Pages

Monday, January 13, 2003

Protesters

Our domestic Stalinists of ANSWER are revving up another weekend of protests. Many will answer the call, including one quoted Texas attorney. So the attorney doesn’t care who organizes the rally? Nazis, or League of Women Voters, or the American Legion, it just doesn’t matter to him. He values the Stalinist ANSWER’s ability to organize. Well, that’s what Stalinist do, being the vanguard of the proletariat and all. They organize the useful dunderheads and lead them to storm the parliament. While the communists of ANSWER will never shoot their way to power—I don’t mean to imply that—that is their goal, albeit a hopelessly unrealistic one. But that ability to hope against reality is consistent with their economic, political, and social ideas.

This ability to ignore who you side with is consistent with that mentality that leads to human shields in the service of Saddam Hussein. I don’t care how much I disapproved of the actions of our government on a particular subject, I could not march, and chant, and hoist a sign condemning our government in the service of some organization that advocates the violent overthrow of our democratic government.

And it is funny, too. These protesters demonize our government yet freely speak to reporters and mass in our capital, unafraid of being whisked away, tortured for the names of their friends, and executed in the public square as a warning to others. American bombers will not wreak vengeance on their home towns as pay back. They will not lose their jobs as the government seeks to silence them. They live in a free country where they can vent their anger even on the eve of war without fear of reprisal.

How they fail to see how this reality of tolerance and freedom contradicts their fevered image of an American dictatorship is beyond me.

On to Baghdad. The protesters have my scorn and disgust for their display of Saddam solidarity.