On Which Side Do You Stand?

I grew up in the Sixties and Seventies, a time of considerable civil unrest with young long hairs rising up in protest over the United States' involvement in the conflict in Viet Nam, women's rights, and civil rights for African-Americans. As a stereotype hippie, I vividly recall sitting in the streets of downtown Morgantown, West Virginia, blocking traffic to get attention and raise awareness, risking arrest, among hundreds of other sign-toting young people who shared a belief and conviction that they were making a difference by actively protesting government policy in Viet Nam and the inequitable treatment of blacks in our country. While I soon thereafter enlisted in the United States Marine Corps to serve my country in time of war and also to better understand that which I was protesting, I would later find myself peacefully protesting, once again, along with the Berrigan brothers south of Boulder, Colorado, with strong conviction to raise awareness about the need to clean up the Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal, a dire safety concern for everyone living along Colorado's Front Range. While the Berrigans spent more time in jail than not, I never experienced anything worse than being hosed back and threatened by police and federal authorities.

There is still a revolutionary streak running through me, with some dissenting view always ready to be expressed, but it is always approached with reason and intelligence as to how any dissent is to be communicated, always guarding against involving emotion with any contrary opinion. If something makes me angry, the anger within must first be resolved before any action is taken or I raise my voice.

There was most always a profound respect displayed during the hippie movement for the passive resistance approach of Mahatma Gandhi, and of course for the peaceful marches of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Violence was a non-starter among any protest I joined at that time. It was the "Peace, Love, Dope" generation, but there was most always a certain respectful morality behind any defiance of authority and efforts to raise public awareness. There were some few that acted through violence and performed bombings resulting in the death of innocent bystanders, but they consisted of small factions of sadistic ideologues with less noble objectives. Unfortunately, while the civil disobedience of the hippie movement came and went, after making a definitively positive social contribution to ending the war and improving the rights of women and blacks, a certain element of revolutionaries that exercised violence without moral boundary has continued to this day behind increasing support for the terrorist ideology of the likes of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

We live in a time, once again, of huge civil unrest. But unlike the time when hippies protested in the streets, today's protests are angry, violent, largely unreasonable, and seem to hold to no standards of behavior. The rabid demonstrations we are witnessing appear unprecedented in their anger, unlike anything in American history, and a true disconnect from reality. The aftermath of the recent inauguration of the new administration saw protesters assaulting Trump supporters, setting fire to structures and a limousine (which happened to be owned by a Muslim businessman), shouting profanities, and stoning authorities. These were riots, not peaceful protests, with verbal threats made openly to assassinate the President and burn the White House.

Protests we see today show much greater organization and a level of funding support never seen before. There is a high level force of insurrection at work that wants to destroy the United States as we have known it through violent acts of anarchy. One of the nastier recent protests was the Occupy movement. (and by the way, the Soros money behind Occupy is the same money behind the anti-Trump movement today) The Occupy protests were marked by widespread rapes, assaults, robberies and holdups. Protesters publicly defecated and urinated on police cars, leaving behind a swath of destroyed private and public property and a pigsty of waste in their wake, left for public workers to clean up.

A large part of the problem is that liberal Democrat protests are not held to any civilized standard of behavior by Democrat leadership and the liberal fourth estate. Neither the press, nor Democrat officials, nor our former Democrat President admonish such menacing behavior as assault, rape, verbal threats, and defecating on police cars. Democrats and liberals accuse Republicans of conducting a war on women. Assault, rape and murder are the worst things that can be done to a woman. Yet a significant majority of the assaults, rapes and murders of women are done by people who identify as liberals, and if they voted or had a party affiliation, it would be Democrat. In fact, if we examine criminality in America – whether murderers, muggers or prisoners – it would be dominated by people who would be described as liberals, Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton supporters. And virtually all of the violence against police – whether it’s throwing stones, ambushing or murdering – is committed by liberals or people who’d identify as Democrats.

In contrast, have you ever seen Republicans/conservatives rioting, turning over police cars, looting, setting places of business on fire and shouting obscenities while marching. Have you ever seen conservatives marching with chants calling for the murder of police officers? Tea Partiers didn’t set fires, stone police or engage in the other kinds of despicable behavior like the liberal Democrats are doing. Tea Partiers were not arrested for assault, rape, robbery, and rioting. And when their protests were over, they left the areas where they protested cleaner than when they arrived.

The sides are drawn. On which side do you stand? Which group best represents your character and the interests of your family and community? While each one of us would like to see improvement in some regard in our lives, I somehow continue to have faith that the vast majority of Americans would prefer to conserve what is good about our country while engaging in civilized discourse over our objections, and protest when necessary, rather than destroy it all through violence and anarchy. Gandhi and Dr. King would both agree that the only way to help things improve is through a non-violent approach to dissent. Violence and anger are never the right course of action. May the hippie in me never fade away.