Seattle welcomes everone -- except patriots

Thirty years ago. Seattle was still a family-oriented town dominated by blue-collar industries and single-family homes. There was a bohemian presence there, but it was mostly limited to the University District and Capitol Hill.

Today the entire city prides itself on its open-mindnesses. Seattle not only tolerates non-conformity, it celebrates it. It is Seattle where a proposed group home for homeless alcoholics would allow them to drink in their rooms. It is Seattle where police were ordered to pull back during WTO, which allowed the streets to be taken over and occupied by tens of thousand of demonstrators. It is Seattle where a man running for mayor got up during a candidate forum wearing a housedress and combat boots and started dancing on a table. It is Seattle where not one politician, progressive pastor or academic has complained about a sign hanging in a storefront on Rainer Avenue urging "Victory to the Iraqi Resistance!" It is Seattle where a militant black Muslim, James Ujaama, who eventually pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban, was initially defended by some journalists and civil rights leaders because of his previous community activism.

And feelings matter too. It was in Seattle where County Executive Ron Sims sent out a memo during the holidays asking his employees not to wish each other a "Merry Christmas" because it might inadvertently offend some people.

It doesn't matter how far out your politics, religion or beliefs are, Seattle is committed to fostering respect for all points of view.

If you are a supporter of George W. Bush, or a Republican, or even just an old-fashioned, flag-waving patriot, you are not welcome in The Emerald City.

Ken Potts, a veteran of three tours of duty in Vietnam, lives in Seattle's Shoreline area, where his property and truck have been repeatedly vandalized. The reason? He supports George Bush.

His house has been bombarded with eggs, both front and back, his truck scarred with a one-foot scratch. Mail containing left-wing and anti-American literature was sent anonymously to "The Patriot." "I assume," he says, it is because I have a large 'Bush-Cheney' sign on my house. I also have the 101st Airborne Flag on a 25-foot pole during the day, My mail box was also blown up three times last year until I mounted a 20-pound one on a solid steel post cemented into the ground."

When Mr. Potts went to the store to buy something to clean the mess off his house, the cashier, a woman in her 50s, asked about the Bush bumper sticker on his truck, and told him she was a Kerry supporter. She asked why he didn't like Kerry.

"I told her that, since she asked, I did not appreciate him coming back from Vietnam and turning on his brothers still there. She asked what I meant and I told her that I did not appreciate being called a 'war criminal' and a "murderer,' that I was never involved any atrocity, not did I witness such a thing. She then told me that I was in fact a war criminal and murderer and we (troops) were all guilty of atrocities."

When the store manager came over and apologized to him, the cashier yelled at the manager, telling him not to apologize to a murderer for her.

Now if Mr. Potts had been a Muslim cleric or a gay activist and was hounded like this, the city of Seattle, its politicians, pastors and pundits would be all over it. But if the vandalism, property destruction and harassment happens because he supports George Bush, well, that's just mischief.

Interestingly, while this kind of thing goes on in Seattle, there are plenty of Kerry and even some Nader bumper stickers in the supposedly uptight suburbs.

There are two ways to deal with it. The first is to give up and not post a Republican yard sign or a pro-Bush bumper sticker or flag in Seattle. The second is to emulate Mr. Potts. "I was a patriot before it was cool and will remain one until I die. Nobody can intimidate me into taking down my sign or my flag. I earned the right to my opinion and free speech."

Mr. Potts bought a pair of spotlights. One is trained on the Bush-Cheney sign, the other on the Starts and Stripes.

John Carlson is founder of Washington Policy Center and can be heard daily from 3-6 p.m. [sic] on radio stations KVI-570 [AM]. His column appears every other Sunday. Readers can contact him via e-mail at jcarlsom@fisher[-?]radio.com.

Great column by John Carlson. I was reminded of an old column by Michelle Malkin (written in December 1999). There is no question that, just under the surface, Seattle has a mean streak.

