9/11 Memorial Uprooted in Midday Protest (Flags taken down by college leftists)

A 2,977 flag memorial was ripped out of the ground in front of Mead Memorial Chapel shortly before 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 11 by a group of five protestors claiming that the flags were on top of a sacred Abenaki burial site.

The flags — meant to commemorate each of the 2,977 lives taken in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — have been posted in the grass between Mead Chapel and the Davis Family Library annually in a joint effort between the College Republicans and Democrats for nearly 10 years.

Ben Kinney ’15, president of the College Republicans, spent two hours putting the flags outside of Mead Chapel on Tuesday night, and happened to be walking up the hill towards the chapel when he saw four females and one male stuffing the miniature flags into black trash bags.

“I got there just as they were taking the very last of them out of the ground and putting them in piles,” he said. “At first, I the group was comprised of College Democrats helping put the flags away before the rain rolled in, but then I realized what they were doing.”

Kinney said the protestors told him they were “confiscating” the flags in protest of “America’s imperialism.”

Julia Madden ’14, was walking back from Proctor when she saw the five people uprooting the flags.

“I was just getting out of class, but when I saw what they were doing I decided to say something,” she said. “They were quickly putting them into two big plastic trash bags. I’m mad at myself for not being more aggressive. I was just dumbfounded.”

There was no discussion. No compromise. We asked if we could put them somewhere else, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“I was thinking to myself ‘why are people cleaning them up now and why are they doing it in such a hurried and haphazard manner?’ I went up and asked them what they were doing. They said ‘this is an Indian burial ground and you can’t have anything penetrating the earth.’”

“It is really disrespectful to our community. It is disrespectful to the firefighters who went into the towers to save people. Most of all, it is disrespectful to anybody who lost somebody on that day,” he said. “It was completely out of line for anybody to come remove those flags. This is a travesty.”

Kinney, who said he received permission to erect the memorial from Associate Dean of Students for Student Activities & Orientation JJ Boggs, said he had never seen protests against the yearly memorial during his time at the College.

“You can’t say that one death is more legitimate to commemorate than another,” he said.

The sad part about this is that Americans have been brutally conditioned that they cannot, *must* not, *ever* resort to violence in the face of such offensive, heinous vandalism directed against the sacred.

It does not matter if the filth desecrate a church or a funeral or a cemetery, if they attack public speakers at the podium to shut them up and deny them their rights, if they assault people because of their race, or how they look, or what they wear or because they are military personnel or veterans, or for no reason at all.

You cannot, *must* not, *ever* resort to violence against such people. Why is that? I reject this restraint on good citizens.

Imagine what would have happened had a group of real men and women waded into that group of vandals and proceeded to give them a thumping. Literally to give them a “beating”. To leave them injured and mournful and afraid of spontaneous punishment for their vile behavior in the future.

While that might sound like a “radical” solution, I compare it to the right to self-defense.

THE SAME PEOPLE who insist that you cannot, *must* not, *ever* resort to violence against such people, are THE SAME PEOPLE who say that you should NEVER, EVER protect or defend yourself and your family with a gun against a violent criminal, that you should “leave it up to the police.”

They are THE SAME PEOPLE who insist that desecrating the flag is “free speech”; that Christian crosses to commemorate the dead are a “violation of church and state”; that schoolchildren must learn about homosexuality and Islam, but nothing about Christianity, etc., ad nauseum.

Reject their perverted paradigm.

If you see some disgusting individual committing an offensive act, and you are *able* to stop them, even with violence, you SHOULD do so.

Yes, you may get arrested for thrashing them. But you must have confidence in your peers who sit on the jury that they will agree with your justification. That they will reject punishing you for standing up for what is good and righteous. And that the idea of jury nullification will not be lost on them. And in doing so, they will join with you in condemning what the real offenders did.

And encouraging others to stand up for what is good and righteous, in the face of those who would demean and destroy it.

Doesn’t anyone up there have any balls?

Pertinent question, and the answer is “a few”, but the size of the group is rapidly decreasing.

It’s the subtle but intended result of suspending elementary school children when they even talk about guns, draw cartoons, make hand gestures or physically defend themselves. They now live in a world that sends them to the principal’s office if wearing a tee shirt with an American Flag.

My pre-teen grandson is competent with my M1 Garand (at a family-oriented public range) and both his father and I are poised for any 2A issue that may be generated at his school.
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Gramsci: “Infiltrate…political parties, churches, labor unions, universities, the media, community groups, etc…turn them into revolutionary vehicles.”

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