Writes David French, in "Colleges Have Gone off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out" (NYT).
April 30, 2024
"There is a long and honorable history of civil disobedience in the United States, but true civil disobedience ultimately honors and respects the rule of law."
"In a 1965 appearance on 'Meet the Press,' the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the principle perfectly: 'When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly — not uncivilly — and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty.' But what we’re seeing on a number of campuses isn’t free expression, nor is it civil disobedience. It’s outright lawlessness. No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others. Indefinitely occupying a quad violates the rights of other speakers to use the same space. Relentless, loud protest violates the rights of students to sleep or study in peace. And when protests become truly threatening or intimidating, they can violate the civil rights of other students, especially if those students are targeted on the basis of their race, sex, color or national origin."
Writes David French, in "Colleges Have Gone off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out" (NYT).
Writes David French, in "Colleges Have Gone off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out" (NYT).
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Good luck, French. MLK isn't the icon to these protestors that he once was to us all.
Yes, but Trump.
It's going according to plan. See the Fall of Europe.
https://www.independentsentinel.com/dutch-activist-the-fall-of-europe-the-most-important-speech-youll-hear/
The problem is the incentives created when rules and laws are not enforced. In addition to laws, schools have codes of conduct students (used to) have to confirm…but of this MLK blah blah blah is intended to gloss over the bigger issue of the students supporting bigotry, hatred and genocide.
…and are these kids being paid? Follow the money…
MLK is an Enemy of the People as far as Hamas Kidz are concerned.
The problem is that these are literally Democrat NAZIS and real insurrectionists.
Much like the blm riots.
DAvid French.
LOL - those are your people now- loser.
I have written it several times over the last month- what is driving the pushback on these protests is that a Democrat President is being force to run for re-election this year. If Trump had won in 2020 and were President today with the exact same policies with regards to the Gaza War, David French etal would be praising these protests and the university management would be actively encouraging them.
Part of the point of throwing these tantrums is to get the attention that would otherwise not be gotten and because they are acting like immature children, they expect zero consequences for their "look at me" display.
As has been highlighted elsewhere, many of those involved do not understand what they are protesting for, but by gum protest they will!
The thesis of the article is a poster child for cognitive dissonance.
"Civil disobedience... honors and respects the rule of law"
The irony is that the colleges are not honoring the rule of law by ignoring the lawlessness of the protestors. That doesn't mean that the pigs need to be deployed to fire rubber bullets and pepper balls while bashing skulls with Night sticks and Billy clubs. Not because it would be wrong, but because it would make them martyrdoms for Islamic fundies.
That only worked as long as it was pecieved that there was equal justice under the law. Now that we have seen that the laws are selectively enforced and used as a political blugeon to put down one side, all bets are off.
"The thesis of the article is a poster child for cognitive dissonance.... The irony is that the colleges are not honoring the rule of law by ignoring the lawlessness of the protestors."
Did you read the article? It doesn't seem as if you even read the post!
Reread and amend your remarks or explain them or you've really wasted our time.
French is usually wrong about things, but this piece reminds me of long ago, when he was usually right about things. Hopefully he keeps being sensible.
They are terrorist sympathizers so were st floyd worshipers
The left went down a staircase of non-liberal, selfish, and raw political aggression to reach their current point.
* Ends-justifies-the-means court rulings / legislation from the bench (e.g., abortion; guns)
* Jury nullification and silly billion-dollar awards for dubious legal cases
* Use of slippery executive orders and agency "rules" rather than laws as passed
* Selling out to Wall St. and billionaire oligarchs with stock 401ks becoming pensions
* Selling out to the military-industrial complex, and expanding the state funding/control model to healthcare, education, housing, media, and all state-funded jobs.
* Indulging the wishful thinking of (often changing) Wave X feminists to "garner" votes
* Indulging the wishful thinking of racist and troubled minorities to "garner" votes
* Indulging the law breaking of some immigrants to "garner" votes
* Indulging the delusions of mentally ill people to "garner" votes
* Indulging the violent desires of militants to "garner" votes
But Trump. But saving democracy. Destroy democracy to save it.
The 1960s peaceniks of "civil disobedience" became the state sponsored arsonists, brick-throwers, and slippery tricksters of Antifa, BLM, and NATO.
The new left are bullies and alt-conservatives who recreated the worst cultural errors of the 1950s. You become what you hate. Hate = dysfunction.
I watched a video on X yesterday of protestors wearing Yasser Arafat kufiyyehs, blocking a Jewish student from passing to get to the building he needed to attend class. Seemed like most of them were young women. Given, the kid purposefully wore a Star of David necklace on the outside of his shirt to show he was Jewish. But the Nazis would let him pass because he was Jewish.
Colleges are horseshit. It's amazing they can charge the prices they do. Faculty and staff should be fired and just start over. As long as liberal women and man hating lesbians are running America's colleges they will continue to slide downhill.
King would be shouted down today.
Sad.
Do we believe any of these idiot protestors know anything MLK said besides "I had a Dream"?
David French is correct that "civil disobedience" must include acceptance of the legal consequences of that action. That's why MLK's letter was from the Birmingham jail, not from his hotel room; he peacefully submitted to the law.
