The United States Constitution guarantees the right of the people to 
peacefully petition their government for redress of grievances.  That 
right to peacefully petition the government has somehow grown into a 
right to harass, obstruct, disrupt and otherwise bother not only the 
government but private individuals and businesses.

The right of the people to speak freely has also somehow become a right 
to occupy - and damage and destroy - private property and nonpublic 
areas of public buildings and offices, and to obstruct public streets 
and sidewalks.  It has also become, at least in some jurists' minds, a 
right to force others to listen to them.

The Constitution guarantees the right to speak freely, it does not 
guarantee an audience.  Just as people have the right to speak freely, 
other people have the right to ignore them.

Being ignored, however, drives these people to distraction and causes 
them to try to force others to pay attention to them, by yelling and 
screaming in people's faces, by using bullhorns, and sometimes by 
blocking building entrances, sidewalks and/or streets in order
to make it impossible for others to ignore them.  This sort of thing 
used to be called a riot and used to carry heavy civil and criminal 
penalties.

Over the past half century people's behavior and respect for others has 
steadily deteriorated.  In the 1960s civil rights "demonstrators" 
obstructed access to places that did things they objected to (or 
refused to do things the "demonstrators" wanted them to do), and 
federal judges ruled this to be a legitimate form of protest despite 
the fact that such behavior is quite literally trespassing.  
Those "demonstrations" escalated to attacks on abortion clinics and 
providers, up to and including several bombings and murders.

Most people aren't old enough to remember the labor unrest in the 1970s 
and 1980s, but I am.  Labor strikes used to involve picket lines around 
companies being struck, and other union members - and members of other 
unions - were expected to honor those lines and refuse to cross them.  
I remember trucks having to be convoyed by state police on rural
highways because striking Teamsters would shoot at any lone trucks they 
came upon on those highways.  In the middle of one dark night on I-80 
in rural western Nebraska a heroic Teamster standing on an isolated 
overpass put a bullet through the middle of the windshield of a non-
striking trucker traveling on I-80; unfortunately the driver's wife
was sitting on the engine cover (which is in the middle of the cab) and 
was killed by that bullet.  That sort of thing - murder - is a 
legitimate labor action according to the federal courts; the killer, of 
course, was never caught.

During the coal miners' strike in the late 1970s, striking miners fired 
bullets into non-union mines that were still trying to operate.  I 
don't find it at all suprising that our heavily unionized "law 
enforcement" officers couldn't manage to find any of the gunmen, 
although I suspect that everybody in the area knew who they were.  
Those striking miners also spread caltrops (metal devices made of nails 
that resemble the jacks'that children play with) on highways to flatten 
the tires of trucks carrying coal - of course, they also flattened the 
tires of cars and trucks that weren't carrying coal and had the
potential to cause numerous possibly fatal motor vehicle accidents, 
which obviously didn't bother the strikers at all; there was also a 
bomb found on a railroad bridge that carried coal trains from the 
(nonunion, mostly mechanized) Wyoming coal fields.

Thirty years ago during the Detroit newspapers strike, strikers 
attacked workers trying to cross their picket lines.  Strikers also 
hijacked trucks of newspapers and burned them, stole papers from news 
stands (which were owned by private individuals, not by the
newspapers) and burned them, and attacked strike breakers and police 
with clubs, guns, rocks, bricks, and pieces of steel rebar.  As far as 
I know no one was ever arrested, let alone charged, tried and 
convicted, of any of those crimes - they are, after all "legitimate 
union bargaining tactics."

During a machinists' strike against Boeing in the Seattle area, one 
worker who crossed the union picket line had his rural vacation home 
torched (by persons unknown, of course), fortunately no one was hurt.

This sort of thing isn't unique to this country.  Back in about 1969 
there was an English language newspaper on Okinawa (at the time a US 
possession, it was returned to Japanese control in 1973) that had a 
dispute with its very left wing labor union.  The union was not happy 
with the publisher's editorial opinions (I thought they were great) and 
threated to strike because of what he was writing.  The publisher told 
the union if they went on strike he'd move the paper to Taiwan and ship 
copies in.  The union went on strike and the publisher moved the 
paper.  When the first papers arrived from Taiwan, union strikers
attacked the newspaper employees receiving them, beat them badly, and 
burned the newspapers right on the airport tarmac.  Of course, nobody 
was arrested, let alone charged; it was, after all, a "legitimate union 
tactic."  Two years later the union's big and somewhat tattered and 
faded "struggle" banners were still hanging on the still closed
newspaper building - which, of course, the union had illegally broken 
into and taken over (of course nobody was ever charged with trespass or 
vandalism) - and the paper was still being printed on Taiwan and 
distributed all over the Far East, except on Okinawa.

In recent days we have been "treated" to the spectacle of hundreds of 
supposed adults throwing massive temper tantrums because their 
candidate didn't win the 2016 election.  Yet those same supposed adults 
claim to be proponents of "democracy" (which is just a fancy word that 
means "mob rule," this country is not and has never been a democracy,
it is a constitutional republic).  Of course, like most left wingers, 
they only support democracy when their candidates win.  As an aside, 
during the Obama administration a fellow who lives just off L-31 north 
of US-34 had a big sign at his gate that said "Obama, America's first 
red president" (which is not correct, Roosevelt minor (1933-45) was
America's first red president, and ther argument can be made that 
Thomas Wilson (1913-21) was), I thought that sign was a bit extreme; 
since the 2016 election somebody in Randolph has had a big sign on his 
front lawn that says "Not my president, never my president," some 
people have no problem displaying their own stupidity and blind hatred.

I note that some of these "demonstrators," who call themselves 
the "Antifa" movement, wear uniforms of black hoodies, gloves, dark 
glasses and scarves covering the lower half of the face - hiding their 
identities just like the Ku Klux Klansmen of old did with their white
robes, masks and (very appropriate) dunce hats.  They must be very 
proud of their activities to want to hide their identities like that.  
In my view these "Antifa" people are far more dangerous to society and 
the country than the people they're supposedly protesting against.

Another fairly recent development has been "counter-demonstrators" who 
show up uninvited at other peoples' demonstrations and functions, and 
there's a religious cult of kooks down in Kansas that shows up 
uninvited to spew their anti-gay hatred at funerals of military 
personnel who die on duty.  These "counter-demonstrators" are usually 
of the left-wing persuasion, and continue the left wing's practice - 
perfected over the past half century on this country's college 
campuses - of shouting down speakers they don't like or disagree with.  
The presence of these "counter-demonstrators" practically guarantees a
violent confrontation, particularly when those "counter-demonstrators" 
arrive armed with helmets, clubs, knives and guns.  Stories in the very 
left wing mass media, of course, are written to make these "counter-
demonstrators" out to be the good guys and the original demonstrators - 
usually pro-right wing or anti-left wing - are portrayed as the
bad guys.  When violent clashes - usually precipitated by the "counter-
demonstrators" (remember those helmets, clubs and other paraphernalia) -
 occur they are universally blamed on the original demonstration.

It's probably also necessary to note that a bit over a year ago a 
Republican congressman was shot while he was playing golf simply 
because he was a Republican.  I don't know if the shooter was caught.

Thus is the state of the American political system.
Bob Ackley, 06/1
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