Archive → January, 2017
Did Liberals become Lawless by Nature? Or Habit?
Part of the 1960s counter-culture and protest fuel was a strong sense that ossified American culture and morality were “just, because.” To counter-culture activists, the war in Vietnam was perhaps the best example of this inconsiderate mindlessness. It became a galvanizing centerpiece in the display of Everything That Is Wrong With America.
So both bras and draft cards alike were burned as acts of moral or legal defiance became part and parcel of the movement.
Fast forward fifty years, and the liberal culture is deeply rooted in brazen acts of defiance and protest. Sit-ins, occupations of offices, “die-ins,” stormy public protests are all regular scenes as liberals make their point public.
Somewhere underlying the actions is that old sense that ‘because these things I oppose are immoral, I can engage in immoral and illegal acts of protest’.
Or said another way, ‘I vote the right way, so my actions are infallible’.
Half a step away from this thinking is the idea that whatever politically correct issue du jour is up next, illegal and violent acts are a necessity or at least justified. Heck, people even argue they are the cause. Could be the candidacy and then election of Donald Trump “causing” demonstrators to destroy private and public property, assault fellow Americans, bully co-workers, and accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being violent, hateful, etc.
And here is where a lot of Americans are lost and confused, including me.
Protesting is understandable. Violent protests are not (think of the many recent cry-bully protests against displeasing electoral outcomes).
Strongly disagreeing with someone’s politics is understandable. Assaulting someone over it is not (especially when the assailant claims to be “for love” and “against hate”) (think of the mass violence by liberals committed against Trump supporters for the past year).
Writing a letter to the editor, like Bob Quarteroni did a few weeks ago here in the Patriot News is all-American. Go for it. But trespassing, vandalizing and stealing private property, and threatening landowners with physical harm to make a vague political point, as Mr. Quarteroni gleefully admitted to in his letter, is not OK.
Asking a young lady yesterday to please stop at the stop sign in our neighborhood, and not barrel through it as she did, because two small kids play at that intersection, netted my son and I this response: “I did stop at the stop sign”
“No, you did not, we watched you drive right through.”
“I’ll bet you voted for Trump,” said the dashing young lady, who then gave us the finger and marched on in to the Wells Fargo bank to get her money. Apparently Trump made her drive recklessly.
And then there is the sanctuary city thing, a naked play for votes by one political party that seems to always need a permanently angry underclass. Illegal aliens will do for them, never mind that the rest of America wants them to follow the law.
If a bunch of gun owners decided to ignore gun laws in one of these sanctuary cities, because they believe the gun laws are unconstitutional, punitive, unfair, backwards, and causing crime rather than limiting it, you just know what the city fathers would do: Lock ’em up!
It is interesting, isn’t it, that neither Barack Hussein Obama nor Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders asked their rampaging supporters to stop…. The liberal political leaders actually encouraged the illegal and violent behavior. And in fact, in state houses and the US Congress there is one political party whose elected members continue to hold illegal “sit-ins” and other forms of partisan protest in public, taxpayer-owned places.
So what happened here?
When did liberals go from staking out some intellectual or moral high ground, to destructive, illegal, and criminal acts as a matter of daily behavior?
Somewhere, that old sense of just cause got blurred. All of the burned draft cards and other little illegal acts of defiance morphed into a culture of perpetual violence, destruction, and openly flouting the law (when it suits them).
I know a lot of liberals. How could I not, having graduated from America’s flagship Quaker school? Our high school class grew up together and we are like a big family, so we stay in touch. And of course I continue to maintain relationships with as many liberals as will have me as their friend (apparently not easy for PC people, a subject for another essay).
I look at these otherwise great people about whom I care a great deal, and I wonder, did they willingly and consciously allow their nature to become corrupted and lawless? Did they get here by habit?
Are their goals so pure that any means are justified, no matter the unfair high cost, the immorality, the injustice, the personal loss by innocents? That was a Lenin and Stalin thing. Not that American liberals would ever follow in those paths….nahhh.
I cannot answer this question, and I wish liberals would.