A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on August 26th, 2008 in US News

I got onto this kick because of Bruce Weinstein‘s column on the ethics of protest. Of course, from a professional standpoint, I’m much more interested in the politics of the matter. As I’ve read more about the “protests” in Denver, the more convinced I am that the whole thing is probably illegal – and it is intended to be.

What right does any group have to get the New York state delegation locked-down? What is the point of such a protest? All it does is show that a few people can cause enough mayhem as to require professional help. So it isn’t protest. A protest without a point is just hooliganism and rapant idiocy.

Rooftop footage of the action shows that the participants were far from innocently exercising their Constitutional rights. Take a look (Courtesy Rocky Mountain News):

Amanda Hubbard of Denver says there was no warning. Hey, Amanda, what exactly do you think reinforced lines of police means? Thank you for not littering?

It’s also more than a little dishonest for her to talk about that. The group sponsoring the event is called “Recreate ’68″ – a reference to the Chicago convention when street protesters poured into the convention itself and disrupted the proceedings. Supposedly, the march is to “stop the war in Iraq”. Well, exactly how does that work? Are they going to be such enormous assholes that they have to bring back the National Guard to deal with them?

The entire point of the action is to disrupt the DNC convention. That is not a Constitutionally protected action. Most of the people at the convention are not politicians, but rather people who got involved in their local political organization. If anyone wanted to hear from Recreate 68, they knew where to find them. This is not Ghandi’s march to sea where the government created a monopoly on salt as a means of collecting taxes through other means. It is not Martin Luther King, Jr. leading blacks into the police lines to protest being disenfranchised of their right to vote.

Each of these people has the right to vote, though there is no way to know if they used it. If they did, their extreme position lost. They are simply trying to impose their ideas on the rest of society. They are ten times as fanatical and tyrannical as the people they are trying to protest.

The fact is that the police were faced with an active and agitated crowd that was illegally blocking traffic and disrupting the lives of the people in Denver. They were not going away. If the police had simply moved forward and begun arresting people, it is likely that some people in the crowd would have reacted violently and it would have turned into a true mob scene. So the police used tear gas and then immobilized people. Other than burning eyes and lungs, no one was hurt. That’s remarkable, and the Denver police should be hailed for that feat.

Hooliganism is not legitimate political expression. The courts have long since ruled on that, and common sense dictates that they are right. Liberty walks hand in hand with responsibility. That doesn’t mean that anarchists must remain silent. But it means that they cannot impose their desire for anarchy upon an unwilling public. Like the rest of us, they must convince people that their path of action is the proper one. Anything else is simply not democracy at all.

And don’t call it a protest.

Technorati Tags: Bruce Weinstein, protests, Denver

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