You have done a courageous thing, and I think you aren’t getting enough credit for it.
I am here in my home in Hermitage, a home for which I’ve worked and saved. I find the Occupy Wall Street protests to be directionless, odd and, at times a little creepy. The franchise protests in cities across the country have struck me as little more than a bit of me-tooism, people on safari for a unique experience.
So when I heard you had written a fiat behind closed doors and mobilised a paramilitary force to shut down the Occupy Nashville protests I KNEW I had to thank you.
It was only through such a bone-headed, dictatorial, egomaniacal and ill-sighted action that I–the original You Kids Get Off My Lawn Lady–would find any common ground with these hairbags at Legislative Plaza.
Before you and your little band of khaki-pantsed thugs started pressing women’s faces into wet pavement and ziptieing their hands, I was sitting here saying things like “why don’t you try Occupying A Shower?” and “It’s hard to file a job application from behind a piece of posterboard.”
Before you started loading kids and old people into a jail bus, I was one of the folks who thought those other folks were ridiculous because they were protesting without a clear agenda.
Now?
Now you’ve given Occupy Nashville something to say. And that something is something I agree with.
This is The United States. Blood was shed to guarantee our freedom to assemble. When you quash that you spit on the graves of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,and pretty much the whole of Arlington Cemetery. Your actions show you to be a craven and a coward and, at the worst, wholly unAmerican.
Thank you for revealing your true face. May you find the rest of your sole term in office as uncomfortable as possible.
Sincerely,
Katherine J. Boyer-Coble
Proud American
Proud Libertarian
Pissed-Off-As-Hell Tennessean
A free society functions best when it’s citizens are moral and educated. Our founders seem to have fit this category, but now, we the people, don’t so much.
Parasites exploit the host by attacking and undermining what might otherwise be a hosts strengths or better qualities. Occupiers are parasites who have no true intention of improving this country or being the change they want to see.
Haslam seems to me to be a white blood cell, doing a necessary job.
Somehow a free society needs to develop the sophistication that can both preserve essential liberties and to destroy disease.
Peaceful assembly, free speech, etc., have been and are being attacked. Really, how do we then preserve them for the future and defend them against an occupying army of parasites sent by our socialist enemies?
So let me get this straight…
Haslam is a glob of pus that is defending our rights and freedoms by denying those rights and freedoms to people who aren’t good enough to deserve them?
That pretty much your take on the whole thing?
Look, I get that the OWS/ON protests were and are pretty flakey. They can’t agree on what they want, they don’t have a clear idea of the functions of any structure of economy, many of them seem grossly overentitled and underachieving. They are blaming the bulk of their problems on nebulous outside forces. Many of them haven’t yet gotten a firm grasp on the cold hard realities of adulthood and are just shocked –SHOCKED, I tell you!–that four years in an overpriced university don’t automatically qualify them for upper middle class jobs.
The protests were initially organised by a fringe socialist group with a primary goal of legislating the distribution of wealth.
But you know what? So what. None of that matters. As far as I’m concerned they could be naked crackheads who paint themselves red and demand a Communist takeover.
They could be brow shirted thugs hollering for the Nazi Party to be empowered.
It. Doesn’t. Matter.
We all enjoy the freedoms of this country. Freedom is for everyone no matter how grimy or idiotic or rich or poor.
And until this fool mess with Haslam acting like a dozen people with sharpies and cardboard were a real threat to anything there were very few people who took the OWS/ON junk seriously. They were just griping.
Now? Haslam played right into their hands. His idiotic and blatantly unconstitutional overreaction gave them a reason to be taken seriously.
White blood cell, my ass. More like the gasoline dumped on a dying ember.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
Your summary of my idea is correct. And the point that it doesn’t matter is likely correct also. My question is really a question.
If enemies of American freedoms analyze, plan and successfully attack us on the basis of exploitable weaknesses directly derived from those freedoms, how do we preserve them and yet still protect them?
Determining who isn’t “good enough to deserve them” is the problem. You’re right in pointing out that acting on that premise is wrong and contrary to freedom and the right to dissent.
In a city near me, after a few weeks of tolerating the Occupiers violating established rules about permits and staying on a priority after dark, the mayor sent in the cops at 2 am to abruptly clear them out. It would have been “legal” the first hour after dark on the first day, but the cleanup didn’t occur until weeks worth of warnings and violations had accumulated.
This Mayor didn’t want to take action, but he had too. His delay resulted in a bill from the Tea Party for every dollar they paid for the right to demonstrate in the same location months earlier.
I just wonder, what is the answer? How do we protect our freedoms without also violating them ourselves in the process?
I think OWS is a practice run, not a dying ember. The people behind this are patient and have been working at destroying us for many, many years.
yeah… parasites.
Isn’t it odd that the Tea Party was vilified as a group by pointing out the dimmer light bulbs in their early ranks, and the Occupiers, in contrast, are highlighted by a few respectable folks like these veterans?
Why is that?