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)
You show the maturity I would expect. You're a racist, too judging by the photo. (Would be the claim your type makes). What made you this way, was it a poor mother figure?
Your concern for free speech is touching.
So, basically, your argument is that Dubya is just like Billzebubba?
The people along the route don't want him dead. BTW, the "King" traveled to Bethesda, MD on Wednesday and took Marine One, rather than his limo, which would have tied up early afternoon traffic on busy Wisconsin Avenue. He's not a king, he's considerate.
Takes one to know one.
Bump for later reading and comment.
When you use his idiotic logic, Bush has to visit everyone in the town. The baby's sore he didn't get to spout his hate rhetoric at Dubya. It's obvious to people like us that he's visiting the TOWN, not everyone in it.
Funny you should mention Clinton and hypocrisy in the same sentence.
I was thinking the of the same exact words.
Presidents cause disruptions.
The references to "royalty" in the article are disgusting and insulting.
Your hate of free speech is obvious. You just attacked his, hypocrite.
All right, look.
A few years ago, Al Gore visited my daughter's school.
Between the cops and his motercade and the Secret Service, it bound up our little town for hours.
( Not that Security was on it's game that day.. I worked at the school at the time, but because I'm tiny I wandered right past the check-point. They thought I was just another kid depsite my pectoral developement. Idiots. I didn't know Gore was even in the school til I got into the office)
When Presidents and Vice Presidents travel, things get shut down because they must.
I've looked at your profile. You state that "we are no longer a free country".
How so?
I don't get visited by a Block Captain. I'm not required to go to " political meetings" . Nobody has offered me an incentive to rat out my neighbors. The Men in Black have not visited my husband at ork. Nobody has messed with our bank-account. Unless I travel by air, I don't even get asked to show a photo ID. No one is bugging my phone. ( I know how to check) No one is sidling up to my daughter and asking her about how I vote. There is no curfew. I get to live where I want, work where I want, send my daughter to school where I want.
I do what I want, when I want.
What is YOUR problem?
Guess some folks just have a NEED to complain about anything President Bush does.
So it's OK?
Were you taught to debate by a gaggle of schoolgirls?
Dumbasses don't understand logic.
What's this all about?
Thank you. Always glad to help the poor oppressed subjects of the king.
Good point
A little whine from the cheese state :(
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