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OT - As Peaceful as a Tea Party -- The only person arrested in recent days for threatening violence against a politician targeted Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House

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Joseph Gwinn

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Apr 2, 2010, 10:22:35 PM4/2/10
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I'm still thinking about the implications of needing machine-gun nests on the
roof of a newspaper building.

Joe Gwinn

===========================================================

As Peaceful as a Tea Party -- The only person arrested in recent days for
threatening violence against a politician targeted Eric Cantor, the No. 2
Republican in the House.

By JOHN STEELE GORDON

Perhaps a measure of its threat to the liberal agenda, the tea party movement is
being accused仇ith little or no supporting evidence黍f using threats, insults
and violence to intimidate the political process.

Rep. John Lewis, (D., Ga.) claimed that when he and other members of the
Congressional Black Caucus walked through a tea party protest last week in
Washington, they heard the N-word hurled at them 15 times. No video or audio
recording喫n an age when such recorders are ubiquitous吃as surfaced to back up
the claim. No one was arrested.

Liberals in the media have taken up the cry that tea partiers and Republican
politicians have issued threats of physical violence. On March 25, Paul Krugman
wrote in his column in the New York Times (echoed in an editorial the following
day) that the chairman of the Republican National Committee "declared that it
was time to put Ms. Pelosi on 'the firing line.' And Sarah Palin put out a map
literally [sic] putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle
sight. All of this goes far beyond politics as usual."

It does? "Firing Line," after all, was the name of a highly regarded television
interview program that ran for 33 years, hosted by the eminently civilized
William F. Buckley Jr. None of the hundreds of politicians who appeared on it
were afraid they might be shot. Such words as "target" and "cross hairs" are
standard journalistic metaphor, such as this headline in the March 5 New York
Times, "Looming Climate Regulations Put EPA in Conservatives' Cross Hairs."

[image of protesters]

In fact the only person arrested in recent days for threatening violence against
a politician was held for threatening Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the
House. A spent bullet also hit the window of Mr. Cantor's district headquarters
recently.

Political violence in this country in recent years has been largely on the left.
Dozens of right-leaning speakers have been prevented from speaking on college
campuses in the last 30 years by the threat or actuality of violence. But if
there has been an instance when a left-leaning speaker was similarly treated, I
do not know of it.

To be sure, tea partiers have carried signs saying such things as "If [newly
elected Massachusetts Senator Scott] Brown can't do it, a Browning can,"
referring to the American firearms manufacturer. But how do those differ from
the signs regularly seen喫f seldom reported on by the mainstream media掬uring
the previous administration calling for President Bush to be tried for war
crimes and shot as a traitor?

The fact of the matter is that while American politics is raucous, often rude,
and now and then over the top, it is also remarkably peaceful compared to other
eras and other countries.

Consider the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. It was a titanic
political struggle that lasted for decades before the civil rights acts of the
1960s finally ended Jim Crow. And there was certainly violence aplenty including
thousands of lynchings in the pre-civil rights era. President Dwight Eisenhower
called out the National Guard to ensure the peaceful integration of schools in
Little Rock, Ark., in 1957. Four young girls were killed when the Ku Klux Klan
bombed a church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. Three civil rights workers were
murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., the following year. Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy only three months later.

But terrible as the violence was, compared to social and political movements of
similar magnitude in other countries, the American civil rights movement was
extraordinarily nonviolent, thanks largely to MLK's commitment to nonviolent
resistance. The troubles in Northern Ireland (which has a population of less
than two million) between 1969 and 2001, caused the deaths of over 3,500 people,
mostly innocent bystanders, and 47,000 were injured.

American politics were not always so peaceful, of course. In the revolutionary
era, tarring and feathering was not a metaphor, but all too real. Hot tar was
poured or painted on the victim, causing at least first-degree burns, and he was
then rolled in feathers and paraded around town as a warning to others. Removing
the tar was an agonizing procedure and the burns often became infected.

The practice dated back to medieval England and the first recorded instance of
it in this country was in 1766 in Norfolk, Va. A mob, which included Norfolk's
mayor, tarred and feathered Capt. William Smith and then threw him in the
harbor, from which he was rescued barely in time to prevent his drowning. Capt.
Smith was suspected of collaborating with British customs agents to suppress
smuggling. The last instances of this barbaric practice in America took place in
the 1920s, when labor organizers were tarred and feathered in San Francisco.

