In case anybody cares: I don’t believe in political violence. The problem is, what happened in Chicago was that one group that does kind of believe in political violence met another group that believes in political violence, and the two groups* decided to have themselves some mutual political violence. Erick Erickson put it perfectly:
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/708473151030689797
And I’ve been expecting something like this to happen since Donald Trump first started telling people at his rallies that if they roughed up a protester he’d make sure to pay their legal bills. Which, by the way, was and is a lie. That one dude that took him up on it was left to twist in the wind. But that incitement – and I’m sorry, but that’s what it is – is why Trump should not be allowed to turn this into a free speech issue. Freedom of speech does not cover the instruction “go, and hit that man.”
Moe Lane
PS: I don’t know if this helps him, and I do not care. Trump still needs to stop telling people to hit other people.
*I am perfectly willing to believe that most of the people caught up in this thing tonight don’t actually want to hit people. But there were far too many of them that did.
Eh, we saw traditional liberal tolerance on both sides tonight…
MoveOn just went out and killed the Michelle Fields story as it was getting going. Well done, Lefties.
.
.
Donald Trump is most fortunate in his enemies. Just when he has got himself stuck they toss him in the Briar Patch.
There are other…. people I’m sure we’re all familiar with who have encouraged people to start going to these rallies *armed*. I expect a “Shape-Status Upgrade: Pear” soon enough.
You can say that it was Neil Stevens. Here’s the link. Although I don’t think that that advice would work, given that I’m pretty sure that they pat down people at any event that has Secret Service protection. Which is fine; assassination is a legitimate risk for any Presidential candidate.
I feel like Tevye.
.
On the one hand, I don’t want anyone to be able to exercise a heckler’s veto. It’s destructive to free speech.
.
On the other hand, when someone who IS a heckler gets shouted down by one, isn’t there a certain justice in that?
.
On the OTHER hand, justice is not just tit-for-tat, or “fair is fair.” We should hold everyone to a higher standard.
.
On the *OTHER* hand, don’t people usually learn best about their own bad standards by being held up to them?
.
On the **OTHER** hand, doesn’t that line of reasoning apply to everyone? An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
.
On the ***OTHER*** hand…
.
And on, and on, and on…
I’m with Larry Correia, although he was talking about the Refugee Crisis:
“Some of you are under the mistaken impression that there are *good* options here.”
And the National Guard was completely justified when employing lethal force at Kent State.
Fat lot of good that did them.
.
When the media is arrayed against you, even self-defense will be loudly portrayed as unconscionable.
.
Of course, the flipside is that these riots are something that cannot be countenanced.
.
Of course, many urban areas have decided to do exactly that, and it is general accepted within them that the mob has the right to destroy property and livelihoods. Trying to rein that in will take lethal force, consistently applied.
See statements one and two.
.
There’s going to be blood.
Now that people at the values know they’re going to be attacked, they’re going to be prepared to counterattack.
I really don’t like this. There are consequences for going down this path and none of them are good, and very little is foreseeable.
Progressives have been working to break apart the foundations of a civil society for a long time. Events like this show their “progress”.
Somehow I see a scenario like the Altamont Free Concert unfolding : one thing leads to another and then ….