Sometimes I think I’ve wandered through a wormhole into a strange parallel universe. Once again I find myself skating on the underside of the ice.
Here’s the backstory. For months, ever since the election, the left-wing fascists of Antifa and others have been rioting in the streets, beating people up, breaking windows, setting fire to cars, denying people their right to free speech, and smashing people’s faces with motorcycle locks … and THE LEADERS AND COMMENTERS OF THE LEFT SAID NOTHING.
How did this happen? How did the Democratic Party that I had supported all my life morph into the fascists beating people up to prevent them from speaking? Along with my fellow Democrats I sat-in and non-violently protested FOR freedom of speech in Berkeley in 1964/65 … it breaks my heart that modern Democrats are now rioting AGAINST freedom of speech. How can they be against freedom of speech, no matter how challenging, insulting, or unpleasant? It is our Constitutional right!
And why have the party leadership said nothing? Riot after riot, beating after beating, another poor guy gets his car burnt up, someone else has their face beaten in, and not one word of condemnation from Clinton, or Schumer, or Warren, or Sanders. Nothing.
Look, my Democratic friends … Democrats have been beating people up to stop them from speaking! And calling themselves Anti-fascist? That is a LIE. Fascists are those who beat people to stop them from speaking. Do the math!
How did the Democratic Party become the party of street violence? How can that be?
With that as background, I fear that it is the left that brought about Charlottesville. Here’s what people forget.
The fascists of the right had a legal permit to legally parade. It is their constitutional right, after all, to assemble freely.
Now, stop and consider that for a moment. It is the key fact that people want you to forget. They were legally exercising their Constitutional right to assemble and march. It is a CRIME to try to stop them by violence.
However, the fascists of the left decided once again to try to stop people from exercising their right to assemble and march. Hey, it worked a dozen times before, so why not?
So the Antifa turned up in force, to try to stop the march by force.
Here’s the deal. Far too many of the fascists of the Right are certainly loathsome people whose views disgust and repulse most of us.
But America is a place where all of us, I say again, all of us have a Constitutional right to assemble and lawfully parade … particularly loathsome people whose views disgust and repulse us. If America is not free for them, then it is not free for you and me. Period.
That’s the American deal! Free speech is for EVERYONE, not just those whose views you favor. Free assembly is for EVERYONE, including all variety of unpleasant folks. If slugs and rattlesnakes get a permit to march, then it’s a crime to stop them by violence.
How did the Democrats and the Antifa and the left in general forget these things, when they are so fundamental to what makes America work, not to mention being first in the Bill of Rights?
So please … spare me the nonsense that the hands of the left are clean in Charlottesville. Stripped of the emotion, here’s what happened:
The Antifa tried the same violent tactics that they’ve been succeeding at for months—at the inauguration, in Portland, at Berkeley, at Wellesley, and on and on. And in Charlottesville, once again they wanted to use force to deny people their Constitutional rights. But this time it wasn’t college professors and students that they were beating up. This time, they got their asses handed to them. As my mother used to warn me, “Scorch around, and you’ll get burned.
Do not think I am without compassion. I have great compassion for the suffering of the misguided human beings on both sides of that fight, because both sides think that violence is the solution. And all those who follow that path of violence, left and right alike, miss out on much that makes us human. Would you swap your life for theirs?
But regarding left-wing fascists who were once again trying to DISRUPT A LEGAL MARCH AND DENY THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO FREELY ASSEMBLE. Gotta say, I’m happy to see them lose for a change … I don’t understand how the left got it so wrong. People have a RIGHT to free speech. Even the people you hate with a fervor have a RIGHT to freely assemble. STOP TRYING TO DENY US OUR RIGHTS!
Sorry for the shouting, but this attempt to silence people by violence is ugly, despicable, and an anathema to democracy. It does not justify the responding violence of the right But if the left-wing fascists had just stayed home and let them march, we could have avoided all of this.
Finally, the media in the wormhole I wandered through seem obsessed with their Fearless Leader. After months of the Democratic leaders saying nothing about violence from the fascists of the left, oh, no, not a word, lips zipped, schtumm … now they want to parse every word the Fearless Leader is saying, as though he were some kind of oracle.