But there is another dimension of civil disobedience which David French, and most people these days, overlook. The law which is being disobeyed must be an unjust law, so that the punishment being peacefully accepted is seen as unjust, too. For example, Rosa Parks being punished for refusing to sit in the back of the bus. She disobeyed, was arrested, and accepted her punishment, which brought attention to the injustice of that law.
What is passed off as civil disobedience these days is willful violation of just laws. For example, students violate laws reasonably regulating the time and place for expression of dissent, and claim that is "civil disobedience." And yet there is nothing unjust about those laws. So why should the rest of us care about the consequences of their violating a just law? Suck it up like an adult!
Some entrances matter - entrances to late term abortion clinics; and some entrances do not - entrances to education at an Ivy League university. There are people in jail in DC right now for a non-violent protest which followed all the rules formulated by Gandhi and followed by Martin Luther King. But they are prolifers; they were in a late term abortion clinic whose doctor has been recorded on video explaining to a potential customer how he would kill a baby born alive so she need have no worries. Killing babies born alive is illegal in DC but the protest drawing attention to this butcher's activities did not result in any serious action against him while these non-violent prolife protestors got five years for blocking clinic entrances. So there you are. I do not wonder why David French doesn't mention these prolifers. We are on the right and the right has no rights.
Speaking of that, the whole struggle at Columbia over blocking entrances and pathways to an educational institutions illustrates how hard it is for the Jews to understand that they are now on the right like prolifers since a majority of American Jews identify with the left. But it's easier for man to become a woman than for a group of well-off Americans to be admitted to the intersectional, settler colonial left of today.
The masked sheep at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, got in on the act yesterday. Faculty as well as students. Guess there is an encampment on the Library Mall, and yesterday a human chain was formed to protect the campers.
Just look at the video. The masks! If it is still for COVID paranoia, these people are crazy. Who besides an insane liberal university would hire these kids? Can you imagine what an entitled pain in the ass they would be at work?
Although there are some sane UW students that skip this bullshit and just fished a weekend of getting drunk at the Mifflin Street Block Party. Those are the kids you want to hire.
The namby pamby author invents a polite limit on civil disobedience to breaking an unjust law. Bullshit. Civil disobedience is a highly ambiguous term that covers all sorts of lawlessness deployed as a political tool to change policy.
Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that the word civil confers politeness. In fact civilization has caused much more violence than any other human structure. Civil disobedience is just one step below civil War and we all know how polite and nice a civil war can be.
You know, nobody is really serious about putting a stop to the modern phenomenon of Direct Action. This is not a mass of students milling about and deciding to Camp Out On The Quad for Palestine. The useful-idiot students, professors, and riff-raff that we are getting mad at, are put there, to get mad at. They are the replaceable styrofoam bumper on the Direct Action Bus.
If you dive deeply into some of the better journalism around those Direct Actions that got heated (e.g. Seattle a couple of years ago, where a Proud Boy was set up, ambushed, and murdered), you start to understand that these are sophisticated efforts, deploying technology, tactical expertise, and controlled violence. They are well-funded. Like the battlefield, the executive functions are kept behind the lines and out of the skirmishes, where they can observe and direct. They have their own protective perimeter guards. They have lines of communication. They are in many cases veterans with overseas experience, and seasoned political operatives that know how to organize. Did I mention that they are well funded? George Soros and other like-minded NGO's.
So far, we have heard nothing about the people in charge of keeping the public order - i.e government or law enforcement - deploying personnel to direct their full attention on the leadership teams. Take out the leadership and the campus circus will fold, almost immediately, maybe hastened with a little hickory massage. I can only hope that this is happening, but being kept quiet for good reasons. But this is what it will take, to win. And the nation's AG's could do some good if they went after these commies and dismantled their funding.
many of those involved do not understand what they are protesting for,
=============
is that not called a teachable moment?
but what can teachers teach at this point?
"The namby pamby author invents a polite limit on civil disobedience to breaking an unjust law...."
It's a term that needs a definition and MLK is persuasively offering a definition. Yes, it's a narrow one, but sometimes narrowing a term is the better rhetorical move. MLK did a fantastic job there and it's worth repeating for the benefit of people doing demonstrations today.
Extreme Hamas supporting leftists wear masks because they know they are terrorist supporting sociopaths.
Althouse (to Howitzer Howard): "Did you read the article? It doesn't seem as if you even read the post!
Reread and amend your remarks or explain them or you've really wasted our time."
Howitzer Howard has been warned repeatedly about the dangers of posting more than 5 words of his own thoughts. Like gadfly, it never works out.
My biggest problem with French is that he asserts that "true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others," then proceeds to call everything he wants to enable a "right."
On the new episode of Advisory Opinions, he discusses this topic and says that civil rights demonstrations in the MLK era did not violate the rights of others. But the people who owned private businesses with lunch counters believed they had private property rights and could decide who to serve and who to tell they had to leave.
we have had four years of rampant vandalism, murder, rape, that he was blissfully ignorant of,
not only did they break the window, and threw pieces of it, to cut other people maliciously,
so it's way past time for him to notice,
"But there is another dimension of civil disobedience which David French, and most people these days, overlook. The law which is being disobeyed must be an unjust law, so that the punishment being peacefully accepted is seen as unjust, too. For example, Rosa Parks being punished for refusing to sit in the back of the bus. She disobeyed, was arrested, and accepted her punishment, which brought attention to the injustice of that law."
