Posted on 03/22/2003 5:25:20 AM PST by fporretto
Multiple trusted sources have reported anti-war protests that, by design, have crippled the traffic flow in various American cities. In particular, Palace correspondents in Boston and San Francisco tell of groups of unruly demonstrators shutting down major thoroughfares by physically occupying them, thereby bringing city traffic to a halt. Up to now, metropolitan police have been exceedingly reluctant to remove them by force.
As Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit has said, these activists, who claim they speak for the workingman, don't seem to have the workingman's interests very much in mind.
What your Curmudgeon finds noteworthy is the justification offered by these protestors for their disruptions of the lives and business of uninvolved Americans. Nearly all of them have cited the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech as their license to obstruct the peaceful comings and goings of others.
Let's have a quick review of that famous clause of the Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There you have it, straight from Fisher Ames's pen. The right to speak is guaranteed... but not the privilege of forcing others to listen. The right to assemble -- peaceably -- is similarly protected... but not in violation of any right possessed by others, for example by forcibly invading private property, or seizing public property for an illegitimate use.
The moral issues concerning organized demonstrations are clouded, in many minds, by the concept of public property. Let's be candid: this notion has lost its clarity these past forty years, especially since federal antidiscrimination activism led lawmakers and judges to classify privately-owned commercial establishments as "public accommodations." However, there should be no question that a municipal street maintained and operated by a city government is "public property."
The protestors argue: "The street is public property, and we're as much 'the public' as anyone else, so what's wrong with our using it as we see fit?" And it's enough to paralyze the thought processes of a lot of Americans, who've never considered the essential conditions public property of any kind must satisfy.
Isabel Paterson, in her landmark book The God Of The Machine, briefly reviewed the conditions that make public property a sustainable idea:
The actual use of public property by the public is limited to approximately two-dimensional conditions.... Thus it is practicable -- whether or not it is necessary or advisable -- to make roads public property, because the use of a road is to traverse it....the passenger is not allowed to remain as of right indefinitely on any one spot in the road. The same rule applies to parks and public buildings....To be sure, even in the use of a road, if too many members of the public try to move along it at once, the rule reverts to first come, first served (allotment in time and space), or the authorities may close the road. The public has not the essential property right of continuous and final occupancy. [Emphasis added by your Curmudgeon.]
Duration of tenure is what distinguishes private from public property. If Smith asserts a non-transient presence in a place, not subject to eviction by someone else, he is asserting that that place is his. For Smith's claim that such is his right destroys the rights of all others to do the same -- a condition public property cannot withstand.
The obstructors on the streets in Boston, San Francisco and other cities are claiming that their right to speak confers upon them a right to privatize the streets, seizing them for private use at their sole discretion.
This is not the place to examine the broad and important question of what sorts of property can legitimately be made "public," or what rules of use the managing authority could legitimately impose upon them. It's enough to note that these "protests," being made in the "public's" name, are no more respectful of the "public's" prerogatives than they are representative of the "public's" opinions.
Inasmuch as the anti-war Left would like to see the entire world made into "public property," the irony is near to overpowering.
One particularly disingenuous response to this objection ran as follows:
Why are rightwingers always against protest when its a cause they don't like? It's strange; these very same rightwingers attempt to justify Junior's Operation Inigo Montoya on the basis that we want the people of Iraq to enjoy such freedoms. But then Deb and her ilk demand we shouldn't have such liberties.
And later, from the same source:
The vast majority of Iraqi war protests have been peaceful. Just as with the protests in the civil rights era and during the VietNam war. But civil disobedience is an American tradition--dating back to the 'Boston Tea Party.'...
Face it, Frankie; your concern isn't that a relative few break the law as part of their protest. Instead, you wish to stifle any dissent which might interfere with your God-given right to watch people give their lives on Fox TV. [Both comments are from the Insomnomaniac Weblog.]
Which should tell you all you need to know about the "First Amendment rights" claims being made by the rights-hostile, intellectually dishonest anti-war Left.
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