WHO CARES? Trump doesn’t control the fascists of the right, any more than Elizabeth Warren controls the fascists of the left. It just stuns me that we are have been having months and months of political riots in the streets, culminating in this recent escalation to a fatality, and the talking heads natter on endlessly about did Trump pick the right words, and did he say it strong enough, or was it soon enough … WHO CARES? We are having political violence in the streets, courtesy of left-wing fascists. Trump is not the issue here. Left-wing fascists are the issue.
Here’s the short version.
The right-wing fascists showed up to exercise their right to assemble and march. That is their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT.
The left-wing fascists showed up to stop their legal gathering, by force if necessary. That is a CRIME.
There is no equivalence between a Constitutional Right on the one hand and a crime on the other …
The left seems to want to forget the American deal. Free speech is for EVERYONE, particularly hateful fascist scumbags on both sides. Freedom of speech is not just for the people who the Left approves of. Similarly, freedom of assembly is for EVERYONE, even skinheads and white power folks, not just the people that Antifa thinks are wonderful.
And trying to stop ANYONE from exercising that right goes against everything America stands for.
So rather than either raging about or defending the President who had nothing to do with the riot, how about instead we have an adult conversation about de-escalating this lethal stupidity. For a while, we’ve had the alt-right.
Now we have the ctrl-left.
How about we get together and start working on some kind of a ctrl-alt-delete?
Sadly,
w.
Skating Under The Ice 
“How did the Democratic Party that I had supported all my life morph into the fascists beating people up to prevent them from speaking?”
Exactly. Republicans and Democrats used to fight for the middle, now they fight for the extremes. They weren’t saints though, especially the presidents. Wars, civil rights abuses, the discontent keeps building. All you need is a leader to incite the mob. I won’t name any Democrats in particular. And then you have Arab Spring, which shows that it is possible for a mob to overthrow a government. Ceausescu was an early example, Ukraine was another. Another example of mobs — Kristallnacht. The answer to that question may be “human nature” or “power corrupts”. If that morphing is a natural evolution to increase entropy, then the question is how can we prevent it.
When ‘liberal’ morphed into ‘progressive’ on the left, the right sort of stayed the same in absolute terms; in relative terms the ‘right’ became the ‘far right’. After the last election, nobody can agree on what ‘right’, ‘conservative’, ‘Republican’ mean any more. And moderates have disappeared. Interesting times.
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Don’t forget WIllis the other strange bedfellow throughout … for example the fact the supremacists had the support of the ACLU … having to go to Court to win their permit – while permits were freely given to the ANTIFA goons.
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My understanding was that Antifa didn’t have a permit … am I wrong?
w.
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Both sides had permits.
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According to the city government offices of Charlottesville no they did not, only 1(one) permit was issued for that particular day. Try again.
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Very interesting story here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450454/charlottesville-white-supremacist-rally-first-hand-account-day-deadly-hate
The original protesters had a permit for the statue site. The city moved it to a safer site. A judge moved it back, citing the 1st and 14th amendments.
http://www.nbc29.com/story/36115819/judge-grants-injunction-jason-kessler-can-have-unite-the-right-rally-at-emancipation-park
The ACLU comments on that:
About that other permit:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/aug/17/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrong-charlottesville-counter-protest/
There is a copy of that certificate shows that permit. There is no significant information on what is shown. I would say one person had a permit for an unspecified Public Demonstration. No organization is named. The anti-protesters did not necessarily have any relationship to the guy who bought (?) the permit and the “general liability and property damage insurance” demanded by the permit (if he did).
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“How did the Democratic Party that I had supported all my life morph into the fascists beating people up to prevent them from speaking?”
In very broad terms, the idealistic movement of the 60s spawned some people who gravitated to seats of power. They were influenced by true radicals out to control that power (Alinsky). Over time these two types purged traditional Democrats from the Party. Those who didn’t go into government took over media and education where they could control the narrative and shape thinking. Some of the old Democrats were scoundrels (Kennedy and Johnson, for example), some were staunch defenders from external threats (Henry “Scoop” Jackson), but most had a sense of truth and history that guided or at least constrained them. Not so with those now in power. Truth and history don’t matter any more and there’s nobody to hold them accountable. The Republicans are almost as corrupted so they don’t challenge anymore.
Btw, the Free Speech Movement succeeded because there was some appreciation for the Constitution back then. Just like Gandhi in India and Mandela in South Africa, the Movement benefited from the self-restraint of those in power. Relatively peaceful revolutions only happen where governments have some measure of respect for transcendent ideals.
