Fear and Loathing from the Left, Part I…

“Hi, Mom? It’s me. Uh-huh. Yeah. I know…that Olympic Water Polo sure is something to watch. (pause) Oh, that noise? Um…that’s about 250 other people waiting to use the phone that I’m on. So, listen…can you bail me out? No, really. Well, I was on my bike…”

And so it begins, my friends.
We were spared from news reports on protests during the Democrat National Convention in Boston last month. Oh, it wasn’t because there were no protests, I assure you. There certainly were. However, now that the “feel good” citizens of the left are protesting the big, bad Bush Administration, we’re going to be treated to more protest video and news reports than we can stand.
So…here’s how it starts: approximately 5,000 bicyclists decide it’s a good idea to shut down busy Manhattan streets to voice their protest of the Bush Administration. Yeah…that’s a simply grand idea, isn’t it? I can almost hear how this went down at the protesters’ favorite coffee house: “Hey, I have an idea! Let’s get a couple of thousand people on their mountain bikes to stop traffic and we can tell people why Bush is evil. Yeah…that’s it!”
That’s a great idea, indeed. Yes…let’s take 5,000 bicyclists, run them throughout lower Manhattan and block off streets. Yes, let’s impact the lives of people who want to just carry on with their normal everyday activities and people who are paying to visit the nation’s largest city.
In the immortal words of the two animated guys in the Guinness ads, “Brilliant!!”
Oh, and it gets better. Not only did they close down some of New York’s most recognizable streets, they were chanting “Whose streets? OUR STREETS!” for the better part of 90 minutes.
I love the Constitution and I embrace Bill of Rights because it is what our society is all about. The Bill of Rights makes sure that any and every American who wants to speak out against their Government can do so without reprisal or unlawful incarceration.
What’s my problem with this, you ask?
Nowhere in the aforementioned Bill of Rights does it say you can deprive other free, hard-working Americans of their freedoms in the pursuit of yours. It really is that simple. If you want to protest something, that’s fine. Go ahead. Speak your mind and carry out your protest. Do not, however, impact my life and my civil liberties. Do not hold me captive and force me to listen to your spiteful ranting.
That’s exactly what members of the New York Police Department thought. Then they started arresting the protestors and hauled in about 250 of them for blocking traffic and refusing to move.
There’s a difference between “civil disobedience” and sheer idiocy. Civil disobedience is the “refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government.” Sheer idiocy is what these bicyclists did Friday night.
If you listen to the media, it would appear that some sort of travesty has taken place in taking these people into custody. What occurred was no injustice, it was New York’s Finest doing their job and preserving order in the Big Apple.
Look, if they want to organize a demonstration and get a permit and proper police coverage, that’s great! I whole-heartedly endorse that. A demonstration like the one I just described–protesting President Bush and the RNC–occurred this very day. It got lots of press coverage and accomplished the goal that the protesters has hoped to achieve: getting their message out to New York and the world. Yay for them. It was planned and the people of New York were afforded an opportunity to listen–or not–as they chose to. While I may not agree with the speech or the accusations in today’s protest, I respect their right to do and say those things because this is America.
The people who were wrongfully detained by the bicycle protest were not provided the same opportunity, and that’s wrong.
The New York Daily news quoted protestor Bismarck Decastillo, “The people protested, with freedom. When people can get together, we can do something.” Yep. They sure can. They can piss off about a million people—and Decastillo ought to know what New Yorkers are like when they’ve been crossed. I mean, he’s from the Bronx, he’s gotta be a Yankee fan—he oughta know.
I can tell you one thing, these people are lucky they didn’t cause a full-scale riot. That could have started very easily, and many people could have been injured or even killed.
Maybe they should have read the website these other potential Liberal criminals have put up. That might have helped the ones who got hauled away Friday night in an NYPD bus. Sure they want to shut the city down, too, but at least they’re giving people good advice on what to say if they’re arrested: “I am going to remain silent. I would like to speak with a lawyer.”
You can protest all you want, but the law is still the law. If you infringe someone else’s rights and freedoms, they may decide to “lay the smack-down on your candy ass.” (That’s what I’d want to do, truth be told.)
More importantly, though, if you infringe someone else’s rights and freedoms it’s against the law! You deserve what you get at that point, in my opinion. These clowns are lucky they only got arrested.
Of course, it may be the only way they can actually get someone to listen to their incessant ramblings and half truths. I do realize that. It still doesn’t make it right.
We’re going to be treated to more and more of this coverage over the next week in an attempt by the news media to take attention away from where it belongs. They didn’t do this during the DNC in Boston because it was their guy who was center stage. Now that it’s President Bush, they’ll be back to “politics as usual” in their coverage…and they’ll put any moron on television this week with a protest and a cause.
Tomorrow in Part II, we’ll look at the abject hatred that spews forth from the left, and how the media looks the other way for Liberal hate speech.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com