(June 23) We live in a nation of laws created through the consent of the governed, backed by constitutionally guaranteed rights. Anyone who breaks the law by violating the persons, property, or rights of innocents should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and punished.
Period.
If you don’t like a statue or memorial, that doesn’t give you the right to deface, destroy, or remove it. You have a right to petition your government to remove it and the right to secure the support of other voters to convince elected officials to remove it, and you have the right to protest peacefully, without violating the free movement of others, around the statue, to express your objections to it. But that’s it. The minute you touch it in any way that mars it, you have broken the law and should be arrested.
Likewise, you have no right to set up, by force alone, an “autonomous zone” in any area of the country bigger than property you and your compatriots own. You have no right to violate the rights, the property, or the ability to conduct business of anyone within the zone. You certainly have no right to deny to anyone in the zone the police and emergency medical protections due to every resident of the town, city, county, state, or country.
If you do any of those things, you should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and punished.
You have every right to walk along a roadside, holding signs aloft and chanting slogans. But unless you have a permit, you have no right to block the access others have to that public road. If you block it, you should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and punished.
You have not just the legal right but the moral authority to protest police brutality loudly. You have no right to attack other police who are keeping the peace and protecting innocent people and their property. If you do attack, you should be arrested and subject to those criminal justice processes described above….
[The rest of this column is here.]