The “fascist” epithet is being thrown around epithet without really understanding it’s meaning which is “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism/ In general terms the Left power structure leans more toward this definition today than the Right, but the thugs and agitators hardly seem sophisticated enough to appreciate the term.
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I have an issue with the notion America had it better back then, “Btw, the Free Speech Movement succeeded because there was some appreciation for the Constitution back then. Just like Gandhi in India and Mandela in South Africa, the Movement benefited from the self-restraint of those in power. Relatively peaceful revolutions only happen where governments have some measure of respect for transcendent ideals.”
As far back as you want to go there hasn’t been a golden time of free speech without bruises in American history. You might say America is noble but its citizens are only human, and not very good at that. The winking eye of Government or its steely gaze, always follows the base path.
Still it’s a good idea to preach the notion free speech is at our foundation, can you ask for a better bulwark?
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On the voting map, the denser the population, the bluer the map. In dense populations, individuals have to deal with people and laws. In the sparser hinterlands, they have to deal with nature. Threatening people works; threatening nature doesn’t.
These days both the Left and the violence are in cities. On average, the Right is in the country, and they have other things to deal with — they haven’t the time to demonstrate or riot. It’s hardly a law, only a correlation — but it seems to represent the current situation.
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When Democrat leaders call for harm and death to a Constitutionally elected President, everything else follows from there. When Democrat leaders ignore the rule of law, exempt themselves from the consequences of ignoring law, everything else follows from there. So what happened to your Democrat party? The leaders turned to corruption and lawlessness in the pursuit of power. Everything else has followed from there. I am not ignoring the wrong doings of the Republicans, this post asks why the Democrats have changed.
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Well the foil hat part of me is pondering that at some level these events are being organized. A year or so ago we had the confederate flag kerfuffle; the rapid escalation of that one seemed way beyond a mixed up grass roots thing. Now they’re gunning for the confederate statues. To me it’s more of a senseless distraction from real issues.
I have relatives with CSA engraved on their tombstones. I’ve taken the opinion that I don’t care what happens to the confederate statues, They mean nothing to me. It’s a rock with some stuff scratched on it. Though I’d prefer to see these relics get into private collector hands their fate means (rounded up to) 0 for me.
I counter my own stance with, given history, if these movements succeed they won’t just go away but continue chipping at increasingly trivial and more expensive hyperventilation.
http://battleofolustee.org/1st_fl_inf_bat.html
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The best summary of the situation I have seen. Thank you.
‘The left seems to want to forget the American deal.’
Of course. That is what it is all about in the end.
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The Boston outrage just reinforced your article. The democratic party left you and the majority of the congressional republicans joined the uniparty. Best of luck to us all.
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President Trump was absolutely right to condemn the leftist thugs who mobilized to attack the neo-Nazi demonstration in Charlotte, and for the reasons you cite. He was also right that some of the demonstrators against removing the statue of Robert E. Lee were not neo-Nazis nor Klansmen, but concerned citizens who just didn’t agree with the city’s decision.
“The left seems to want to forget the American deal.” Unfortunately, the radical left has no interest in America or her ideals. Their aim is to tear down the Republic and replace it with some kind of neo-Communist state. The Antifa and BLM groups are organized and funded by wealthy capitalists like George Soros, whose paradoxical aim is to destroy American capitalism and the promise of individual freedom defined in our Founding documents. The black-hooded mobsters are their tools.
What is particularly worrisome is how readily the leftwing media and the gullible politicians, both Democrat and Republican, fall for the pretenses under which these radical groups operate. So we find the right-wing demonstrators condemned and the left-wing mob cheered, because they are against ‘racism’ and ‘hate’. They’re not, of course; just the opposite.
President Trump, with his willingness to stand up to the Left (assuming he can survive the concerted attack on his Presidency) may be the best hope we have of a leader who can mobilize Americans who actually believe in the principles of the Declaration: “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. . .” Americans, that is, who are not fascists of the Right, nor of the Left, but Individualists to whom those principles are “self-evident.” This assumes, of course, that the Progressive propagandizing of our youth for several generations now has not by now negated the independent quality of Reason required for the Republic envisioned by the Founders.