That fits with French's idea that "true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others" and shows the answer to my previous comment. The people who thought they had a right of their own were conceiving of a right that did not deserve to be called a right.
Why do we care if liberals (Faculty and Students), camp out and shut down access to university facilities? It's their space. Just keep that shit in Madison, and stay away from Waukesha County...deal?
he discusses this topic and says that civil rights demonstrations in the MLK era did not violate the rights of others
Nobody really cares about shutting shown a quad on a college campus.
But blocking an interstate is a crime.
But what we’re seeing on a number of campuses isn’t free expression, nor is it civil disobedience. It’s outright lawlessness.
you mean like surrounding Jewish kids and telling them that IF they try to go to their classes;
you'll KILL them?
That sort of thing?
If you stop classes, and students.. Because you are protesting Abortion.. What happens to YOU?
Doesn't it MATTER, WHAT you're protesting?
There was a protest at the Capitol, back in Jan, 2020..
The people were asking for investigation into voter suppression. What happened to THOSE people?
The First Amendment needs to be amended. It was written before there were megaphones and bullhorns. The right to speak is not a right to be listened to, and that should be clarified before majority rule becomes rule by the loudest and most obnoxious assholes. As a first step, noise, nuisance, and loitering laws should be vigorously enforced.
French sounds like Kristi Noem rationalizing shooting her dog for the crime of being untrained.
Our "leaders", the same so-called "leaders" who failed these college kids, who failed to educate them, who failed to inspire them, who failed to lead them, who failed at every turn to live up to the standards and values they have preached to them, now want to send in the jack boots and the billy clubs because the kids represent their failures and worst of all, threaten to thwart their ambitions.
Shorter French: "True civil disobedience" doesn't threaten The Party. It serves The Party. It bolsters The Party. It furthers the agenda of The Party. It defers to The Party. And it ends when it no longer serves The Party. If not, then it's opposition and can be ruthlessly suppressed.
When you call for the suppression of these protests and punishment of the protesters, also stop and think about what will happen to those protesting the stealing of the next election or the imprisonment of Trump or whatever is the next outrage perpetrated by our so-called "leaders", because whatever they do to these protesters will be 10 times worse for the Deplorables.
The totally organic and natural peaceful demonstrations have begun to take over buildings at schools in Humboldt Calif, Columbia and Princeton.
Let it go on. Communists, totalitarians, always turn on those who helped them get into power. These schools promoted, financed, and supported left wing and communist values and goals.
the Presidents of the schools are the ones who can end it. And it is lovely to watch them twist and turn as their institutions are trashed.
My understanding is that these elite schools receive lots of our tax dollars.
The state and fed legislatures could stop it, if they wanted too.
These schools are no longer an asset to our Republic. If the peaceful demonstrators burn them down, thats ok.
I want Biden voters to watch the people and policies they voted for crash into reality, and burn.
OccupyColumbia
Antifa fascists
Some, Select [Black) Lives Matter (SS BLM)
Progressive processes with liberal license.
We need to stop fentanyl from China ... and this shocking move is how to make a difference
Labor and environmental arbitrage in the pursuit of hope and change, profit, and Democratic gerrymandering are no ethical vice.
"true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others"
Right-wing a.k.a libertarian ideology.
Republicans should be loving these protests. They expose the complete failure of the left. They expose the true agenda of the left. They will do nothing but help Republicans in the fall.
If David French is going to save you, you are doomed.
We are in an age of existential questions. Does Columbia University have a reason to exist? If it was shutdown tomorrow, it is quite arguable it would be a net positive for the country.
Palestinian supporters carry the burden of proving they aren't gonna explode in the middle of a crowd. Every time they protest. Thus, wearing a mask as a pro-Palestinian protester is as provocative as waving a gun, and deserves the same treatment. Prove me wrong, if you can.
I watched Morning Joe this morning. The panelists criticized the Columbia protests and were supportive of the actions taken in Florida to arrest such protests....Well, it's good to see that liberal Democrats have some misgivings about the Hamas lovers, but, all in all, such misgivings increase my cynicism. Their opposition to such demonstrations is nowhere near as vociferous as their opposition to 1/6 protesters. And their opposition to the various BLM riots was non-existent....This wasn't a small step forward but rather a little twirl in their minuet with the far left.
If you want to improve things on America's college campuses, let the Jewish students through, and block access for all the white women.
Especially the ones with green hair and nose rings.
Let the hot sorority chicks pass, or their is really no reason to go to college.
Althouse writes, "My biggest problem with French is that he asserts that "true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others," then proceeds to call everything he wants to enable a right."
After an irresponsibly brief period of thought, I believe every form of civil disobedience, save one, violates someone's rights. Consider the popular tactic of blocking roads and bridges. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." There it is -- liberty --right there in our founding document. Most people tend to think of liberty as a synonym for freedom in its most esoteric sense. Ask someone to define liberty and you'll likely get a rambling dissertation, but to Jefferson and his companions, it mostly meant moving about at will. If you're dissatisfied with the government in New York, you have the right to move to Florida. We take this for granted now but in 1776 it was very exceptional, even revolutionary. This fundamental right is why California is going to crash and burn when they try to collect taxes from former Californians for up to seven years after they have broken their shackles. It's also why the bridge blockers do what they do in the smug self-assurance that their right to protest trumps everyone's right to liberty, and at some level, the denial of liberty to others is a component of every other form of organized demonstration funded by the fiendish Soros clan. They have reason to believe people will give in to their totalitarian demands if they make themselves sufficiently obnoxious to grassroots working folk preoccupied with just getting by.
