Don's Tuesday Column

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   6/30/2020

The left is saying overthrow America

160 years of insurgency, terrorism, treason and oppression of opponents has ensued from Democrat-led and -tolerated leftism/progressivism. “Resistance” is their word; it has analogies to Southern states’ “resistance” to the imposition of Federal authority post-Civil War, for the indisputably laudable goal of protecting the constitutional rights of newly-freed African-Americans. I’ve seen videos of white “Antifa/Black Live Matter” radicals screaming the n-word into the faces of black police officers. Disgusting.

For informed analysis, look up: “The Movement to Destroy a Nation,” by Shireen Qudosi, clarionproject.org; “The Left Pushes to Finally Take Down America,” by Michael Walsh, theepochtimes.com; “Raheem Kassam says the Democratic Party has declared war on America and its institutions.” Peruse those three articles before saying we are wrong about the left.

To be sure, some statues warrant removal, but the civilized, constitutional method is to sway public sentiment and achieve a consensus that prompts elected officials to take action. It’s decidedly not to gather a violent mob to deface and destroy public property, some of which is dedicated to the very cause—Lincoln freeing slaves, and African-American Union troops—they supposedly support. Look up “CNN’s Coates Excuses Anarchy: Statue Vandalism Is ‘Symbolic Speech’” by Alex Christy.

Indeed, one of the statues found intolerable by the violent, insurgent left is President Andrew Jackson, whose term sought to crush the Ku Klux Klan, the terrorist arm of the Southern Democrat party’s “resistance” to the imposition of (in their view Northern Republican) federal authority. During the Civil War we had “draft riots” in New York City where South-sympathizing, Democrat men engaged in insurrectionist violence against President Lincoln’s draft laws.

“Jim Crow” laws, poll taxes and the Klan’s terroristic intimidation of black citizens all had the goal of preventing them from exercising their rights under the Constitution. Not the least of those rights was the first true use of the 2^nd Amendment’s primary purpose: The inviolable God (not government)-given natural right to self-defense, so that Southern black Republican citizens could ensure their very existence against “Jim Crow” Democrat despotism.

Current turmoil—the street violence of rioting-not-protesting activists against, ostensibly, racial injustice and police brutality—has now morphed into “burn down this system” (BLM leader). That’s resulted in around 700 damaged, burned and destroyed businesses in Minneapolis, MN and countless other destroyed, defaced and impacted businesses, churches and law enforcement assets. News media moved on from that issue—violence inuring to Trump’s benefit—to the previous campaign to sully Trump with rising Covid-19 infections. In spite of clearly protest-contact upward trends, mortality has declined from 2,500 to about 600 deaths per day.

The dead and injured officers—who comprise among the most heroic, self-sacrificing, principled protectors of America’s citizens—and innocent bystanders are a grim testament to the newly-unleashed anarcho-terrorists. They have historical precedents going back to the French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror,” the “brown shirt” street brigades’ violence against perceived enemies of Hitler’s Nazi regime, and the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” of youthful Maoist, Little Red Book-wielding dispensers of state violence.

That resembles the current case. The dovetailing of mass protest/riots with quasi-official elements of “resistance”—in local and state governments, the Democrat-appointed judiciary and their cheerleading justifiers in academia, entertainment and news media—constitutes a “full court press” of intimidation unseen since the 60s race riots and 200 bombings by SDS/Weather Underground radicals.

Who is targeted? Elected officials, who are browbeaten by calls to “defund/dismantle” the police. The relatively rare misuse of authority by law enforcement doesn’t warrant the wholesale undoing of the only entity, equipped and authorized to exercise force to protect our citizens, the poorest of which (mostly minorities) bear the heaviest burden of violent criminal behavior.

Also targeted: the vast middle class, of all races, that see riots, looting and arson in cities and blocks from their homes, employers and businesses—which represent decades and lifetimes of striving within the laws and norms to acquire for themselves and their families some abundance and comfort. It’s a thinly-veiled agenda of alienating voters away from the Republican, conservative, President Trump side—to the Democrats who offer seeming relief from the turmoil, as frustrated and scared citizens say “just make it stop”.

A recent Harvard Harris poll found that 60 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the police; 64 percent think that most police operate fairly and according to the rules. Blame for riots: 27 percent blame the police; 53 percent blame the protesters. Only 28 percent want the police defunded.

Let’s all agree with the Reverend Martin Luther King, 1960: “Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men. God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers, and all men will respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality.”

Would that we could all agree on what racism is. Some see only systemic discrimination against minority groups, for which all whites bear a burden. Others limit racism to assuming negatively, prejudging and acting against an individual or group based solely on their race. The problem is that those adhering to the former view won’t accept, or “tolerate” if you will, that we who hold the latter view won’t personally accept the burden of guilt for the racism of others.

I don’t accept group guilt over individual accountability. Let every human heart grow in acceptance and love of others, no matter their superficial differences. Can I get an “Amen”?