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Reblogged this on HiFast News Feed.
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A clear mind that slices through confusion. Thank you, sensei, you have done it again.
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Thanks, Peter.
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” How did the Democratic Party that I had supported all my life morph into the fascists beating people up to prevent them from speaking?” Sorry, Willis, the Democrat Party has ALWAYS been the fascists beating and silencing people. They started a war to keep blacks in slavery and lost, ever since they have applied themselves to stripping blacks of Constitutional rights AND punishing the whites who defeated them. The Democrat Party is and has always been to home of enemies of the United States and its citizens. They are working diligently today to instigate another civil war, and they will lose. This time Americans have to insure their sick, anti-American ideology is driven from our country.
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Not entirely true. The majority of the people that I worked with to ensure free speech in Berkeley in 1964/65 were Democrats fighting FOR free speech. Now they fight AGAINST free speech, which was the oddity.
w.
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You were lied to. The Democrat Party has always been about subjugation, the silencing of ALL opposition, slavery and oppression.
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Good pic in your post of the so-called “assault car” stepping on the brakes before entering a crowd/mob blocking the street.
Saw pics/vid of the car a block or so away and it appears to be doing 25 – 30 mph. That is likely within the realm of the legal limit. Earlier video shows people getting out of the way/street and not appearing to be in a panic pace. I have some question as to whether the driver was deliberately targeting the protesters or simply running up on a mob and/or taking an action to force them to get out of the road. I doubt they had a permit to block the intersection. The mobs will cease to block highways and roads when they start being pushed out of the way.
Anyway, being a “whitey” I don’t plan to get stopped/trapped by any mob scene. Remember how that worked for some in LA several years back.
We continue to see political correctness at its worst.
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Well … it didn’t take long for a mob to stop and surround a driver that was forced to drive (slowly) thru the mob blocking the road. Happened in St. Louis yesterday.
Consider another possible outcome to getting stopped. A few in the mob decide to cut the tires and drag the driver from the vehicle. The driver fearing for his/her safety/life is forced to open fire. Is there a difference between a mob and a gang? When attacked it’s better to be safe than sorry or dead. The press would have a field day with it for years to come.
Better for everyone to keep the protests or mob scenes out of the road.
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Willis,
I know you aren’t seeking affirmation, but I couldn’t agree more.
Fascism was a ploitical philosophy that originated in Italy, in part as an alternative to communism. It emphasized the collective over the individual, with all working together for the “greater good”. The emphasis was on the group, preferably with a common heritage.
What is interesting about fascism is not the roots, but the methodolgies. Fascism was about control. Fascism used tactics designed to keep the message uniform. Freedom was not allowed. Individualism was not allowed. Departing from the party line was not allowed. Dissent was not allowed.
Fascists are authoritarian and collectivist but emphasize victimhood. They create straw men to rail against and burn.
The enemy of fascism is freedom. The opposite of fascist collective control is individual freedom.
Shouting down an opposing view to prevent them from espousing that view is also the opposite of individual freedom. Using violence to prevent someone from espousing a view is the opposite of individual freedom.
It is quite a sad statement if you are so fragile that you can’t handle someone saying something you disagree with. If you have the courage of your convictions you should be able to defend your position without resorting to shouting, screaming, lashing out, fit throwing, or any of the other negotiating tactics favored by two year olds.
I personally believe in individual freedom. I completely disagree with the views of the white nationalists that were marching in Charlottesvile. Note that the city initially denied them a permit, and that the ACLU filed a lawsuit in support of the white nationalists to get them the permit.
The best way to deal with someone who espouses abhorrent views is to keep an eye on them, defend yoursefl if actually threatened, but otherwise ignore them. Seeking a physical confrontation is wrong. Seeking to silence them is wrong. Beware those who seek to silence others. You don’t want that power used against you.
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An eye roll and a Trump smile sets them off, Every Time!
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HI Willis,
when I woke up early this morning my brain was working on the problem of re-writing history, refusing to acknowledge events of the past etc and thought that ‘1984’ should be brought back into the curriculum. But then I realised that today’s young, and not so young, would probably take it as a manifesto not a warning about the loss of free speech or free thought.
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Choose Sides? You Bet. But Antifa and Fascism Are the Same Side.
