We drew (according to one count) about 30 people to yesterday’s counterprotest on John Ireland Boulevard.<\/p>\n
It was a huge <\/em>success.\u00a0 Before I took off from the house Saturday morning, I had a hard count of maybe 18.\u00a0\u00a0 Getting nearly double that?\u00a0 Awesome.<\/p>\n Of course, the point wasn’t to demonstrate.\u00a0 Demonstrations don’t really affect policy in any way at all.\u00a0 What they are<\/em>, if you keep things in perspective, is a dandy social occasion; a time to get together and realize you’re not alone out there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Liberals and “activists” are like tuna (and, if it’s possible, please believe I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense); they travel in big groups, they get uneasy when they’re NOT in a big group, they have a hard time conceiving of existence that doesn’t involve big groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conservatives are like sharks; any one of us is a match for dozens of liberals, and our very presence at marches or school board meetings or community council elections<\/a>\u00a0provokes unreasoning fear, panic, irrationality and an “end justifies the means” mentality.\u00a0 And we usually operate alone.\u00a0 Conservatism is fundamentally a solitary thing; we usually come to the movement alone, or with a spouse.\u00a0 Liberals have their marches and their union meetings and their poli-sci classes; our social impulses are usually carried out via talk radio and blogs, at work or while hauling kids to school.\u00a0 Getting a group of five or more conservatives together for ANYTHING but an open bar is a major undertaking.<\/p>\n So I have neither the illusion of nor the desire to try to get thousands of conservatives out into the street next year for the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul.\u00a0 But I do<\/em> want to get dozens out on the street, and spotted around the city’s various choke points, with cameras and video and laptops and wireless cards, to make sure that the “demonstrators” are held accountable to the world for the actions of their, er, less-restrained fellows.<\/p>\n Like Brad Carlson did with this guy<\/a>.<\/p>\n The left labors under the fantasy that there’ll be an equal amount of provocation from the left and the right.\u00a0 My goal; to have the radical far left’s sins and crimes spread far and wide, in the event that their lunatic fringe misbehaves in Saint Paul this year.<\/p>\n And yes, I fully expect that the left will have its phalanxes of “citizen journalists” trooping through the streets with cameras, trying to do the same.<\/p>\n Hopefully we’re all <\/em>going to be bored stiff.<\/p>\n Anyone wanna place bets on who’s gonna be busier?<\/p>\n Kermit<\/a>, Brad<\/a>, Dr. Jonz<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Swiftee<\/a>\u00a0were there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We drew (according to one count) about 30 people to yesterday’s counterprotest on John Ireland Boulevard. It was a huge success.\u00a0 Before I took off from the house Saturday morning, I had a hard count of maybe 18.\u00a0\u00a0 Getting nearly double that?\u00a0 Awesome. Of course, the point wasn’t to demonstrate.\u00a0 Demonstrations don’t really affect policy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,41,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-convention-08","category-days-of-adolescent-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}