Posted on 05/14/2004 8:20:31 AM PDT by freeeee
The King made a royal visit to Wisconsin last week, and as is common when monarchs travel, individual liberties were suspended.
King George Bush's bus trip across western Wisconsin closed schools and roads, prevented residents from moving freely in their own communities, and prevented citizens from exercising their free speech rights.
All in all, it was a typical George W. Bush visit.
But there's a slight twist.
People in western Wisconsin, who hold to the refreshingly naive notion that they live in a republic as opposed to an imperial realm, are objecting.
"There's a pattern of harassment of free speech here that really concerns me," says Guy Wolf, the student services coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. "If they're going to call it a presidential visit, then it should be a presidential visit - where we can hear from him and he can hear from us. But that's not what happened here, not at all."
Wolf and other La Crosse area residents who wanted to let the president know their feelings about critical issues came face to face with the reality that, when King George travels, he is not actually interested in a two-way conversation.
Along the route of the Bush bus trip from Dubuque to La Crosse, the Bush team created a "no-free-speech" zone that excluded any expressions of the dissent that is the lifeblood of democracy. In Platteville, peace activist Frank Van Den Bosch was arrested for holding up a sign that was critical of the president. The sign's "dangerous" message, "FUGW," was incomprehensible to children and, no doubt, to many adults. Yet, it was still determined sufficiently unsettling to the royal procession that Van Den Bosch was slapped with a disorderly conduct ticket.
Up the road in La Crosse, the clampdown on civil liberties was even more sweeping. Wolf and hundreds of other Wisconsinites and Minnesotans who sought to express dissents were videotaped by authorities, told they could not make noise, ordered not to display certain signs and forced to stand out of eyesight of Bush and his entourage. Again and again, they were told that if they expressed themselves in ways that were entirely protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, they would be "subject to arrest."
"Everyone understood the need for basic security for the president, but none of us could understand why we had to give up our free speech rights," explained Wolf.
La Crosse Mayor John Medinger shares that concern. The Bush-Cheney campaign leased a portion of a local park where the royal rally was held. Yet, Wisconsinites who wanted to protest Bush's visit were told they could not use a sound system in a completely different section of the park.
"I want to find out why the whole park was used when only a portion was leased," Medinger told the La Crosse Tribune. "So when demonstrators were told they couldn't have (sound) systems, the question is why."
The Bush-Cheney campaign paid a $100 fee to use one part of the park, but disrupted much of the city. Medinger is now assessing the full cost of the royal visit and hopes to deliver a bill to the campaign, which State Elections Board attorney George Dunst says the Bush campaign should pay. Other communities, including Prairie du Chien, are looking at following Medinger's lead.
But the challenge should not just be a financial one. The Bush visit attacked First Amendment rights up and down the Mississippi. A lot of people are owed apologies.
In a monarchy, of course, the King never apologizes. But in a democracy, the president is supposed to be accountable to the people.
By pressing demands that the charges against Frank Van Den Bosch be dropped and that the White House and the Bush-Cheney campaign apologize for participating in an anti-democratic endeavor, residents of western Wisconsin can, and should, take up the cause of this country's founders. It is time once more to challenge a King named George.
Caption: President Bush waves to crowds from his campaign bus as he passes through Prairie du Chien last Friday. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Get over it. Presidents cause disruptions where ever they travel. Republicans AND Democrats.
Having ones panties in a wad beats the horrifying possibility of having panties on ones head any day of the week.
Ok, you can get off your soap box now.
"You said it, brother."
At least there were no union thugs beating the crap out of protesters, which is what happened when the trailer trash moved around the country.
That was real deep.
Good on. Some one has CMS
Why? Is the King coming this way?
Let me give you a little perspective, from Real life.
The gym I workout in, in Midtown Manhattan, is right at the nexus of a Presidential/VP entery exit zone, and it was ROUTINELY cordoned off, at 5:30 in the AM, for extended amounts of time, for x42, and his would be, but thankfully not successor, about every 4 weeks, in 2000.
Thats not even protestors thats people going to their F*ng jobs.
thats life.
Idiot writer. What town or area DOESN'T have the utmost concern for security when a high ranking dignitary is there?
I was visiting Kentucky in November of 1996, when the former occupant of the WH, x42, was in town. I actually saw Air Force One on the tarmac. It was suggested that we get my luggage and get out of the area before the motorcade returns, and the Secret Service shut down the roads.
Typical liberal writer with his head up his medieval arse, who hates America but is glad to live here, and in this time, because if he lived in those medieval times, if the king didn't like you, he had you killed.
Go sell crazy someplace else. We're all stocked up here.
I see nothing here that did not take place during Clinton. When SlickWilly went to sporting events, you had to show up 2 hours early or get in late. Freeom to not have hecklers shout you down was also employed by Bill. It's the sameol' sameol'.
"It' doesn't matter what you say because you're smelly and fat! Mean too!"
Typical Bush-hater hypocrisy. I'm sure things went like clockwork when Clinton travelled. Yes, sir. An asinine point.
This writer and his "imperial subjects" should be stacked naked in a pyramid, with liberal feminist environmentalists panties stuck on their heads. What a royal a-hole.
Good Grief..Piffle
Oops, should have been...
Great article. /sarcasm
I see. It's ok if Clinton did it.
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