Take a side? You bet. But Haider and company are trying to force a false choice. They’d have you believe that advocates of free speech, open society, tolerance, and peaceful political change have to pick between fascists with tiki torches and masked “anti-fascists” clashing with them in the streets. But advocates of a free, open, and liberal society society are a side—the correct side—and the left-wing and right-wing thugs battling in the streets are nothing more than rival siblings from a dysfunctional illiberal family.
http://reason.com/archives/2017/08/22/choose-sides-you-bet-but-antifa-and-fasc
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“Antifa and Fascism Are the Same Side.” Oop, there it is. Democrat Party is using BLM and antifa as their Brownshirts. Clearly they studied history before erasing it and figured out what works for destabilizing a country.
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We are now living in times where historical monuments need to be moved to a “safe zone’ to protect from the frantic left. However, I will create my own “safe zone” and I’m not gonna move. I just hope political correctness doesn’t clash with reality on my doorstep or god forbid inside my home.
What is happening now? It’s crazy. Who started this madness over the past few years?
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Hmm I’ll try again, my comment was in moderation for 2 days and now gone.
My take on this group Antifa and every time I see that name, is that they are actually Anti First Amendment. They would prefer to shut you down then to allow you your right to speak. Sad state of affairs we are careening towards.
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AK, my apologies, I’ve been off-line for a bit. Your comments are now out of moderation, and future comments will go straight through.
w.
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Thanks,
I was about to try fixing capilization of letters in email address as the culprit. No worries…
Thanks again
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Today we have hit rock bottom. ESPN announced that they are taking one of their announcers off a game at the University of Virginia because his name is Robert Lee. Mr Lee is of Asian decent and has no connection at all to Robert E. Lee the Confederate General.
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A personal story related to Charlottesville. In 1968 I opted for Harvard on a full Army scholarship rather than using my appointment to West Point. Spring 1969 the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a big campus event trying to get Harvard students to vote to shut the college down. Three times that night we voted not to, when once should have been enough. So afterwards at 2 in the morning SDS forcibly occupied University Hall in the center of Harvard Yard (one of two administration buildings) and shut Harvard College down anyway. In the aftermath of forcible police removal of these thugs the next day, the faculty voted to cancel the rest of the semester, and to throw out ROTC as an expression of solidarity with the SDS goals and antiVietnam stance. Army gave me the choice of transferring to a distinctly inferior school they had selected, or losing the full scholarship and resigning my potential commission. Chose the latter. Ended up having to work my way through Harvard for three years by forgoing any social life because the cost was far beyond my parents ability to afford given the financial assistance Harvard College then offered.
SDS was as democratic then as DPRK and Antifa are today. Some things have not changed in decades. Harvard’s faculty composition then was no different than today, almost all liberal progressives who actively supress honest disagreement (although not as badly as Yale’s safe spaces movement). Faculty forced out President Larry Sommers on a pretext after Sommers forced out Cornell West for being overtly racist and political (black studies) against white students. Fauxahontis Elizabeth Warren was indoctrinating Harvard Law students before becoming a Taxachussets senator. The straw that broke my back was Harvard hiring Naomi Oreskes (of Merchants of Doubt and Exxon Knew RICO infamy) as a full tenured professor. They shall never see another cent from me until she is gone, and probably not even then.
What Charlottesville did, more than the Berkeley/Ann Coulter riot, is bring the left’s hypocrisy, double standards, and lack of respect for the Constitution into full public view. Unfortunate that it took a death caused by an over-reacting alt right, but the Antifa bicycle lock beating did not have the same effect. An unintended bonus Trump effect for us Deplorables; he rightly condemned both sides, and the Dems went visibly hypocritically nuts.
BTW I am a registered Independent because dislike what both main parties have on offer. I vote for specific people to be my thinking representatives, not loyalists to party platforms. Col. Allen West was a great congessman until the Democratic Florida legislature gerrymandered away his district.
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The Wikipedia has this to say on Democrats, slavery, and racism:
[The crisis for the Democratic Party came in the late 1850s, as northern Democrats increasingly rejected national policies demanded by the southern Democrats. The demands were to support slavery outside the South. Southerners insisted that full equality for their region required the government to acknowledge the legitimacy of slavery outside the South. The southern demands included a fugitive slave law to recapture runaway slaves; opening Kansas to slavery; forcing a pro-slavery constitution on Kansas.]
