How I despise those Westboro Baptists.
I counter-protested against them outside Arlington National Cemetery a few years back. I simply could not believe some of their signs.
That said, as despicable as they are, if they had a legal permit to protest, I cannot silence them.
The issue is, that right to Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Speech is not reciprocated by the left, ever.
Ever.
Also, I am sick of this “alt-right” crap (as I assume you are by the quotes you used). This is just another attempt to corral all non-liberals into a common pen (throwing Tea Partyers and other conservatives into the same box with Nazis, even though Nazis are ideologically more in line with the Left and things like radical Islam)
I am tired of letting them control the language, but given they are 90+% liberal in the media, this is fully expected.
Westburo is one extended family of lawyers who seek attention and financial payback when they are “wronged”.
Daddy Phelps ran for office as a Democrat several times and was photographed at least once with Al and Tipper.
It’s street theater. Did he believe the crap he spouted? Don’t know. Did the press use it to taint all opposition to homofascism in the church and classroom? Yes indeed.
And the press didn’t do much to educate audiences just what political party Fred Phelps was a part of.
I wouldn’t even identify TEA Party members as “alt-right”.
Apart from the Pauls (Ron and his son) who are Libertarians running until the Republican Party (and often taking outrage at the GOP), I can’t think of many candidates put up by the TEA Party who made it to office who weren’t conservative Republicans.
TEA Party figures may have been outside of the Rockefeller Country Club wing of the RINO Party but they held core values of the “generation Reagan” Republican ideal.
And TEA Party rallies were peaceful family friendly affairs.
There are Libertarians in the “alt-right”. There are also Reform Party people in the so-called “alt-right”. Was Ross Pee-rot a right winger? Was Gov. Jesse The Meathead Ventura a right winger? They were Reform Partiers as was Donald Trump (who has at least done more to shore up the Republican Party than the RINO establishment did for decades). Donald Trump was not a “Conservative” but he does stand up for America apparently over Globalism and he has offered some verbal pushback to the creeping Socialist tide.
As political rallies go, what is the message of these “unite the right” people? Co-opting a larger political party? Can they show their voting records to convince me that they are on the right to begin with?
I don’t swallow the line I’m being told and the media never once pointed out the presence of Mao-Che-Stalin loving Communists at virtually every Leftist rally for the last 20 years.