August 3, 2020 at 2:19 p.m.
Beware the 'mostly' in 'mostly peaceful protests'
Beware the 'mostly' in 'mostly peaceful protests'
"What makes me concerned for the country is, for the first time in my memory, that the leaders of one of our great two political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence and the attacks on federal courts," Barr said. "Why can't we just come out and say violence against federal courts has to stop? Could we hear something like that?"
Apparently not. Barr certainly didn't hear it at the hearing, and neither he nor the public are hearing it from most Democrats or the media nationally.
To his credit, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has condemned the violence that followed the death of George Floyd: "Protesting such brutality is right and necessary," Biden said in late May. "It's an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not."
The problem is, the vice president's words have been lost in a sea of his other pronouncements about the righteousness of the protests and he has done nothing to venture forth from his basement to underscore the point. It has become a point buried beneath an avalanche of leftist sympathy not merely for peaceful protests but for violent riots, too.
At the beginning of July, to cite just one example, Senate Democrats killed a resolution to specifically condemn violent protests. Make no mistake: The failure to condemn these violent outbursts is the same as supporting them.
The national media has been even worse. Some in the media have even decided to slide down the slippery slope head first, openly embracing the violence.
That's what Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times did, telling CBNC: "And violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man's neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. And to put those things - to use the same language to describe those two things I think really - it's not moral to do that."
More often, the media simply glosses over the violence, leaving out clips of brutality and looting and burning and labeling violent protests as "mostly peaceful." That phrase has become the catchword of a media that seeks to misrepresent what is really going on.
As Ben Shapiro has observed, "mostly peaceful" is "a brand-new invention meant to obscure the simple fact that many of our cultural elites are fine with violence so long as those who engage in such violence have the proper goals."
The real point here is that a protest is either peaceful or it's not. "Mostly peaceful protest" is simply a journalist's euphemism for a violent protest that the journalist endorses.
So Shapiro's point is well taken, and here in Wisconsin it was perhaps best expressed in this nonsensical headline from the Wisconsin State Journal back in early June: "Third night of looting follows third night of mostly peaceful protest."
Ah, yes, a night of looting is a great example of mostly peaceful protest.
Several weeks later, during all that "mostly peaceful" protesting, Democratic state Sen. Tim Carpenter was beaten to a pulp in what we are surprised the media didn't call a "mostly peaceful interaction" with the protesters. Thing is, Carpenter was an ally of the protesters, so beware the "mostly" if you're ever involved in a mostly peaceful protest.
Beyond pandering to the violence, Democrats and the media are guilty of a rank hypocrisy when it comes to armed demonstrations. When protesters brandishing firearms gather to demonstrate against police brutality, or armed black militias take to the streets, we hear nothing about the weaponry and everything about how "mostly peaceful" they are.
Many times they are peaceful. But when conservative groups, with some carrying firearms, peacefully protest against the deprivation of constitutional rights, Democrats and the media condemn them as dangerous extremists threatening the foundation of society.
That's what happened in Michigan when armed protesters peacefully entered the state capitol to protest the governor's lockdown actions. Mind you, there was no violence at all in Michigan, but the New York Times called the protesters "armed rebels" and Hillary Clinton proceeded to call the demonstrations "domestic terrorism."
That was reminiscent of Joe Biden's 2011 characterization of Tea Party groups as "acting like terrorists."
Late last month, Robyn Thomas, the executive director of the liberal Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, attacked armed protests as fundamentally evil: "In recent months, we've witnessed an alarming uptick in incidents of armed protestors asserting that their right to bear arms trumps every other right - not to mention public health and safety. But protestors who strap rifles to their chests and show up to rallies in tactical gear are not defending themselves against any actual, credible threats."
Thomas said armed protesters were predominantly white men who were not taking public safety into account when expressing their discontent.
She went on to list any number of actual examples to support her assertions, but not once did she condemn or even mention the existence of armed black protesters doing the exact same thing. She did not include in her long timeline the July 4 march of dozens of predominantly black masked, armed protesters through Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia. She did not mention a march in June in Oklahoma by black gun owners in which some openly carried their firearms.
She did not mention a similarly long list on instances where blacks or predominately black groups protested with firearms in hand.
Our point is not to criticize those armed but peaceful protesters who legally exercise their Second Amendment rights. Our point is that the Left, Democrats, and the media attempt at every turn to demonize conservatives who exercise those very same rights responsibly and legally while turning a blind eye to the same actions carried out by their ideological comrades.
Even worse, they not only turn a blind eye but embrace violence when it occurs and attempt to make it disappear in soothing rhetoric about mostly peaceful demonstrations.
One can certainly debate the wisdom of armed protest, but the right of a person or a group to exercise their constitutional right to carry is fundamental, no matter what.
In our way of thinking, we'll take actually peaceful demonstrations - people exercising their rights to carry arms while protesting legally, whatever the cause - over "mostly peaceful demonstrations" that include burning, looting, and assault.
That liberals and Democrats embrace the latter is all we need to know.
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