[Klan flourished in the Southern United States in the late 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. It sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during the Reconstruction Era, especially by using violence against African American leaders. With numerous chapters across the South, it was suppressed around 1871, through federal law enforcement. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks and conical hats, designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities.]
[Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued to be enforced until 1965.]
Interestingly enough, modern Democrats know nothing about this glorious history. A popular cartoonist Doonesbury always presents Jim Crow as a Republican. Subscribe to the San Francisco Chronicle!
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The Democrat Party has always been the Party of racism, misogyny, suppression of individual liberty and silencing all who oppose them.
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“How did this happen? How did the Democratic Party that I had supported all my life morph into the fascists beating people up to prevent them from speaking? Along with my fellow Democrats I sat-in and non-violently protested FOR freedom of speech in Berkeley in 1964/65 … it breaks my heart that modern Democrats are now rioting AGAINST freedom of speech. ” So sez Willis…
Thanks Willis you have asked the question I have been wanting to ask my friends from the 60’s who were a part of the “free speech movement”…
I am not and have never been a Democrat.. I lean to independent and probably more libertarian.. I vote for candidates of both parties.. in fact from the actions of both our political parties I believe they have both lost their way and are very comfortable with a divided country which makes it easier for them to stay in office.
The nagging question I keep asking myself is “To what end is all of this?” and without anything other than relying on some basic human traits.. I keep coming back to power… and to keep or gain power the social values, icons, mores, and customs need to be invalidated, destroyed, and delegitimatized.. once and if that happens then the formal structures become vulnerable to destruction i.e. the constitution..
Charlottesville, Boston, and now the destruction of Confederate and in some cases past Presidential statues are working, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to keep the focus off of the issues that are keeping people in poverty or slipping into poverty.. i.e. the sad state of our K-12 educational systems, the stagnation of wages, the failing health care system, etc.. those are all big and complex issues and very difficult to frame and solve in 140 characters.. rallying support against bigotry and slave owners hey that is a no brainer in our twitter world.. easy to get a mob together for that.. it is also easy to get people riled up to who feel they have been discriminated against because of their race (whatever that race may be).. the zealots on all sides then show up in their uniforms to do battle… and our institutions who are responsible for public safety choose sides or look the other way rather than step in and keep the peace… Charlottesville they looked the other way… Boston they did their job, and we need more of that.. our Universities choose sides… as does the press and our elected officials.. While I must admit Trump puts his foot in it very often, got it right by calling out both sides.. and was pillared by the press and elected officials for calling out both sides… I
To sum up. I do believe we are heading down a slippery slope and my hope is the institutions we have in place to keep our democracy and liberties intact begin to function again as they were designed.. the key institutions are the three branches of government and the press. If they are corrupted.. I am afraid all bets are off …
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” three branches of government and the press. If they are corrupted.. I am afraid all bets are off …” Are you seriously saying this? Are you this f**king blind to reality? America is so f**ked.
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Not blind at all.. I guess when your eyes have seen the assassination of a President, two Presidential Candidates, and a Civil Rights icon, the gunning down of students at a college campus by the National Guard, and I could go on on with the list of major riots in urban areas and college campuses.. and we seemed to pull ourselves out of that hole.. our history has many lessons where this country has been on the brink and pulled back.. so while this is not a very good situation.. it has been worse and my slippery slope reference was we are heading in that direction, but we are not there yet.. So no I don’t believe we are so f**ked..
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“Free speech is for EVERYONE, particularly hateful fascist scumbags on both sides.”
Lately, comments like this have bothered me. Hateful, fascist scumbags do not have an above average right to free speech. Everyone has the exact same right, which is, I believe, the meat of what your article is saying.
I realize I’m arguing semantics, but sometimes I think we need to do that. I think the use of the word, particularly, gives more weight to the freedoms allowed the group listed after that word, when the reality is they have no extra freedom of speech over anyone else. I suppose the word I’d prefer to see is even, though I realize that doesn’t pack the punch you may have sought.
Why do I worry so much about the words chosen to express ideas with which I agree? This might not even be worth a comment, but there you have it.
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Willard said:
Thanks, Willard. By “particularly” I mean that we don’t need laws regarding freedom of speech for speech that people approve of.