As you may recall I think there's an exceptional form of protest that violates no one's individual rights. Though ten thousand forms of welfare and wealth transference constitute the largest portion of the federal budget after debt service, none of the recipients of those tax monies are entitled to them as an unalienable or constitutional right. Therefore, if I choose to adopt Thoreau's form of civil disobedience, I avoid doing harm to my fellow citizens' rights. It's too bad for civilization that the Thoreau method will land you in prison much more certainly than firebombing a police car.
Watch psycho Nazi women block access for a Jewish male student to attend class at UCLA.
The purpose of the sponsors of these protests is destabilization. Many of the protesters cannot articulate basic historical or geopolitical facts relating to the Israel/Hamas conflict. What river? What sea? Duh!
The forces at work here are Marxists, Jihadists and mediaswine. Other than the students and administrators, many of whom are complicit, who cares if these universities shut down? The participants have shown that the institutions are hotbeds of terrorist supporting antisemites. Thanks for the insight. Now dry up and die.
Howard said...
The namby pamby author invents a polite limit on civil disobedience to breaking an unjust law. Bullshit. Civil disobedience is a highly ambiguous term that covers all sorts of lawlessness deployed as a political tool to change policy.
Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that the word civil confers politeness. In fact civilization has caused much more violence than any other human structure. Civil disobedience is just one step below civil War and we all know how polite and nice a civil war can be.
Civil disobedience is leftists/progressive being assholes, burning shit down, forcing people to work for them, inflicting racist DEI policies, blocking roads, demanding government money.
Civil war is everyone else making them stop.
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...
Extreme Hamas supporting leftists wear masks because they know they are terrorist supporting sociopaths.
Nope. They do it because they're special and they're supposed to be able to get away with shutting down their college, barring Jewish students from accessing the campus and still get that job at Goldman Sachs or with that white shoe law firm once the graduate.
"When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly"
Inoperative here. What the "protesters" object to is the existence of Israel and injustice of "Zionism." They do it openly. Law breaking is just a delegitimation tool. See, you can't stop us. We run these institutions. Our hate is stronger than your civility.
But it seems that in a few places they can and have been stopped, for the moment.
Too bad, in a way. Perhaps we deplorables should encourage encampments and escalation, as a GOTV effort to mobilize the normies against the lefties, a replay of Nixon vs. McGovern.
Ann Althouse said...
"The thesis of the article is a poster child for cognitive dissonance.... The irony is that the colleges are not honoring the rule of law by ignoring the lawlessness of the protestors."
Did you read the article? It doesn't seem as if you even read the post!
Reread and amend your remarks or explain them or you've really wasted our time.
The Biden Regime is:
1. Shipping in millions of illegal immigrants over the southern border.
2. Starting wars all over the world.
3. Trying to throw their political opponents in jail.
4. Facilitating collusion between the government and the largest corporations in the world to censor political opponents.
5. Printing money so fast the price of food has doubled in three years.
6. Obviously stealing elections with mail in ballots.
7. Throwing political dissidents in jail for years without a trial.
8. Instituting racist anti-white anti-asian DEI policies.
9. Paying people all over the country to attack Jews.
Howard isn't wasting your time. Howard is a Nazi Browncoat telling you to accept Democrat Lawlessness.
The sad part, for a variety of reasons on all sides, is that despite everything the Democrat Party has done you still think he isn't credible.
LOL David French. IS there a bigger fraud? Gee, he found a way to criticize those protesting the Gaza Genocide and killing of 30,000 brown people in Palestinians. They just arent being "civil".
Where was David French in the 2020 summer of Love? He wasn't too hung up on civility then. IRC, he was applauding Mittens when he marched in support of BLM. Remember all those "Mostly Peaceful" protests with riots, death, and destruction?
American Students have a right to criticize Israel in the harshest terms. They are foreign country. We Americans dont censor ourselves to protest the Genocidal actions of foreigners. We have the 1st Admendment.
But hats off to the Zionists, they always know how to derail every converstion into "Oy vey, we Jews are ther REAL victims". Always derail. Always attack. Never apologize or defend. You even have bibi netenayhu whining about some American student in NYC doing a protest and making people 'Uncomfortable" while he's dropping bombs and killing innocent people. Incredible!
"Shorter French: "True civil disobedience" doesn't threaten The Party. It serves The Party. It bolsters The Party. It furthers the agenda of The Party. It defers to The Party. And it ends when it no longer serves The Party. If not, then it's opposition and can be ruthlessly suppressed."
Plus 100.
I live in a state (Florida) with a sane Governor and a mostly anti-leftist population. Are any of these Hamas Kidz riots moving the needle for sane folk away from Biden in Blue and Purple States? That's all I care about.
Of course, the FBI recordings of MLK, Jr. will never be released.
But if they were, a lot of statues will get torn down and a lot of schools/streets renamed...
