Campus insurrections?
The pro-Hamas students are revolting. And they aren't the only ones.
It was a peaceful crowd at first. At least on the surface. We now know that members of the crowd were armed with everything from bats and knives to bear spray and bombs. There were even a few guns sprinkled throughout the crowd despite the area’s designation as a gun-free zone.
The speakers whipped the crowd into an angry frenzy and they moved off to occupy administrative buildings to force those in charge to accede to their demands. Leaders looked the other way as the crowd attacked police because they shared the political views of the crowd. In the end, hundreds were arrested. The protesters complained loudly that they were mistreated and their rights were violated because the demonstration was mostly peaceful.
If that sounds like the ongoing campus protests, I was actually describing the crowd on January 6. The two incidents do have a lot in common, however. If there is one thing that comparing the two violent protests can show us, it is that both parties are filled with radical hypocrites.
It is true that some of the student protesters say that orders to remove their encampments and stand down are illegitimate and infringe on their rights. It is also true that January 6 protesters claimed that they had a right to visit the Capitol and that people arrested in the riot were political prisoners.
The core truth underlying both events is that rights are not unlimited. A desire to protest does not include the right to trespass or occupy a campus indefinitely or cross police lines and enter the Capitol to halt the tabulating of electoral votes. Potato, po-tah-to. It’s all criminal behavior.
In the case of the colleges, the leadership is derelict in their duty to control the student population. These campuses are under the jurisdiction of collegiate officials and campus police forces, not Joe Biden, but they have an obligation to protect the rights of non-protesting students who want to engage in radical behaviors like going to class and graduating. Failing to protect students from harassment and bullying by the protesters can put the colleges in violation of federal law. Restricting the time, place, and manner of student protests is not an infringement of the First Amendment, but letting demonstrators run wild can violate the rights of other students.
The analogy between the college presidents and Donald Trump on January 6 is a strong one. Like the college presidents, Trump failed to intervene in a timely fashion to halt the protests and restore order. Like the college presidents, Trump sympathized with the protesters running amok in his jurisdiction.
Unlike the college presidents, Trump gave a keynote speech at the rally that kicked off the attack on the Capitol. While the college presidents are afraid of offending their students and having the demonstrators turn against them, Trump lit the fire and fanned the flames of the January 6 insurrection.
So, if the student protests are so similar to the January 6 riot, you might ask, are the student protests insurrections? To answer that question, let’s examine what an insurrection is.
Federal law does not define “insurrection,” but in its simplest terms, the word means “an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government” (per dictionary.com). You might say that college leaders are an example of a civil authority, but students are not rising in rebellion against that authority. They defy the college leaders and police, but they aren’t trying to overthrow them.
Calling the college protests an insurrection would stretch the meaning of the word beyond recognition. If the campus protests are insurrections then pretty much any violation of the law is an insurrection.
As someone said (and I can’t locate the source of the quote), “An insurrection is more than a riot and less than a revolution.”
And that fits January 6. The MAGA crowd that day violently rose against the government’s authority to designate the winner of the 2020 election. The January 6 protesters were trying to overthrow the established constitutional order and interrupt a constitutional process. This was an attack on the Constitution itself.
The campus protests may not be an insurrection, but would they qualify as a riot? The Anti-Riot Act of 1968 defines a riot as “a public disturbance involving… an act or acts of violence by one or more persons part of an assemblage of three or more persons, which act or acts shall constitute a clear and present danger of, or shall result in, damage or injury to the property of any other person or to the person of any other individual.” \
As the demonstrators become more violent, they may represent a “clear and present danger” to life and property. By the way, the law defines a “clear and present danger” with two requirements: a real threat of substantive evil which must be imminent. The lack of immediate danger means no riot is occurring, but the protests are well on their way to becoming one.
The point of all this is not that one side is right and one side is wrong. It’s that both sides have extremists who are wrong in certain situations. Neither side has a monopoly on law and order and both are filled with hypocrites when it comes to covering for their partisans.
There are (a few) Republicans (left) who are willing to call out the party for its rationalization of the attack on the Capitol and the Constitution. There are a larger number of Democrats who are critical of the way that the colleges are handling the pro-Palestinian protesters. These are not left and right issues as much as they are issues where moderates are confronting the radicals of both parties.
That’s the appropriate place to be these days. We are reaching a point where the moderates of both sides have more in common with each other than with the fringes of their own party. And they are starting to realize that.
Whether you’re liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, it’s time to call out the fringes on both sides for the lawless demagogues that they are and embrace the sanity of the middle.
It’s the horseshoe. Right wing morons and left wing morons are more similar than not. And centrists don’t resemble either type of flipping asshat. It’s too bad there isn’t a party to cater to the fat middle, and be F-wit-free.
Amen brother. Here's my position as a bleeding heart liberal; anyone on campus who broke the law should be arrested, allowed a school hearing/trial and if found guilty their backsides should be kicked out of school. Let them go home to explain to their parents how and why they chose to be played for tools.
Life is pretty damned simple when we go back to the basic fundamentals of right and wrong. Those are the only "rights" we should be worrying about.
Center indeed!