We need laws about freedom of speech specifically and particularly to protect the speech that we (and particularly the government or the majority) DON’T approve of. That doesn’t mean that hateful people have an “above average right to free speech”.
Instead, it means they have an above average need for their speech to be protected.
Sorry for the confusion,
w.
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Willis asks:
Great question. The answer to that would fill several books.
Google “Hillary Clinton SDS”. I’ll get back to that, but first things first. In Berkeley 1964 you had a bunch of young, idealistic people. Baby Boomers. Their parents suffered through WW2 and then the fifties came, for better or worse. Doctor Spock, television, social change, assassinations, atomic bombs, birth control, the pill, rock and roll, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, civil rights, Playboy, the Vietnam War, drugs, the fading of the church, and more. And a bunch of young, idealist people wanting more change, with no experience to guide them. “We want the world and we want it now.” “No business as usual.” Anti-establishment. Radicals.
Not that everybody was radical, some were just idealistic. “Free Love”, “Make love not war”, “Give peace a chance”. Attractive slogans; so by 1967 or 1968, the whole world was protesting something, organizing something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_of_1968
Those protests did not remain non-violent. Black Panthers, Weathermen, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, SDS. By 1968, lots of leaders had emerged, with names that are commonly spoken today. Most of them did not become politicians, but they influenced the politicians very much, including Hillary Clinton and Obama..Hillary realized that to change the system, you needed to do it from within. She was not the only one who thought this. That’s what they did. So as generations changed, politicians gradually changed their public positions, according to what was acceptable to the voters.
To answer the question. Democrats now are not your fathers’ Democrats, but they grew from seeds planted by your fathers. IMO, YMMV.
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TMMV,
IU was married in 1964 while attending University in Australia. There was none of the social activity that you list for me or for my mates. We were working too hard to pay our ways through Uni and with babies to support. There were no silver spoons, many of us were dirt poor with parents who fought in WWII and came home broke. Personally, I would never attend a rally for any cause because I am not so dumb as the masses.
Never experienced, personally, any inhibition of speech or ideas until this cursed global warming thing appeared. It is dreadfully destructive of good and proper science – I was one of the first to get a Life Ban from that leftist organ “The Conversation”
Looking around, those mates of old who did well were the ones who refused to go group speech at rallies and vice versa. Reading of Rud’s adventures here I feel a lot in common. Fortune does not favour the indolent. But Willis, how in hell did you fall for becoming a groupie at Berkeley?
This memory lane stuff does not add to the group infighting and Dem/Rep divide that seems to be worsening in USA. Here in Aust, we have found an effective solution. If you wait, the masses will elect a bunch of federal politicians so dreadful that nobody wants to identify with left or right or any of them. A pox on all their houses attitude. What seems to happen is that the pollies then deal with less and less of importance, which translates into less and les interference in your life, which is what I suspect will please you. Geoff
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Geoff,
I entered the University of Queensland in 1960 to study Engineering. Among the students were a collection of people as similar to the modern fools who infest universities in both the USA and Australia as could be (taking account for the years that have elapsed). You could pick these fools; they were commonly in the Arts faculties, they had fewer than 20 hours of classes per week; they always were involved in Student Union/student representative council politics (infact were the only ones who voted in Student Union elections).
Since they were the only ones who had the time to be involved, the vast student body ignored them. One of these oxygen thieves went on in political machinations and she ended up as our Head of State. Needless for me to say that I had little time for her; but many of my friends from those days wondered why I had nothing good to say about this (female) oxygen thief.
In those far off days we could afford to ignore those fools; they are more dangerous today.
Over the 53 years since then I have wandered over much of the world in the mining industry, and have seen and lived in some truly grim country, I have found that the people who work in a difficult business have one characteristic – they are normally decent people. But the ones who are drawn from that cohort of fools rarely travel far from their origins. They remain loudmouthed fools in small puddles.
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I don’t know about that “less interference part”. Sometimes I wonder what the Jews in Germany felt, knowing bad things were coming and not able to do anything about it. Forget the dire global warming predictions. We should be that lucky to last that long. Between nuclear war (accidental or on purpose) and the Decline and Fall of Democracy…
… but enough negativity. Recent events have been great for studying American History. So many interesting things that nobody teaches…
I’m thinking that (aside from gang wars), there have never been street battles before in the US. There were riots where property was attacked, there were riots where there were fights with police. Am I right?