Younger people don’t care about MLK. To the extent they are even aware of his views, they don’t agree with them and aren’t going to engage in a discussion about them.
Narrowing the definition of a broad term is a clever debate tactic and is one way to set up a strawman.
The most notable American examples of civil disobedience are quite lawless: Boston Tea Party, the Abolitionist movement, the post civil war lynching of blacks, the Pinkerton put downs of strikes, the Chicago PD at the 1968 Democrat convention, the weather underground bombings, the police riot incitement of the BLM protests etc.
The panelists criticized the Columbia protests and were supportive of the actions taken in Florida to arrest such protests....
This is NOT polling well for the Administration.
It began trying to save the Jewish and Muslim votes and is now trying to stop the hemorrhage of votes from middle America.
the Gaza Genocide and killing of 30,000 brown people
I asked you on another thread about - for instance - the genocidal sterilization of Uyghur women, and about the many-times-greater killing of brown people by the Syrian government et al. (in contrast to the Israeli government's continuing, expensive, and dangerous-to-Israelis efforts to wage war while attempting to minimize civilian casualties while their enemy uses its own civilian population as personal and munitions protection and their deaths as propaganda). Any response yet?
But hats off to the Zionists, they always know how to derail every converstion into "Oy vey, we Jews are ther REAL victims".
Ah, so "Zionist" DOES equal "Jew"! I certainly suspected this was the case, but it's good to have confirmation.
Present another nation-state in the Middle East that's even in shouting distance of Israel's liberalism, civil rights record - especially with regard to women, tolerance, scientific endeavor, freedom of expression, and - or even "or"; just find another that comes close to Israel on one of these measures - economic prosperity and opportunity for all its denizens. Then we can talk about how bad it is that Israel still exists, against all odds.
Look for the fashion house dipshits to run with the keffiyeh pattern this Summer & Fall.
These people are doing what the J6 people are accused of. All of them (including school administrators) should be rounded-up and exiled to an undisclosed location. Warm clothing, basic tools, no electronics. Let them govern themselves. Perhaps Utopia will ensue.
As these "students" run out of control I ponder over the history of the jewish people that justified the formation of Israel. Clearly these "students" have no understanding of Kristallnacht, the Holocaust, or the Third Reich as well as having no understanding of the aims and practices of Hamas, Hezbollah etc. Essentially rooting for the extinction of a people is beyond my ken, and serves as just one more reason to condemn those involved in "higher education".
This is not civil disobedience in the classic sense. This is criminal activity. Trespassing, false imprisonment, assault/battery, obstructing roadways, resisting arrest, etc., are the order of the day. The police should make certain the demonstrations are confined to campuses, keep the peace where necessary to prevent injury, but otherwise let the universities reap what they have sown.
As I said before, who cares?
No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others.
You mean like the "right" not to have Black people sitting in the same restaurant as you? Or how about blocking the road between Montgomery and Selma, especially at the Edmund Pettus Bridge?
If civil disobedience shouldn't violate the rights of others, what good is it.
RCOCEAN II said... We Americans don't censor ourselves to protest the Genocidal actions of foreigners.
4/30/24, 10:01 AM
The only foreigners who have expressed and acted with genocidal intent is the Hamas/Pali Arabs with their ceaseless terrorist attacks and their "River to the Sea" ideology.
This American Intifada that we're witnessing in the USA is a Deep State production employing the same script and characters as the Occupy Wall Street nonsense and the BLM Summer of Terror Tour. Evil warlords using braindead zombies to terrorize the populace over The Current Thing.
We saw videos of this terror attack as it happened, the terrorists filmed themselves gleefully gunning down unarmed kids, women, children, families. It was a massacre, My Lai... Wounded Knee... anybody defending those actions?
These protesters are chanting Death To America! Why are there Americans who are in alliance with terrorists dedicated to destroying our nation? Do some people really hate Jews more than they love their country?
Howitzer Howard: "Narrowing the definition of a broad term is a clever debate tactic and is one way to set up a strawman."
THAT'S the direction you want to go in response to Althouse?!
LOL
You'd do well to clam up and just skulk away. Should be easy for you.
The Hamasniks blocking roads and bridges and occupying schools are using violence and/or the threat of violence against civilians to achieve their political goals. That's what terrorism is. The Feds have a duty to arrest them and prosecute them for terrorism with all of the zeal in which they prosecuted the 1/6 offenders. They're not because our president is pooping his pants at the thought of losing Dearborn.
"And when protests become truly threatening or intimidating, they can violate the civil rights of other students, especially if those students are targeted on the basis of their race, sex, color or national origin."
So, being "threatening" or "intimidating" is a violation of civil rights? if so, we need to admend the Civil Rights law. And what does "Targeting" mean? Typical of French that he uses this vague language. If you are a Zionist and counter-protest a Pro-Palestine protest you will be verbally attacked. Why should that be violating your civil rights?
Crazy. but then the USA legal system IS crazy. we have a zillion laws where whether you get charged and jailed or never charged at all just depends on who you are and whether the DA/Judge likes you - or not. Go look at how BLM was treated and how J6ers were treated. Look at how the same Zionists who loved BLM - just hate all these brown people marching against Genocide in israel. it even goes to State Governors. Burn down a city block because of BLM? No reaction. No National Guard. Upset a Zionist? Call out the police. WHere is the NG? Its Nazis on the march!
