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Free Speech in Wisconsin

An acquaintance of mine went to film today's protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol, where people were once again fighting against Governor Walker's various proposals. Here is the unedited footage of his attendance (WARNING - Graphic Language). Their absolute hatred of any perceived opponent and willingness to censor the opposition is unfortunately a common theme, albeit often with a more subtle tone, in many of these issues. If these are the type of people leading the fight for collective bargaining, public employees unions are doomed.
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You know, if you're going to try to make the point that those protesting Walker's policies are violent censors, the least you could do is post a well-shot video where one can clearly make out what is happening, rather than something from a Koch-funded "institute" (whose very goal is to eliminate unions) that mostly looks like footage shot by a drunk trying to show us the intricacies of the sidewalk. If the "unedited" video would have been edited, we would have been left with about 4 seconds of nothing much.

This is the sort of quality that makes it easier to tell what is going on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbc064Uwax4&feature=player_embedded

(and yes, that's Michelle Bachmann you hear in the background)

You could have found a better video of some people at Tea Party rallies being obnoxious. At least in that one the angry guy was stating his position at the beginning of the video and didn't put his hands on the photographer's property (though it looked like he really wanted to at some points, and maybe would have had not someone else in the crowd stepped in to calm him down). From what I've seen, though, there seem to be more incidents of Tea Partiers being physically or verbally assaulted than doing the actual assaulting (except at some of those heckling at town hall meetings, but the Left started doing this too after Paul Ryan's plan came out). While many of them say silly things such as questioning the president's patriotism or faith or calling those who support some form a welfare state a communist, I've not found nearly as many articles or videos of angry Tea Partiers trying to block cameras or getting physical as I have of some union protesters. Union protesters in general, and Wisconsin ones in particular, seem to be taking things to be much more personal attacks than Tea Partiers in general (I say in general in regards to both because I know some entirely sensible people who are fighting the pro-union fight in Wisconsin and many perfectly sensible people who affiliate with the Tea Party).

Turning an eye away from the more personal nature of the union supporters' anger, my comment above about "their absolute hatred of any perceived opponent" does apply to many on both sides of the spectrum here. All see evil intentions in the opposition. I've watched Tea Partiers talk about how Obama's plan is to destroy America and his supporters want to establish either another Nazi Reich or Soviet Union, and I've watched union protesters declare that anyone who disagrees with their collective bargaining rights are evil fascists and that those fighting against collective bargaining are but pawns of business interests trying to destroy the working class. Such extremism is silly. It would be well to just say that Obama is incompetent in many things and has a very poor vision for America that will end up hurting the nation, but not that he wants to hurt the nation. And people like Governor Walker are not trying to destroy or end unions; they are limiting the collective bargaining rights over benefits of only public unions, or in some states working towards making it so people can have a choice in the public sector where or not they want to join a union because they do not believe people should be forced into an organization just to work in one particular area. As far as I know there is no great movement to harm private sector unions. If protesters would concede that and instead focus their argument on why (from their point of view) it is better (or necessary) for public employees to unionize, I think they would be a in a much better position than they are now.

Private sector unions are on the way out; the public sector was the Left's last great hope for socialist mobilization. This is the reason for all the angst we see -- their last holy cow is being slaughtered by an electorate who is fed up with over-priced, under-effective government.

It might be different if unions ever delivered on their promise of quality-control and pride in workmanship. Ultimately every last union becomes the guardian of parasitism and inflexibility. Enough.

"You could have found a better video of some people at Tea Party rallies being obnoxious."

More obnoxious than that?? Well, if that's lower-level obnoxiousness from a tea partier, that's kind of sad. As for outright intimidation and brutal behavior, I certainly could have found a better video. My point was primarily to focus on the production values (e.g. any moron could fake an assault from a political opponent by waving a camera around and then just saying "You can't see anything clearly because I was being viciously attacked." - it's from the Video Agitprop 101 class at the Breitbart-O'Keefe School of All-American Journalism.).

"From what I've seen, though, there seem to be more incidents of Tea Partiers being physically or verbally assaulted than doing the actual assaulting."

I'm sure that is true - from what you've seen.

"I've not found nearly as many articles or videos of angry Tea Partiers trying to block cameras or getting physical as I have of some union protesters."

Also, very true, I'm sure.

"(except at some of those heckling at town hall meetings, but the Left started doing this too after Paul Ryan's plan came out)"

Here's a dangerous Catholic goon (thug? Use the right-wing word-of-the-day) trying to give Paul Ryan a Bible (and no, I don't mean an Ayn Rand book!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S30_iDimv4&feature=player_embedded

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