My only comment about this story:
The melee at a Tinley Park restaurant Saturday appears to have been the work of radical protesters who wanted to attack a gathering of alleged white supremacists, the mayor and a law enforcement source said.
Ten people were injured at the Ashford House Restaurant on 159th Street after 15 to 18 young people, wearing hooded black jackets and wielding bats and hammers, burst inside and attacked another group of 12 to 15 people who were meeting there, officials said.
is that if we have reached the point where we attack beliefs, even offensive or reprehensible beliefs, with bats and hammers, civil order has already broken down.
5:30 pm. Take a look at WGN
So far, the police have handled themselves very professionally. The core group of aggressive protesters are destroying whatever cred the balance have for their positions.
I didn’t get the impression these particular assholes are associated with the NATO protests. Did I miss something?
As for the NATO protests -violence against war. So I guess they missed the chapter on irony.
I’ll be honest about my position: It would not surprise me in the least to discover these were agents-provocateur intended to give the authorities an excuse to crack down, perhaps even new reasons to enhance “domestic security” procedures against “terrorists. They probably are just thugs, probably. But it’s also a tactic used far too often by government in the history of our country.
I think it goes much too far to suggest civil order is breaking down. The sad and bitter truth is Americans are generally authoritarian in nature and will support rather harsh measures in response to this. These people employing violence are doing more to harm the right of assembly and protest than government alone ever could.
Eh, I used the words “too far” too many times in that last post. Michael, when you write what procedures do you use to avoid sounding repetitive? When I was in grad school we used to go line by line, pick out words we’d been using too much and then replace them via thesaurus.
Ben:
We call it an echo effect. I do it all the time.
I use two procedures: first, I “listen” for it. Second, my editor writes me some mocking revision letter asking if I’d mind using some phrase other than “needle-sharp” since I used it 14 times in a manuscript and twice in a single paragraph.
That second one usually does it.
Ben,
Americans are authoritarian in nature and will support harsh measures? Authoritarian compared to whom? Harsh compared to what?
@Andy
We’ve had the virtual evisceration of the Bill of Rights over the last decade, so many wars it’s hard to count them any more, and a prison system which locks up as many people as it can grab and then tortures them for years in the name of “law and order”. We almost always see majority support for the construction of an aggressive police state or outright apathy even when Americans say they disapprove. A significant majority of Americans support indefinite detention and flagrant violation of other citizen’s rights so they can feel a little more safe. Passivity itself, and the willingness to trust the system with the enormous powers it has claimed, are evidence of an authoritarian mindset.
Hyperbolic.
I’m not sure that interventionism is equivalent to authoritarianism.
It seems to me that a high incarceration rate and harsh conditions are more indicative of an anarchic streak coupled with a Jacksonian predisposition towards punishment. Those are both characteristics of a Jacksonian (populist realist pessimist) mindset rather than authoritarianism. I also suspect that our crime rates, incarceration rates, and conditions are pretty typical for a highly diverse society. As European societies have become more diverse they’ve experienced rising rates of violent crime, too.
I think that’s suspect. I’d like to see some substantiation of it. As I see it Americans are more disposed to a Jacksonian mindset than an authoritarian one.
I think this is suspect. America’s a pretty prosperous country. Wouldn’t being satisfied with things also lead to passivity?
You may be correct that the two groups are different, Michael. However, we have in town what can only be described as professional protesters and trouble mkers who have shown up at various locations.
In any event, outside of a minority of goons the protests have been relatively small, relatively peacful, and of course, pointless.
I think there were a lot of protestors for the G-8 that were planning to be in Chicago, and they were p.o.’ed that it was moved and came anyway.
And anyway, who doesn’t hate Illinois NAZIs?
Ben,
I pretty much agree with Dave’s points, and you didn’t really answer my questions. I’ve been all over the world and most of it is a lot more authoritarian than here. Most places don’t even have a bill of rights and here in the US there is a pretty strong anti-government streak that isn’t present in a lot of other places.
In addition to Dave’s points on Jackson, I’d add that I think a lot of our culture comes from a Puritan tradition.
PD,
Hehe!
Maybe it’s just me but I find a significant different between taking somebody you disagree with to court, protesting against them, or debating them in public forums and picking up bats and beating them with them.
There are two different Enlightenment-based issues at stake. The first is the “disagree with what you say but defend etc.” point of classical liberalism. The other is “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” If your normative position is that it is acceptable to attack someone physically with whom you disagree at will, isn’t it equally acceptable for that person to attack you? Once that is your norm it’s only a matter of who is armed better.
My Blues Brothers reference was tongue and cheek. I don’t believe the violence is acceptable.
I understand the desires of youth to be heroes, to feel that they took a serious stand against intolerance. But its not very heroic to pick on marginalized, delusional people* that do not count for a speck in the not-so-great arc of history.
*I’m assuming this was a bona fide white supremacist group. I could be wrong, which would this all the more tragic.
@Dave Schuler
The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth amendments are violated routinely as a matter of policy. If Americans are ho hum because (as you suggest) they are comfortable, then they are comfortable with extraordinary rendition and torture, warantless surveillance, denial of right to trial, unlawful search and seizure as well as cruel and unusual punishment. That’s an authoritarian mindset. “It could be worse”, as some have suggested, isn’t a valid argument.
Sorry off topic, but we have an author here so I just have to ask….
Why to authors always use the word “padded” when they want to describe somebody walking barefoot? As in, “He padded across the floor to the bathroom….” It is used so much, every time I see it I roll my eyes.
Steve:
Sometimes to avoid the echo effect, perhaps. Maybe they’ve used “walked” too often. More likely they read someone else use it that way so they do too. Someone wrote padded once and everyone else thought, “Huh, that could work.” I’ve probably done it myself, and for just that unoriginal a reason.
Stephen King advises writers to use their own vocabulary, not to go looking for exotic words in the thesaurus, and that’s generally been my approach. But every now and then I’ll find myself picking up some phrase I don’t like but use anyway.