Posted by Tina
“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.” – Benjamin Franklin, U.S. Founding Father
Over the course of a year or more we have witnessed an increase in violent protests in our nation to force out opinion or block assembly and speech. Protest has become a tactic deployed by radicals to cause mayhem and force political will. Our nation is in peril. The world is watching. We cannot continue to tolerate such thuggish anti-American behavior.
On our college campuses those in charge tolerate this behavior. In some cases students are encouraged and taught how to organize and disrupt events. Professors have participated in the violence.
In Town Hall meetings conservative representatives are not simply challenged by the opposition but are shouted down to the point of destroying the event entirely. (see Jacks recent post) This have become so common that people are beginning to ask, “When will something be done; what can be done?”
City police officers have been the targets in some of these violent protests. In some cities they are either intimidated or unwilling to do their jobs now. Some have been viciously maligned; others seem to be standing in agreement.
We’ve been here before. Is there a lesson in our history that might assist our President in restoring order and respect for our laws?
Christopher DeNeve at American Greatness recalls the era of Eisenhower and relays the following:
…Eisenhower’s experience in World War II brought home to him the need for the nation to move on from its Jim Crow past and fully integrate all American citizens into the full bounty of citizenship in this country. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a crisis presented itself in Little Rock Arkansas. As black students exercised their constitutional right to enroll in public schools, violent mobs threatened and attacked them. The governor of Arkansas failed to disperse what the New York Times called a violent “shrieking mob,” and even ordered the national guard to turn away black students, placating the violent crowds. Eisenhower was forced to act decisively.
Eisenhower deployed federal troops from the famous 101st Airborne to Little Rock and took command of the national guard away from the Arkansas governor. As soon as U.S. troops were deployed, the rioters dispersed, and the students were allowed to attend school without any further violence or bloodshed.
While the issues at hand have changed, President Trump’s detractors and many militant leftists are even more of a “shrieking mob” than the Little Rock rioters. Consider the actions of “Antifa” and “social justice” activists at college campuses around the nation.
As Mr. DeNeve points out, both the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act give the President the authority to use troops in situations like this if he deems it’s necessary:
The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it–
so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or
opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws…
Conservatives have been shouted down, attacked, bullied, or denied the right to speak for a number of years now. Don Feder wrote of his experience in March of 2009. In 2016 legal expert Jonathan Turley addressed this problem including the deplorable inaction by campus administrators and police. Milo Yiannopoulos, Anne Colter and Heather MacDonald are among those who have been barred from speaking.
There’s something terribly wrong. Either the young people (and professors) who participate in these violent protests are completely ignorant of the civil laws of this nation or they knowingly and defiantly break them. This is an intolerable situation in a nation that guarantees free speech to all of it’s citizens. It would be appropriate for Trump to send in troops to ensure the free speech rights of any conservative speaker until this mobocracy comes to an end.
Thomas Jefferson: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.
So many of these protesters believe in social democracy…perhaps that offers a clue.
(The Insurrection Act would also apply to the situation over sanctuary cities, no?)
Your thoughts?
This is not China or Russia
Sorry but your authoritarian streak is showing.
The Real Tea Party? What would you have written about the thugs that threw all that tea overboard?
Tina sorry civil war is here you do not get to dictate corporate rule to the majority
Well Dewey your authoritarian streak is on display every time you post, so you should know. One thing you leave out…we have given the President the authority to do this. We made him the authority by electing him president! The LAW gives him this authority!
Your anarchist streak is illegitimately authoritarian. You have little respect for opposing views; you are part of those who agitate and refuses to live by the laws of our nation. Bullies always feature themselves as the ultimate authority, acting through intimidation rather than valid authorization or the rule of law.
Listen up you ignorant man. I speak for myself. I am an American who sees defiance against the King’s tea tax as an integral part of our founding:
Careful reading places the point of contention in the tyrannical rule of the King and his Parliament to force the colonists, who had no representation, to pay for the French and Indian war. Parliament used the East Indian Company in this scheme by granting them a monopoly. (Like Democrats used the health insurance giants in Obamacare).
You feature yourself as similar to the patriots who’s actions led to the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War but your grounding principles lack the noble and liberating ideals of our founders. Instead they hold the seeds of tyranny!
Sorry, you may cause a civil war but more likely you are nothing more than those who came before you, the Marxist deviant rabble of the sixties. It isn’t that you don’t have valid concerns like the growing economic gap made worse by a disappearing middle class and job losses. It’s that your solutions are purely anti-American, anti-freedom, and anti-equal rights. You think like this. Yours is a constant battle. Instead of effort, focus hard work as a means to a better life you see class warfare, destruction, and anarchy against “the man” as a solution. The result of your civil war is ALWAYS Venezuela where people can’t even get toilet paper or bread and people are now starving to death!
Venezuela was one the richest nation in South America with a thriving middle class. After a few decades of socialist leadership and lots of “revolutionary” anarchy the people are NOT better off. What is left of the riches is concentrated in a few elitists.
You are not grounded in American values and ideals, which is the thing that makes you so damned ignorant!