If you can stand to read it, there's an editorial in today's New York Times by Dahlia Lithwick concerning the daily disintegration of our Bill of Rights at the hands of Bushitler. It turns out that the right of the people to freely assemble and be anti-American assholes is being infringed (emphasis added):
It's easy to forget that as passionate and violent as opposition to the Iraq war may be, it pales in comparison with the often bloody dissent of the Vietnam era, when much of the city of Washington was nevertheless a free-speech zone.
It's tempting to say the difference this time lies in the perils of the post-9/11 world, but that argument assumes some meaningful link between domestic political protest and terrorism. There is no such link, except in the eyes of the Bush administration, which conflates the two both as a matter of law and of policy.
Lithwick's "argument" seems to be that people who hate Bush have a right to physically and proximately confront both him and the people who choose to support him in public venues such as speeches, rallies, and conventions. Bush-haters have a Constitutional right to disrupt the assemblies of those who support him and make any place where such events are held a "free speech zone."
This is garbage for two reasons. One, it is an infringement upon the rights of others to peaceably assemble and to advocate their own interests. Americans who support our President will have made considerable effort to come and be near him as he makes an appearance, and it is fundamentally unfair to expect them to subject themselves to some pack of hecklers or troublemakers whose clear purpose is to make a scene and get the attention that mommy never gave them as children. These oh-so principled "dissenters" have only one thing in mind, which is to gain the attention of Big Media. Nothing would give these French-loving degenerate flag-burners a bigger woody than to get ten seconds on Peter Jennings' evening apology. And that's a right? There's a right to sufficient media coverage for fifth-columnists to spew their bile? Try again, Ms. Lithwick.
Two, the physical imposition of violence-minded Bush-haters in concentrated areas introduces a high potential for chaos, confusion, and loss of control. Neither the President nor the Secret Service nor any other defender of this Administration is obligated to stand there and allow people who are obviously unstable and filled with hate to have the kind of "access" to the President that they would like. Apparently, Lithwick is unfamiliar with the logic of rope-lines, security perimeters, security sweeps and checks, metal-detectors, and dozens of other such measures. This is the President we're talking about, not a county commissioner. In the past 40 years, we have seen what apparently friendly crowds can wreak upon prominent American politicians. Is it really so unreasonable that, in a time of war and asymmetrical terrorism, our President should be afforded the highest physical protection? I didn't see the DNC refusing security perimeters in Boston, you know.
As for Lithwick's more scurrilous point ---that this Administration is busy making dissent into terrorism--- she is simply spreading the usual Leftist hysteria. These hippies and flakes would like us to believe that they are being repressed and censored, but that simply isn't happening. People are free to speak their minds in every conceivable public venue. They can assume false identities and rant all day long on the internet. They can assemble with like-minded people anywhere they wish. They can make a nuisance of themselves with placards, bullhorns, and their usual stench. They can make propaganda films and laugh all the way to the bank. If they're sufficiently well-connected, they can get a gig on a major network or a radio station. They can write books, letters, and Congressmen. So forget all this crushing-of-dissent gibberish: nobody's knocking on the doors of average people who hate Bush in the middle of the night. It's a lie to say they are.
The anti-war Left, being on the inherently more intelligent side of this argument of whether the President is the Anti-Christ, should believe in the primacy of ideas. But they do not. They believe in ideology as performance art. They believe in clustering together in their little claverns where no other opinion may intrude. But they are not entitled to intimidate others in places where those people are assembled to demonstrate their own beliefs. It may be laughable to think that the anti-war crowd poses a physical danger to people who believe in the Second Amendment, but as the stakes grow larger in this time of war, only irresponsible hacks like Lithwick would ignore the potential for domestic dissent to turn violent. And as the anti-war Left's beliefs and behavior come to resemble ever more closely the qualities of treason and sympathy for terrorists, real Americans would be wise to be on their guard.
Even against the Sandal-Wearing Patchouli People.