On April 8th, the Tacoma News Tribune published an editorial about alleged death threats against Sen. Patty Murray. The editors stated, “In the furious arguments over health care reform, legitimate conservatives have sometimes been accused of fomenting violence with bitter and angry rhetoric”.
The next day in Olympia, almost three-dozen leftists dressed in black, wearing masks and calling themselves anarchists chanted obscenities at law enforcement officers. The anarchists attacked a newspaper photographer, spray-painted buildings, broke windows and threw newspaper boxes into the street. Police arrested 29 leftists. Two officers were hit – one in the head and one in the groin.
In February, 2008, an antiwar concert at Evergreen State College resulted in severe damage when a deputy’s car was overturned and looted. The name of the hip-hop group- Dead Prez- conveys something of what the anarchists were fomenting at the gathering.
No guns were involved in recent local anarchist attacks. Nor were guns used in 1999 when anti-globalist anarchists went berserk and smashed up the streets of Seattle. A bullet shot through the window of Republican Eric Cantor’s office in Virginia is one recent example of gun violence related to Health Care. Where are the other examples?
Alleged threats by anyone connected with Tea Parties or patriotism are amplified in a virtual reverberating echo chamber. “Wackos on the right have guns,” according to the Tacoma News Tribune.
To put things in historical perspective, however, on August 7, 1970, 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson, armed with an automatic weapon took Judge Harold Haley out of a Marin County courtroom. The left-wing militants took the Judge, Deputy District Attorney and three jurors hostage to demand freedom for the “Soledad Brothers“. Subsequently, a raft of music, heroic literature and popular culture has evolved around the Soledad Brothers who killed prison guards to retaliate for the killing of three black prisoners during a prison fight.
Judge Haley, Jonathan Jackson, and two prisoners were killed as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse. The judge was killed with a sawed-off shotgun fastened to his neck with adhesive tape. The anarchist-socialist left (paradoxically such fish swim in the same schools) conducts terrorist operations against police and government on a regular basis in other countries like Greece- Europe’s current symbol of big government’s fiscal insanity.
Angela Davis purchased the guns. At that time an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the UCLA and member of the Communist Party USA, Davis is now a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University and a frequent speaker on subjects like racial and gender justice. The list of hardcore Sixties radicals that are now esconced within the ivied halls of academia is a fascinating historical pecularity that is quite extraordinary!
When I was 16 years old, I spent a summer exploring radicalism on the streets of Chicago. I slept in a crumbling Anarchist Bookstore and spent time perusing source documents from the earliest socialist internationales, International Workers of the World and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. I studied antiquated handbooks on how to barricade the streets, deploy Molotov cocktails and foment disturbances designed to raise the consciousness of the proletariat.
The following summer saw the Black Panthers, SDS and Yippies (Youth International Party) succeed in villifying the Chicago Police during the 1968 Democratic Convention. A coalition of various leftwing and counter-cultural groups catalyzed a new perception of the Vietnam War when mainstream news journalists, many of whom were already alienated from U.S. policy in Vietnam, were caught up in the reaction to a well-planned maelstrom of leftist provocation against the police in Lincoln Park. The provocations included throwing bricks and feces at the police and taunting the police officers by calling them pigs.
After I received Christ and repented of my former spiritual ties to such mischief, I felt nothing but remorse for even contemplating such things. But I never dreamt that acting out violence against police and other innocent people might lead one to become a law professor at Northwestern University!
Did Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, formerly radical bombers within Weatherman faction of the SDS ever suspect that they would rise to the top of the academic elite? The couple are friendly with President Obama and have written and spoken at length about their pasts. Today Ayers is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law at Northwestern University. They left behind a trail of murderous violence that would make Bonnie and Clyde proud- and never repented. Dr. Ayers never even served any time in prison!
Ayers has spent a great deal of time sitting on boards in Chicago that disperse tax-exempt foundation money primarily for education purposes. Ayers prefers educational programs that promote his radical Marxist-Leninist agenda. In fact, even though Pres. Obama denies a close friendship with Ayers, they have worked together at the foundations.
In fact, Dr. Ayers only regrets that he did not actually kill any U.S. personnel with his bombs. Despite claims in the news media that he never killed anyone, however, there is a great deal of evidence that he was accomplice to the murder of a police officer in San Francisco.
In a 1969 speech to the SDS Weathermen in Flint, Michigan, Dohrn said of the murder of eight month pregnant Sharon Tate, “Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in pig Tate’s belly. Wild!” She said of the LaBiancas- also victims of the Manson family- “Offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives, and then eating a meal in the same room, far out! The Weathermen dig Charles Manson!”
Leftists often assert that violence is necessary in order to advance the cause of social justice. The mainstream politicians and media focus on isolated examples of violence perpetrated by misguided groups or individuals like Timothy McVeigh that act under color of patriotism. The news media collude with the Democratic attack machine to ignore leftist violence and threats of violence and smear Tea Party folks that peacefully protest and actually love their country too much to even consider acting violently.
President Clinton came out on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and renewed claims that talk radio and the internet enable violence by creating a climate of hate. That was how he regained his grip on the levers of presidential power in 1995. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City provided the turning point that Clinton needed after the 1994 gully wash against Democrats in Washington, DC. History does not repeat itself but it certainly does seem to rhyme at times.
The concerted refrain is that rightwingers have guns and we are trumpeting an anti-government call to arms. To listen to the squads of Democratic operatives that have taken to the airwaves, those of us that criticize deficit spending want to eliminate police protection and other core government services.
Most of us appreciate our police protection and that is why we exercise our duty to speak out peacefully on behalf of fiscal responsibility. There is a great deal of history to demonstrate the social disorder that occurs when government strips away wealth by increasing the money supply and devaluing currency. Good law enforcement officers cannot afford to serve and protect when tomorrow’s paycheck may barely buy enough to buy the family a loaf of bread!
Legitimate gun owners are as likely to be union members, Democrats, gay activists, liberals, leftists or people of color as “Tea Party” activists. Some of us talk a lot about the Constitution because we have this old fashioned idea that it is the bedrock of the American legal system. On the other hand, left-wing groups like the New Black Panther Party have received favorable treatment from the Obama administration despite a recent record of intimidating voters at polling places and violent, racist rhetoric. How long before the American left repeats the historical and deadly pattern of violence that continues to rage worldwide?
The Law Office of Mark Knapp PLLC 