From Glenn Reynolds via Examiner: ""Protest is patriotic!" "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!"
"These battle-cries were heard often, in a simpler America of long ago -- that is, before last November. Back then, protests -- even if they were organized by the usual leftist apparatchik-groups like ANSWER or ACORN -- were seen - at least in the media - as proof of popular discontent.
"When handfuls of Code Pink ladies disrupted congressional hearings or speeches by Bushadministration officials, it was taken as evidence that the administration's policies were unpopular, and that the thinking parts of the populace were rising up in true democratic fashion...
"Remember: When lefties do it, it's called "community organizing." When conservatives and libertarians do it, it's "astroturf."But some people are noticing the truth. As Mickey Kaus notes, "If an 'astroturfing' campaign gets real people to show up at events stating their real views, isn't it ... community organizing?" Why yes, yes it is.
"As someone who's been following the Tea Party campaign since the beginning, it seems to me to be the most genuine outbreak of grassroots popular involvement in my lifetime. People have been turning out, in the tens of thousands at times, because they feel that Obama pulled a bait-and-switch and is moving the country much farther to the left than he promised during the campaign..."
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Remember-when-protest-was-patriotic-52767517.html
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