By far the worst violence in this country against a duly enacted law was the
draft riot that took place in New York City over three days in July 1863. The
draft had been initiated that year but the law contained a proviso that a man
could pay $300 for a substitute. Many wealthy young men (J.P. Morgan among them)
quickly paid, but the sum was far beyond the reach of the average worker in an
age when the unskilled earned less than $1,000 a year.

Names were drawn out of a box on the first day, July 11, at the draft
headquarters on Third Avenue and 47th Street. But at the second drawing of
numbers on the following Monday, 500 men began throwing paving stones through
the windows and then set the office on fire. Mobs began to rampage through the
streets, from what is now midtown Manhattan to as far south as Union Square. The
police were on their own as the state militia was at Gettysburg, having just
participated in the Union victory there. The police superintendent was severely
injured by rioters at the draft office, and the police were unable to cope. The
Bull's Head Hotel was burned to the ground when it refused to serve the rioters
alcohol.

As many of the working men in the crowd feared competition from newly freed
slaves, the riot quickly took on an anti-black component. The Colored Orphans
Asylum on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street was attacked and the children were barely
evacuated before the building was torched. Many blacks were lynched from
lampposts around the city. The houses of prominent Republican citizens were
attacked as were the offices of the anti-slavery New York Tribune, which held
the rioters off with two gatling guns on its roof.

Not until federal troops were rushed into the city by forced march did the riot
begin to abate on Thursday. It was snuffed out in a final confrontation between
troops and rioters near Gramercy Park where many rioters were killed.

Damages were estimated at up to $5 million (at a time when $5,000 would have
bought a brownstone in a nice neighborhood). Over 50 buildings had burned to the
ground. The death toll was never officially determined, but estimates ranged
from more than 100 to over 1,000. Injuries were at least 2,000. Bodies appeared
in the East and Hudson Rivers for days afterwards.

Compared to the draft riots and many lesser disturbances over the country's
history, the angry words and provocative signs of the tea party movement over
the last year are as peaceful as, well, a tea party.


Mr. Gordon is the author of "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and
Times of Our National Debt," just out in a revised edition from Walker &
Company.

The Wall Street Journal, 2 April 2010.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304252704575156052852906506.html>

Wes

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Apr 3, 2010, 12:00:07 AM4/3/10
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Joseph Gwinn <joeg...@comcast.net> wrote:

>I'm still thinking about the implications of needing machine-gun nests on the
>roof of a newspaper building.
>
>Joe Gwinn


I searched the post and only saw machine once. Did I filter something relevate out from an
earlier post?


Wes
--
"Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect
government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home
in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Joseph Gwinn

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Apr 2, 2010, 11:27:05 PM4/2/10
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In article <aFutn.163168$Up1.1...@en-nntp-08.dc1.easynews.com>,
Wes <clu...@lycos.com> wrote:

> Joseph Gwinn <joeg...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >I'm still thinking about the implications of needing machine-gun nests on
> >the
> >roof of a newspaper building.
> >
> >Joe Gwinn
>
>
> I searched the post and only saw machine once. Did I filter something
> relevate out from an earlier post?

No, a Gatling Gun is a kind of machine gun.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun>

Joe Gwinn

Message has been deleted

Joseph Gwinn

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Apr 6, 2010, 3:45:08 AM4/6/10
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In article <slrnhrifs4...@sorceror.wizard.dyndns.org>,
Steve Ackman <st...@SNIP-THIS.twoloonscoffee.com> wrote:

> In <joegwinn-7FBC1C...@news.giganews.com>, on Fri, 02 Apr 2010

> 18:22:35 -0400, Joseph Gwinn, joeg...@comcast.net wrote:
> > I'm still thinking about the implications of needing machine-gun nests on
> > the roof of a newspaper building.
>

> I'm still trying to figure out what a "spent bullet" is.


>
> > A spent bullet also hit the window of Mr. Cantor's district headquarters
> > recently.

It was never made clear, but it seemed to be a bullet that was fired into a
water trap, which stops the bullet without damage, and then retrieved from the
trap.

But this has nothing to do with needing a brace of gatling guns on the roof to defend free speech.
The newsmen of yore were made of stern stuff indeed.

Joe Gwinn

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