And once again, we're centering Jews in the "conversation" - instead of talking about the on-going Genocide against the People of Color in Gaza. Is that due to White Privilage or Jewish Privilage?
You make the call!
'You mean like the "right" not to have Black people sitting in the same restaurant as you? Or how about blocking the road between Montgomery and Selma, especially at the Edmund Pettus Bridge?'
A lot of democrats did some really bad shit back in the day, and they're still at it.
The most racist party in the history of America...
I read his op-ed and found it odd in one major particular. In his op-ed, French notes that the lawlessness he decries is often abetted and encouraged by like-minded administrators and faculty. (He could have added that the elite universities often have a large contingent of foreign grad students serving as instructors, and they bring their politics and agendas with them when they end up in a US university.) They pick a side and everything follows from that. Yet he says the solution is the neutral application of rules protecting everyone’s right to speak, study and learn balanced against others' right to protest. One way that's supposed to work is for the consequences that MLK said should follow from civil disobedience need to be imposed and accepted -- but they are not imposed and never accepted, or if imposed, quickly rescinded (amnesty!). So, his solution is a lovely ideal found only in Never-Never Land but not achievable on planet Earth unless something is done to rectify his initial observations about the role of administrators and faculty in fomenting and encouraging the problem. His little vignette about Tufts captures the point neatly. So, who will police the supposed guardians of neutral and fair practices when the guardians are often aiding and abetting the problem (or just excusing or rationalizing it out of cowardice and a concern for their own career promotion in the face of the mob)?
Rotwang's Cabana Boy writes, "If civil disobedience shouldn't violate the rights of others, what good is it."
Freder poses a question and forgets his grammar and his ethics. (To be frank, nothing is more forgettable than Freder's ethics.)
So where do you draw the line, Freder? And if you do, what grounds have to complain if a protestor violates your rights? Suppose the protestor draws his line to include your right to live?
Freder Frederson said...
No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others.
You mean like the "right" not to have Black people sitting in the same restaurant as you? Or how about blocking the road between Montgomery and Selma, especially at the Edmund Pettus Bridge?
If civil disobedience shouldn't violate the rights of others, what good is it
**************
As MLK himself said, civil disobedience means "cheerfully" violating laws, especially unjust laws, and then taking your lumps----, police assaults,arrest and even sentencing---for doing so.
None of this "amnesty" crap the Columbia protestors are demanding.
Your restaurant hypothetical is puzzling: what civil rightsa did whites have not to be seated in the same restaurant with peaceful blacks? We're not talking out protestors screaming at diners through bullhorns here.
As for those protestors beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge, they certainly suffered for their cause, and what the world saw was so repugnant that it led to Jim Crow being ultimately defeated.
And that was the point.
The reason "civil disobedience" works (when it does) is that the onlookers think "Wow! These people feel strongly enough about this issue to suffer for their beliefs. I might want to reconsider not caring about it."
Many of the young people doing the new, consequence-free civil disobedience have never had that explained to them (I know, because I've had those conversations). They think that if they inconvenience the normies enough, the normies will just give them what they want (thus simultaneously demonstrating something about their parents' childrearing and that they know nothing of mass psychology).
One of the reasons that the big create-inconvenience-to-normals "movements" of the past 15 years have gotten little traction among normals is exactly because they were always covertly (and often overtly) supported by the Powers that Be: the perpetrators never faced any real consequences, so there never was any true civil disobedience--just jerks being obnoxious and the Authorities using the "mass protests" as an excuse to do what they wanted to do.
The current "Hate the Jews" protests are now advocating for something that not all the Authorities are in favor of doing, so not all of the Authorities are capitulating, and this has thrown the whole fake Kabuki system into disarray.
@Yancey"I have written it several times over the last month- what is driving the pushback on these protests is that a Democrat President is being force to run for re-election this year. If Trump had won in 2020 and were President today with the exact same policies with regards to the Gaza War, David French etal would be praising these protests and the university management would be actively encouraging them."
So true! Compare reactions to BLM rioting under Obama and under Trump. The Dems played with fire and now its gonna be hard to stop.
"Good luck, French. MLK isn't the icon to these protestors that he once was to us all."
Your optimistic naivete shows. I'd bet there are some here for whom MLK was not an icon, but a communist agitator and race hustler.
"A lot of democrats did some really bad shit back in the day...."
Yep, but most of them switched to the Republican Party in the 60s and beyond. The south was predominantly Democrat for the preceding 100 years only because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The southerners in the 60s and later could see Nixon was not a Lincoln and the modern Republican party was not Lincoln's party, and thus more to their liking. However, Nixon was smarter and more moderate than today's Republican party, and he passed some policies that were fairly liberal, (e.g., the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Air Act, and he opened up relations with China).
When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly — not uncivilly — and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty
He was correct.
And it shows us the one and only correct "way out":
You always give anyone committing "civil disobedience" / "breaking the law to advance a political agenda" the maximum punishment the law allows.
If what they're doing is right and good and proper, then the public will rise up in rejection, and change things
If what they're doing is whiny petulant crap, then the public will laugh to see them in jail.
If you don't want to take that risk? Don't violate the law.
