Comment by joshuamorton
6 years ago
This gets confusing, because many (including cotton elsewhere) intentionally blurred the lines between protestors and "rioters", and stood behind plans that served to suppress peaceful protest.
People on this forum are usually quick to remark that free speech is powerful and important and worth protecting even at great cost to individuals. Property damage caused by a small number of violent actors falls into this category, especially when the majority of the protests were peaceful and actively discouraged property damage.
So yes, Cotton's plan would have served to suppress political dissent and therefore probably violated the first amendment (and the third). Printing a sitting senator advocating for violating multiple constitutional rights without a disclaimer to that effect is a disservice to nyts readers.
Destroying things that do not belong to you is not free speech.
Bringing the military in on stopping it is crossing the Rubicon. In as literal a sense as you can get without living in Italy. Regardless of feelings on the current situation, the idea of getting the military involved should be extremely unsettling to anyone living in a democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Rubicon
For a more contemporary quote from battlestar galactica:
Adama: There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
In 1992 the military was used to put an end to the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.
There is a spectrum between peaceful protesting and violent insurrection. Burning down police stations, murdering police officers, and stealing rifles from police vehicles is very, very far down the line to violent insurrection. In retrospect I don’t think we were quite there, but we were getting close to it. And ultimately, one of the purposes of the military is to protect our republic from violent insurrection.
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I never said it was. I said it was a cost to protect free speech. Do you believe that Cotton, the Police, or the National guard will be able to stop only those looting without accidentally arresting, shooting or otherwise harassing anyone who is simply protesting?
Do you believe deployment of the national guard won't have a chilling effect on people protesting? If you want to protect the speech (or in this case assembly) of the many, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences of the few who will abuse that right.
Otherwise, implicitly, what you're saying is that (a relatively small amount of) property is more valuable than the right to protest an unjust government.
> Destroying things that do not belong to you is not free speech.
Note: that's exactly what the Boston Tea Party did. Protesting by destroying things that do not belong to you has a long, celebrated history in America.