Encumbrance

The woke culture is campus politics from '89-'91 coming to your nearest street corner. It's far from laudable. It's oppressive as anything. "Cancel culture" isn't new, it's been going on since the New New Left left the campuses and went non-profit instead of academic. The prevailing sentiment amongst the left hasn't changed since Ike was president. It's been this way since the communists got a foothold in the arts and education of the country. But I digress. I disagree with the bolded. The focus here is that conservatives believe in negative rights, that is the right to be left alone in many areas of life, for better or good depending on your worldview. The left believes in positive rights, that is the right to health care, to a basic income guarantee, to housing and so on. Those are two very differing conceptions of government, likely not rectified soon. In fact, they're fought about tooth and nail every day in politics. Regarding Trump and racism and division, I have no idea what to say about that. It's been done ad nauseam in this forum.

Not really odd. I didn't like the narrative after I left and didn't think my position had been given proper weight. It's quite natural to then reconsider and add addenda. And this thread bothers me for several reasons. The issue is framed wrongly and lamented wrongly. Secondly, I view it as vital for the exact reason Smack Tripper pointed out upthread. It seems okay to side with arsonists and looters these days, and I'm not having any of that. I'm making it quite clear where my position lies so that people who may misunderstand either what violent civil disobedience means or what it can lead to are disabused of that notion. Third, property rights are important to me, the country, our Constitution, our ability to exist peacefully. The destruction of private and public property should never have been abided in the sixties and should not be now. That was a huge mistake to let protestors run riot (literally) and we should do everything in our power to disallow it and make people go through normal channels. There must be some policing tactic between deploying riot police and standing down. Fourth, that the last resort and procedural check against government (that of violence and flames) is the one considered first by the protestors. It shows they cannot succeed legislatively or judicially. They alone must be judge and jury. THAT ####### bothers me. I've thought long and hard about these things. Some twenty-something year-old lawyer (keeper of the language, keeper of laws) hurling Molotovs at cop cars is lucky he's not shot dead on sight. He or she should be given no more weight than I. But their violence demands that it should be so. That's what bothers me, I guess, really intrinsically. You can't win through proper channels so you'll resort to violence as your means. I have no quarrel with justified revolution. I have huge quarrel with revolution over a statue. And I certainly don't think, just because there's a threat of violence, that their position should command any more weight than given to my opinion. Simply because I refuse to take up arms scores points for idiotic mob passion, not to right thinking and right reason.

The people I've seen in the videos are largely white and I did not figure that would be an issue. From what I saw, anyway. I still don't think that the Richard Sherman Decree should either determine meaning or usage nor should it be worth an issuance of a call to the board's top moderator. Perhaps if I'd used real racially-charged language and had real sympathies for the Confederacy, it would be appropriate. As it is, this thread is pretty ####ty. I'm doing what I can to clarify what was said. Everybody else seems to want to herp derp it, in my estimation.

I never said a thing about people being pro-arson until people started calling my position pro-Confederate or accusing me of using racial slurs to address the protest tactics. Then I figured what was good for the goose is good for the gander, and a pro-arson argument, given the defense of their position and tactics, is a lot closer to the truth than you'd like to admit.

Really? The National Guard has no place at all ever in this? I miss liberals when they talked about the "rule of law" from back in the late nineties/early aughts. Won't find many of them around, either. I also miss when liberals knew what the heck they were talking about. Conservatives are way more than in keeping with law than one would think when they call for Guardsmen to stop insurrection. In fact, it happened after Brown V. Board Of Ed. The old story of the National Guardsmen escorting the children to the safe schools? Who do you think called the Guard in over city and state objections?

Yeah, that's it. It's all about controlling narrative, not the locals policing themselves accordingly so that people aren't hurt and their God-given rights trod upon.

On a different note, I am surprised by the heavy-handedness of this thread. Because one takes a position where property destruction and arson by mobs is unacceptable, therefore, one must disagree with the position is so fifth grade grasping as to not deserve response. Rolling emojis simply bemoan a loser's position, frankly, and were so popular in the PSF among Trump acolytes because they had no proper defense to anything but a "we're in on this joke" emoji roll. Well, so much for that, one side or the other. Just because one hates the mob and destruction of property does not mean one wishes to see Confederate statues line once Elm-graced boulevards and streets. That's not the case.

It's not an unconstitutional act -- so much of we think of an unconstitutional act, which is generally a civil wrong by a federal or state actor. It is an affront to property law in general, historically and statute-derived in the criminal law. The federal and state criminal laws are derived by the authority of the Constitution, but to say one is destroying property is unconstitutional is also not technically accurate. They're violating either a state or federal statute, or both. Public property is accorded much respect at the common and statutory law. It is not something to willy-nilly trifle with.

Keep laughing, you're losing. eta* No, you simply "understand" why it is they do what they do and will disparage anyone who questions their methods as not "understanding" why they do what they do. When we perfectly understand why it is they do what they do but we disagree with arson and destruction of public property.

What? What are you talking about? Sounds like you have an axe to grind, only it's not with me.

Only people scorching earth are the arsonists you support.

To ignore procedure is to ignore half the thought that went into our Constitution and administration of our laws. It trusts the mob. This is why things are burning. Because you are all this obtuse.

So the majority of the FFA "thinkers" think that property is justifiably torn down without process by a minority of people if the cause is right. In other words, any minority's take on what constitutes a "just" taking of property is "just" up to and including the cause that precedes it. That non-locals should judge or deem fit to acquit those who have chosen to not use process, or who have failed at using process, but still just go ahead and vandalize and destroy property anywhere. I wonder then, what causes earn this right to be called "just." Or, to the point of the OP, is it acceptable to destroy anything that offends you, to which the "heavy" thinkers here have offered no process to get from idea to practice, but rather, this is slavery and scores my antifa and BLM friends points, so why not? Slavery was bad, you know? Monuments to it galling. So they should be destroyed by minority opinion and no process. But "wait," they cry when it happens elsewhere. "This was an exception. Of course it was!" With no process and no exit strategy, you've got competing claims to justice in the name of destruction. It'll not end. It'll end at your line drawing of course, but your line drawing is arbitrary and not binding. This is the dumbest I've ever seen people argue in the FFA.

A good old, community-oriented book burning always goes a long way in stirring up the legislative minority in a community (note I use "minority" in terms of raw numbers, @Dezbelief)

Is a dumb horse. I'm a pony. That flies. #####.