Oops. Double negative. Would, not wouldn’t.

Make that, that wouldn’t (have) embarrass(ed) your mother….

So, Barbara and JE, I take it you’re both suggesting, bring a camera to these town hall meetings, but not brass knuckles; and don’t say anything that might embarrass you if it were nationally televised.

The DoJ won’t be much help but so far there’s still YouTube and FOX.

CK has suggested that demagoguery may have to be fought with Southern based populism. I feel like the

bootlegger Mr. Leehman in the movie “The Public Enemy.” Make sure my name doesn’t get into the papers, he says. Don’t worry, says Nails Nathan, we won’t use you in our advertising.

At some point, we have to take the valid stand that it is they who are being anti-democratic, in seeking to silence and intimidate others — that they are not just in disagreement on policy, but in the wrong in terms of their tactics.

They are anti-democratic. But: wrong tactics morally, or operationally? Clearly the tactics are wrong morally, but only if you think living in a civil society is a good thing. Excuse me, only if you think there is any such thing as a moral good.
But operationally? I think the jury is still out. On the local level, Alinsky-ite methods have been used for years to manipulate planning meetings and “empowerment” sessions at schools, and in some churches. This is how the takeover of institutions by the left is accomplished and reinforced. Our only hope in this battle is that the brazenness and arrogance tips the wheelbarrow back on the pusher and they get buried in their shøt.

Seth — well, my vote is that we engage in no physical or vocal hysteria. That’s counterproductive. I was disgusted to see a piece on Fox yesterday comparing the anti-Obamacare citizens of 2009 with the college-age hooligan protestors of the 1960s. The ’60s protestors threw rocks, damaged property, and inflicted physical harm on innocent bystanders, becoming public order problems for police. None of the Tea Partiers or Obamacare protestors have done anything like that.

But superficial comparisons are too easy to make when you shout down speakers at townhall meetings.

Meanwhile, however, while I think the use of freighted symbols (e.g., swastikas) can also be counterproductive, it is not some form of intellectual violence, or a removal of the “gloves,” for those on the right to point out what is true: that the Alinskyist tactics being used by some on the left are, in fact, the tactics of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Hitler’s brown-shirts — and they are being used in service of a collectivist objective that has the same root as Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, Mussolini’s Fascism, Hitler’s Nazism, and Maoism.

If Oslash’s support network didn’t have thugs on the street intimidating peaceful protestors — or, as in November, and last year’s primaries, voters — his rabble-rousing, one-sided oratory might come off as mere sloppy impulse control. But he does have a support network with these features.

I think we can take heart that, as Barbara says, it’s not nationwide. I had exactly the same thought on seeing that the SEIU attack on the black conservative was in the St. Louis area — Well, it would be St. Louis. Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis. A lot of political similarities there.

But it’s going to come to everyone’s neighborhood — bused in, if necessary, with George Soros buying the gas — if we pretend it doesn’t matter, and conveninently bellieve that the republic can somehow just live with and tolerate government that seeks mainly to compromise with these folks, in exchange for a little peace. It doesn’t work that way.

At some point, we have to take the valid stand that it is they who are being anti-democratic, in seeking to silence and intimidate others — that they are not just in disagreement on policy, but in the wrong in terms of their tactics.

I really appreciated this post.

Seth- all you have to be is the wrong demographic handing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and they will come to with the gloves off.

Barack’s words are a warning shot to his foes and a call to arms to his friends. But most of the United States isn’t Chicago. The incident in St. Louis happened in large part because of its proximity to Chicago- SL is the traditional “down river” locale for Chicago heavies.

We non-cultists need to have our own toned-down version of the MLK versus Malcolm X debate, ie how strenuous and gloves-off should we be in opposing these goonies?

I’m gonna let that crack at Czars slip, but just say that, if I thought all that we needed to do was turn stash the Ø, I’d worry that 2010 or 2012 wouldn’t be enough. A “normal” new congress and a “normal” new president would be expected to course-correct a couple of degrees in the other direction.

I don’t anticipate at all that a single congress or a single presidency will be enough to make up for lost time, but that’s because I don’t see Ø as a complete novum: He’s the peculiar vehicle, in effect purpose-built, for the continuation and the hypertrophied exaggeration of all that’s unsustainable and no longer worth bothering to afford in American political culture.

The earlier it’s overturned the better, and preventing Øcare and whatever else he tries to cook up will our tasks easier, but he could disappear tomorrow and the Democrats could rescind everything they’ve done since 2006, while operating a caretaker government til 2010 and 2012, and there’d still be a huge amount of work to do.

Now you’ve gone and done it, aelfheld. Not the “F” word!