Everyone in one of those campus encampments should be expelled. Everyone doing a "you Jews / Zionists can't come in here" at UCLA or any other place should be expelled, and thrown in jail for whatever crime they can attach to that blocking.
This only happens to those on the Right, which is why those on the Right aren't going to bother with peaceful protest if / when the Dems try to steal this election
Prof. M. Drout said...
The reason "civil disobedience" works (when it does) is that the onlookers think "Wow! These people feel strongly enough about this issue to suffer for their beliefs. I might want to reconsider not caring about it."
No, the reason why it works is because people see the punishment, look at the "crime", and say "wow, that really shouldn't be a crime!"
I.E.: black people sitting at lunch counters. Or drinking from a "whites only" fountain
So long as everyone obeyed the laws, people knew it was unjust, but it was no big deal, because no one was being punished for doing it.
MLK being in jail for violating an unjust law, that rubbed people's noses in it, and forced them to think about it, and then forced many of them to DO something about it.
Throwing rich kids in jail for blocking roads / destroying artwork / setting up encampments?
No one is going to care, because essentially everyone who isn't fully on their side will correctly believe that the punishment is good and right.
It's why I'm hoping Trump keeps on pushing the corrupt judge and his BS gag order until the judge throws Trumpp in jail.
Everyone who doesn't suffer from full bore TDS (so 55 - 60% of the country) knows that all these trials are BS. But as long as Trump isn't in jail, it's like with the civil rights movement, the irritation is too low to cause a change.
But throwing Trump in jail would rub people's noses in it, and the backlash would be impressive
Robert Cook said...
"A lot of democrats did some really bad shit back in the day...."
Yep, but most of them switched to the Republican Party in the 60s and beyond.
Time for another round of "stupid, ignorant, or just dishonest?"
No, cookie, the vast majority of the nasty scumbag racist pig Democrat remained Democrats until they died
See, Senator Robert Bryd, or Senator Joe Manchin, for obvious examples.
The Democrats are still the Party of Racism, now they just call it DEI.
Robert Marshall said...
But there is another dimension of civil disobedience which David French, and most people these days, overlook. The law which is being disobeyed must be an unjust law, so that the punishment being peacefully accepted is seen as unjust, too. For example, Rosa Parks being punished for refusing to sit in the back of the bus. She disobeyed, was arrested, and accepted her punishment, which brought attention to the injustice of that law.
Bingo
Ann Althouse said...
My biggest problem with French is that he asserts that "true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others," then proceeds to call everything he wants to enable a "right."
That's because French is a hack
On the new episode of Advisory Opinions, he discusses this topic and says that civil rights demonstrations in the MLK era did not violate the rights of others. But the people who owned private businesses with lunch counters believed they had private property rights and could decide who to serve and who to tell they had to leave.
IIUC, the Jim Crow laws had already taken that right away from thevate property owners, and forced them to not allow blacks to sit there.
No?
Again IIUC, when it was private businesses choosing to discriminate, the civil rights response was a boycott. "You have the right not to treat us well, we have the right not to buy from you so long as you refuse to treat us well."
It was when the State got involved and established an unjust law that the companies HAD to treat them poorly, that the civil disobedience kicked in.
No?
Freder Frederson said...
If civil disobedience shouldn't violate the rights of others, what good is it.
Thank you Freder, for taking off the mask. nice of you to admit that for you and your cohorts, "violating other people's rights" is the whole point of the activity.
You're not trying to make the world a better place, you're just looking for an excuse to let out your inner thug
Cookie passing off the same old lies that Klansmen like Robert Byrd left the Democrat Party. And of course, the only good Republicans are dead ones. Tells us Cookie, why are you the only one here calling MLK a communist agitator and race hustler?
As a Columbia U grad I received the following earlier today:
Dear Alumni and Friends,
This is the first in a series of updates from University leadership to keep you informed about the latest events related to Columbia University. We will send updates as we receive them.
• Early this morning, a group of protestors occupied Hamilton Hall on the Morningside Campus. We regret that protesters have chosen to escalate the situation through their actions. Our top priority is restoring safety and order on our campus.
• We made it very clear yesterday the work of the University cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules. Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences. Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation–vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances–and we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday.
• Students occupying the building face expulsion.
• Protesters were informed that their participation in the encampment violated numerous university policies. We gave everyone at the encampment the opportunity to leave peacefully. By committing to abide by University policies, they would be allowed to complete the semester.
• Students who did not commit to the terms we offered are now being suspended. Those students will be restricted from all academic and recreational spaces and may only access their individual residence. Seniors will be ineligible to graduate.
• This is about responding to the actions of the protesters, not their cause.
• As we said yesterday, disruptions on campus have created a threatening environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and a noisy distraction that interferes with teaching, learning, and preparing for final exams, and contributes to a hostile environment in violation of Title VI.
• The safety of our community remains our top priority.
• As we prepare for a commencement to honor our students’ achievements, we continue to urge the protesters to remove the encampment and voluntarily disperse so as to not deprive their fellow students of this momentous occasion.
• We have followed through on our very clear warnings of consequences and are initiating disciplinary action against those who continue to violate our rules.
I hope the U follows through.
I maintain that the punishment should fit the crime. If the antisemites block access to education. the punishment should be that the antisemites have to do distance learning for 3 months or a year or whatever. And distance graduations. They would not like that whereas arrests with no consequences are something they'll boast about and draw others into.
