left’s goal.

Woody – But the biggest reason?   “Anti”-Fa is the children of the upper-middle-class snowflakes that I met at the “Backroom Anarchist Center” way back when – maybe literally.

When the police pulled the masks off the Blackshirts that attacked the March 4th State Capitol rally, one of them was Woody Kain, the son of Virginia senator Tim Kain – AKA the man who would have been Vice President of the United States had conventional wisdom held sway.

I’ve seen these “kids”, most notably around the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul in 2008.  Everything about them screamed the sort of entitlement that comes from being, if not “the elite”, at least someone who rides “the elite’s” coattails.

Which is what makes “Anti”-Fa much more dangerous than the “Alt-Right”:   “Nazis” and “White Supremacists” are not just the fringe, they are the fringe of a part of society that has precisely as much influence as the media and political elite decide to give them.   

On the other hand, “Anti”-Fa are the children of those same elites.  These are not the children of carpenters, struggling to get jobs after community college; as Dennis Prager says, you need an elite education to be this stupid.  These are children who went to Bard and Oberlin and Carlton and Macalester and will, one day, when the lifestyle gets old, will use their class privilege to move seamlessly into positions of power and influence.   They will be tomorrow’s college professors, organizers, non-profiteers, teachers, and politicians.

Having people chanting “we must protect the white race” in an echo chamber is bad.  Having them chanting “F*** Free Speech” in front of a class of impressionable freshmen ten years from now is incalculably worse.

President Trump was too kind.

When we last talked about Ryan WInkler, he was on his way to Belgium, in as much disgrace as the media ever allows a DFL golden child to face, after having called SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom”.   Winkler – who got a degree at Harvard – claimed he wasn’t aware of the history of the term.  But no matter; he took a break.

But he’s baaaaack, and running for Attorney General.

And this oughtta be a great campaign; he’s got the same Twitter smarts as the President seems to have:

Our old friend Chad the Elder of the late, great Fraters stepped up, with results that, if you know Winkler, are utterly predictable:

He wants to be attorney general.

This oughtta be a fun campaign.

(Via Gary Gross)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Scott Adams wrote a timely column on mass hysteria.

 

Joe Doakes

I’d thought about pullquoting this myself.

But save us all some time.  Read it.  Then give it to some of the Democrats – or all of them – in your life.