On
Sunday, April 3rd, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren conducted a town
hall meeting with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Roughly 100 people showed up to protest just
outside the venue.
At this point I will pause to say
that I am no fan of Trump. Loyal readers of this blog could certainly vouch for
that. I am, in fact, heartened and grateful to the “cheese-heads”
(Wisconsinites) for giving a much-needed, near-blowout victory to Ted Cruz.
Trump gets accused, and rightly so,
of being impetuous and antagonistic, rude and boorish in his behavior. He is
all of those things and more. His personality and character are virtually the
opposite of Ronald Reagan’s. He certainly doesn’t possess the off-the-charts
intelligence or the command of multiple issues as does a Ted Cruz. However, he
is also reflexively, impetuously- and savagely- attacked for being a racist,
xenophobic hatemonger.
He is not.
One Trump protester gave an
interview to Infowars.com while standing on an American flag. He exclaimed, “F***
this flag, f*** this country. This red, white and blue, this s***, is the new
swastika.” Sadly, this is anything but atypical of Trump protesters. This fact, in and of itself, should be very
illustrative.
The reflexive use of profanity
suggests that the protester is not prepared to do battle in the arena of ideas.
Calling the American flag the “new swastika” is mind-bogglingly offensive to,
among others, the hundreds of thousands of American troops that, even after their
homeland was the victim of a massive, unprovoked attack by Japan, were sent to Europe to fight Hitler and his Third Reich.
Many thousands died doing just that, eventually liberating Jews, the Germans
themselves, and much of the rest of Europe from the NAZI menace.
What would have been his fate if he
had stepped on an ISIS flag? What happens to protesters that similarly exercise
their freedom of expression in China? Russia? North Korea? Cuba? Venezuela?
Etc., etc. Oh yeah, they don’t have
any right to freedom of expression. It is the United States, aided and abetted
by Western European traditions, principles and thought, that has heretofore
brought forth, codified and protected the natural rights of man.
One Trump backer said to the
protester, “You’re here because of
America.” Others defended his right to protest in this way. Things got heated
enough that police eventually had to form a line to separate Trump supporters
from Trump opponents.
No police line was needed to
separate Trump protesters from the truth. Or dignity.
No comments:
Post a Comment