And also I think some Lenape Native Americans should be running the protest encampments on Native American lines. What's the good of talking about settler-colonialism 5000 miles away if you are excluding Native Americans from leadership roles in a settler-colonialist protest at home?
'Your optimistic naivete shows. I'd bet there are some here for whom MLK was not an icon, but a communist agitator and race hustler.'
Don't forget philanderer and far worse.
But he was smart enough, according to his niece, to be a republican...
Robert Cook: "Yep, but most of them switched to the Republican Party in the 60s and beyond."
LOL
One of the oldest and most easily debunked lefty political lies ever told!
All you have to do is research when the State Houses and State Senate's flipped from Dem to Republican in the relevant states and you'll see that effectively NONE of these cats switched to the republican party.
Raise your hand if you are surprised an unreconstructed stalinist fanboy like Robert Cook would lie about such a thing!
Exit question: out of over 200+ dixiecrat dems in the US House and Senate, how many switched to the republican party?
Spoiler: the answer is between 1 and 3.....
(Cue Sad Commie Trombone here)
The Dems seem to have a huge problem on their hands. Naturally, David French wants to help them solve it.
If America is such a racist country, why do so many people despise the Jew hating that's manifesting at these protests?
Freder Frederson said...
No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others.
You mean like the "right" not to have Black people sitting in the same restaurant as you? Or how about blocking the road between Montgomery and Selma, especially at the Edmund Pettus Bridge?
If civil disobedience shouldn't violate the rights of others, what good is it.
We, the People of the United States, defeated the Democrats in the 1960's and ended Jim Crow.
The entire party apparatus is based on racism and division. The Democrat party was founded to protect Slavery and we had to band together to defeat you then too.
Recently they just morphed Jim Crow into Affirmative Action and DEI. Being racist is just part of being a Democrat.
But even more important to Democrats is they demand the right to attack and harass people who disagree with them.
They have always been violent racist shitheads.
A young woman was just beaten unconscious on one of our elite college campuses by five “activists”, and may have suffered a concussion, for the crime of being Jewish. I wonder what MLK would say about that.
Robert Cook said...
"A lot of democrats did some really bad shit back in the day...."
Yep, but most of them switched to the Republican Party in the 60s and beyond.
Less than 5% of Democrats in the South switched parties to Republican.
This is an easily verifiable fact. Your lying on this like every other Democrat is obvious and blatant.
Slavery, Jim Crow, Affirmative Action, Forced Sterilizations, and DEI are all racist penumbras of the left in this country.
You are just racist shitheads. Deal with it.
"You are just racist shitheads. Deal with it."
They're okay with being racist shitheads. They just don't like it when they're outed as such.
@Godfather 17:26: "I hope the U follows through...."
Follows through on what? That's the most milque-toast, namby-pamby sh*t ever.
"..Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences...." When, and what are they ??
"..Students occupying the building face expulsion...." When ??
"..Protesters were informed that their participation in the encampment violated numerous university policies. " They were Informed?? Seriously, I hope you also you told them off
"..Students who did not commit to the terms we offered are now being suspended."For how long ??
All of these are weak, open-ended continuation statements. They remind me of that super-hero movie with Ben Stiller, where his super-power is getting so angry that his veins stand out and he's purple and shaking, but then he doesn't do anything.
Decisive action with no further warning would end it. This is just the University playing their Palestinian Protest role.
do people cite Civil Disobedience: Thoreau's Legacy
Decisive action with no further warning would end it. This is just the University playing their Palestinian Protest role.
==============
me wantzz to see them simply allowed to carry on as long as they want through the rest of election season !
Decisive action with no further warning would end it. This is just the University playing their Palestinian Protest role.
==============
me wantzz to see them simply allowed to carry on as long as they wantzzz for the rest of election season !
one sided civil war in college towns
"RCOCEAN II said... We Americans don't censor ourselves to protest the Genocidal actions of foreigners.
4/30/24, 10:01 AM"
Nor should we. You have a fundamental right to state your opinion. Freely and publicly. To publish it. To put it on a billboard. Even if I diasagree with you. Nobody has the right to prevent you from doing so.
Here's the kicker. I have that exact same right. In exercising your rights you have no legal or moral authority to prevent me from exercising any of mine.
"RCOCEAN II said... We Americans don't censor ourselves to protest the Genocidal actions of foreigners.
4/30/24, 10:01 AM"
Nor should we. You have a fundamental right to state your opinion. Freely and publicly. To publish it. To put it on a billboard. Even if I diasagree with you. Nobody has the right to prevent you from doing so.
Here's the kicker. I have that exact same right. In exercising your rights you have no legal or moral authority to prevent me from exercising any of mine.
Joe Smith errs about MLK as do progs denouncing Jefferson & Washington, by granting importance to some unpleasant parts of their lives, while assuming these bits of the past destroy the overwhelming, ongoing, positive contributions to history and society of these giants.
Nobody cares about MLK's infidelity or commie associations, because HE LED A HUGE NONVIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE CAMPAIGN TO END BLACK OPPRESSION. That last bit is what is important about him. Jefferson owned slaves? HE WROTE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Washington owned slaves? HE BEAT THE BRITS. A bit of perspective is all it takes.
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