Amateur hour in Seattle
by Michelle Malkin

From http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin120699.asp

I WATCHED FIRE, tear gas, and mass chaos consume Seattle last week, one wicked little thought crossed my mind: It couldn't have happened to a more deserving city.

I lived in the now-tarnished jewel of the Pacific Northwest for three years – not long enough to grow moss on the bottom of my feet, but long enough to acclimatize to both the region's outward beauty and beastly hubris.

Not content to rest on its natural physical assets, the Emerald City launched an aggressive campaign to become a "world-class" metropolis. Public officials have gone to great lengths – plundering tax dollars, short-circuiting democracy, trampling constitutional rights – to enhance downtown and attract global attention.

Take the convention center where the World Trade Organization delegates hunkered down last week. Despite a state constitutional ban on tax subsidies to private enterprises, city officials convinced Washington's legislature to bail out the construction project twice. Low-income senior citizens were kicked out of their lifelong homes, a family barber shop was shut down, and other small-business entrepreneurs were displaced to make way for a $200 million expansion of the trade center.

Private property owners were forced to go to court when public officials refused to compensate them fairly for seizing their land. A jury awarded those owners up to $20 million more than the government had meagerly offered.

The most notorious abridgement of local voters' rights in the pursuit of world-class status was the construction of the half-billion-dollar Mariners baseball stadium. After the M's threatened to leave town unless they got a new palace, King County (which encompasses Seattle and outlying suburbs) held an election in 1995 on a sales tax to finance the new stadium. The electorate said no.

No matter. Egged on by Seattle's political and business elite, the state Legislature thumbed its nose at the vote and authorized new taxes anyway. To prevent citizens from exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed right to a referendum on the matter, the Legislature declared the baseball stadium a "public emergency." Local opponents of sports pork took another beating two years later, when the Legislature essentially sold a special election to Microsoft mogul Paul Allen – who secured another half-billion-dollar, tax-financed, world-class stadium for his Seattle Seahawks.

Gagging unruly dissenters is quintessentially Seattle. When Mayor Paul Schell declared a "demonstration-free zone" in downtown Seattle last week, it came as no surprise. The political establishment has been trying to transform downtown into a demonstration-free zone for years. It's illegal to sit or lie down on downtown and commercial-area sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. It's illegal to put political posters on utility poles or any other city-owned surface. And it's illegal to make too much noise.

Unsatisfied with its current noise ban, one city council member attempted this year to outlaw any sounds that were "loud and raucous and frequent, repetitive or continuous which unreasonably disturb or unreasonably interfere with the peace, comfort, or repose of another." Another almost succeeded in limiting picketing and protesting to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends.

Anti-begging laws have been used to squelch peaceful pro-life activists. Nuisance laws have been wielded against law-abiding nightclub owners in the name of public safety. Implementation of the city's so-called "civility" agenda is entrusted to law-enforcement officials whose apparent motto is: Infringe civil liberties first, infringe them selectively, and worry about the constitution later.

Journalists worldwide noted Seattle's grossly inconsistent treatment of protesters last week. Peaceful marchers were gassed; rioters were free to roam. A local newspaper reporter, Kery Murakami, was hauled off to jail despite displaying his press credentials.

Foreign dignitaries expressed surprise and dismay at the incompetence of the Seattle Police Department. Mohammed Asfour, a Jordanian minister of industry and trade who was kept away from the WTO's opening ceremonies, told the press: "People like us who came from thousands of miles and to find no organization - it's very sad." Sad, but all too typical of a scandal-plagued police department whose own rank-and-file officers lost confidence in their hapless police chief a long time ago.

Before the WTO came to town, Seattle prided itself on its cosmopolitan achievement of neatness, tact, and order through covert bully tactics and social control. The façade has been shattered. The whole world was watching. And now they know what kind of player Seattle really is on the global scene: A wannabe. A hinterland. Not ready for prime time.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.