Reasons why Hamilton was a better man than Jefferson. Hmmm, Interesting.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426364/hamilton-and-jefferson-deserving-and-deserter-m-d-aeschliman
You know that phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident” in the Declaration? Turns out they weren’t so self-evident. The draft version said “We hold these truths to be sacred”.
The founding fathers were for a free press and free expression.
“But by 1798, a mere ten years after the Constitution’s adoption, the federal government had enacted the Sedition Act, making it illegal to publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing” against Congress or the president. The act was a clear violation of Americans’ First Amendment rights. The Federalist party, under President John Adams, used its control of the government to silence its critics and attack the Democratic-Republican minority.” That didn’t take long.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450908/free-speech-endangered-new-school-year-begins
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There are some things that are troubling about this affair. Apparently, there was a referendum in Charlottesville, as to whether the statues should be taken down, and a significant majority of people wanted them left in place. It was the council that decided that they should be taken down. Also, there had been a “KKK” rally in April sometime, which passed off peacefully. It was only when Antifa and the rest of the goons got involved, that there was violence.
Another thing is the car that drove into the protesters. Now, no question about it, the guy is a murderer. That he was indicted for second degree Murder means he has probably admitted it himself. There are photos of him in the rally, I think he was with the ‘Vanguard’ group, and he looks zoned out, as if he was on meds or drugs of some sort.
But there was a picture of the car from the front (this 2 minutevideo will have to do -graphic-) which shows that before the impact, the windscreen on the car was already damaged. He either returned to his car, and was enraged to see the damage, or in the course of driving around, it got damaged by protesters, and he took his revenge. What’s strange is that this has never been mentioned.
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“How did the Democratic Party that I had supported all my life morph into the fascists beating people up to prevent them from speaking?”
https://www.steynonline.com/8063/the-coming-terror
“the violence on American streets derives from today’s paramilitary wing of the Democrat Party – antifa – working itself up over yesterday’s paramilitary wing of the Democrat Party – the Ku Klux Klan. Both have stupid pseudo-exotic self-romanticizing names and, as many commentators have observed, both have strict dress codes intended to conceal their identities. From white sheets to black bandanas is a mere fashion evolution: the purpose is the same – to do ugly things one could not confidently do with one’s face known to all.”
[skipping some stuff well worth reading]
“And the Democrats mostly agree with the media – because the party’s moderates are a bust, and such energy as remains among the Dems belongs all but entirely to the hardcore left.”
I assume that there are still moderate Democrats, who like the moderate Muslims, do not speak out, leaving the radicals in control.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448275/antifa-protest-movement-roots-left-wing-political-violence
“Bryan Burrough in his 2015 book Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, which chronicles the 15-year reign of terror, idealism, and ineptitude of radical left-wing groups such as the Weather Underground, the Black and Symbionese Liberation Armies, and others that began in July 1969 with a bomb in Manhattan and ended in April 1985 with the arrest of the last members of the United Freedom Front in Norfolk, Va.”
and
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Here is a very interesting article about the origins of Antifa. It goes all the way back to about 1920, with the goal to incite a Communist revolution in Germany, and at that time they called all rival parties ‘fascist’.
To the Communists, then and now, ‘anti-fascism’ just means ‘anti-capitalism’.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-communist-origins-of-the-antifa-extremist-group_2282816.html
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Thanks, YMMV. There’s an old rule, that any country with “Democratic” in its name … isn’t.
This is somehow similar … people claiming to be “anti-Fascist” who are the most fascistic group in the US.
w.
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The left has become adept at twisting words and terms that mean one thing in common usage when they actually mean another to the left:
Democratic (Dictatorship)
Fascist (anyone who disagrees with me)
Affirmative Action (Quotas)
Free/Fair Elections (one that we win)
Racist (white people)
Undocumented Immigrants (aliens who are in the US illegally)
Foreign Interference in our elections (anyone not supporting our causes. George Soros is therefor a good guy)
The rich buying our elections (Koch bad, Silicon Valley good)
Freedom of Speech (unless your a fascist (see above))
Academic Freedom (only if you believe in our causes)
Social Justice (socialist ideology, identity politics, etc)
Hate Speech (anything someone who disagrees with me says)
George Orwell would probably be horrified that 1984 has turned into a training manual for the left.
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