First Amendment 101
NEW YORK—It’s been a rough year for stump speaking in general, but let’s make a resolution for 2018:
We need to start listening to these White Pride guys in the polo shirts and khaki pants.
And we need to start arresting the Antifa thugs.
Liberals and conservatives alike should agree that the pattern of these events over the past year has become obvious and odious:
The Alt-Right announces a rally, demonstration or speakers program.
Their enemies organize a campaign to “disrupt” the event. That’s the word they use. It’s not counter-programming, it’s an attempt to shut them down. If it were truly a “counter-protest,” they could do it across town, at some other location, where the National Guard wouldn’t be required, or they could do it immediately after the scheduled event.
By the time the event happens, the Alt-Righters are outnumbered anywhere from ten to one to a hundred to one.
Things get nasty. It usually starts when an Alt-Right guy gets cut off from his comrades and surrounded. Somebody knocks his hat off or tries to grab his flag pole or—the biggest prize of all—seizes one of those homemade shields that are normally found only at Renaissance Fairs. If he tries to get away, the bullies lock arms and block his path, all the while screaming at him or spitting at him. They’re trying to get him to throw a punch, so they can commence a group beatdown, but since most of the Alt-Righters have prepared for this, if only in their imaginations, they simply try to push through the crowd. But since pushing through the crowd requires shoving some guy in the chest or holding him at bay with a flag pole, we end up with a YouTube video of a skinny nerd being chased through the streets for ten minutes by 30 angry guys, loaded for bear, often restrained only by their girlfriends. Blood flows.
As soon as somebody throws a punch—or hits somebody with a urine-filled balloon, because projectiles are always raining down on these guys—an illegal assembly is declared and the streets are cleared, sometimes with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Very few arrests are made, usually a couple of dozen. Ninety percent of the arrestees are counter-protesters.
Bottom line: the counter-protesters always win, because nobody ever hears the speaker.
We now know from the 220-page report commissioned by the Charlottesville City Council that, in that notorious case, the police chief decided to keep his officers behind barricades even when they could clearly see physical altercations. His theory was that the situation would get so bad he would be forced to declare an unlawful assembly and tell everyone to leave. Of his two obligations—protect free speech and protect public safety—he went 0 for 2. His only strategy was to make it end quickly.
In most cases, law enforcement ends up congratulating itself because arrests and injuries are held to a minimum.
That’s not the standard of success.
That’s the bare minimum expectation.
The standard of civic success is this: The speaker finishes his speech and everybody who wants to hear him can hear him.
If there are people present who do not want to hear his speech, or do not want others to hear his speech, and if those people take any action to make sure he can’t be heard, they need to be carted away.
Most police forces are so poorly trained that they think, if the demonstrators are speaking and not being physically assaulted, then all objectives are achieved. The fact that they’re being shouted down doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s list.
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