Saturday, October 15, 2005

Wannabe-Nazis instigate riot in Toledo

Watch how this story will get spun. The bottom line will be an outcry for more police power in the streets. This will be wrong. The outcry should be for social justice. When you create conditions of misery for large numbers of people, then resort to force to subdue those people, you are wrong. Good leadership will work to improve the conditions of their constituents. Good leadership will not try to bankrupt their own republic.
Wannabe-Nazi Instigator story here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051016/ap_on_re_us/nazi_march

3 comments:

suzannejb8 said...

I haven't formed my opinion of the police force question you ask, but it does remind me of one year the KKK was planning to parade in Charleston, SC, where I lived at the time. I wanted so badly to have the wherewithall to get a helicopter in the air above them and drop bunches of garbage on them.

Note, here is a quote I found on http://preemptivekarma.com/. Provides some additional food for thought:
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."
-- Thomas Paine

I'm interested in your perspective on this.

Mark Frankenberg said...

I agree with you and Thomas Paine that it is crucial that we protect our rights to free speech. The doctrine of Protecting the minority (in this case the KKK) from the tyranny of the mob would be plausible in Toledo but for the fact that the KKK advocates, and has committed as standard procedure, human rights violations and violence, which are criminal in the spirit if not the letter of the laws in our society. Also, inciting a riot is worse than shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre. Much of the rioting mob in Toledo may not have read Thomas Paine, but they could smell a rat (an organized, criminal enterprise), and they did what they could as members of their community to expel it. You'd think that the mayor would have expected this and taken preventive measures prior to it. The fact that he didn't doesn't reflect well on him. All this in Ohio, possibly the most politically corrupt state in the Union (reference Bob Taft, Kenneth Blackwell and the continued coup). All this on the same day of the Millions More Movement in Washington, DC., which was an event geared toward the empowerment of Americans of African Descent, and which was attended by thousands. Smells like a Rovian diversion to me.

suzannejb8 said...

for the Paine quote: it made me think of how various folks in our administration called the attack on Iraq a "preemtive strike", and that they thought that they were protecting Iraq from oppression.

Lots of people have wondered if the words that the administration has used regarding developing a democracy in Iraq are in earnest. If they are (yes, it is a big "if"), would it be against Paine's "wishes"?

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