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.
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.
Which is closer to violent insurrection: responding to police violence by attacking symbols of the police, or bringing an armed group into a statehouse with the express intent of intimidating lawmakers?
Keep in mind when answering that in most cases, escalations to violence by protests were in response to unnecessary escalating by police forces. We have to evaluate so called bad actors in the context of the response to them.
Are you confident that armed statehouse protests wouldn't have devolved to violence if met with teargas and rubber bullets? Are you confident that police protests would have had similar levels of violence if not pushed towards it by police?
> Which is closer to violent insurrection: responding to police violence by attacking symbols of the police, or bringing an armed group into a statehouse with the express intent of intimidating lawmakers?
By “attacking symbols of the state”, you’re referring to burning down police stations and stealing police rifles from patrol vehicles. Those aren’t “symbols”, they are actual facilities and equipment. In the Seattle incident with the rifles, one of the rioters even opened fire on an abandoned patrol vehicle.
So yes, I would say stealing weapons from a public agency and opening fire with those weapons is much closer to “insurrection” than peacefully carrying your own weapons. For that matter, so do the killings of David Dorn and especially Dave Patrick Underwood.
> Keep in mind when answering that in most cases, escalations to violence by protests were in response to unnecessary escalating by police forces.
It’s clear that your biases are leading you to a very specific judgment of what happened and who is to blame, to the point that you’re bending over backwards to make excuses for arson and murder. To name a more recent incident, the police were not in any way responsible for the act of burning down a Wendy’s in Atlanta; certainly not to the same degree as the extremists who actually burned it down.
But that all distracts from the point. I find your views absurd and morally disgusting, but I would never dream of trying to stop you from expressing them. If you were an elected official who represented the interests and attitudes of some broad group of constituents, I would find value in hearing what you had to say even if I found it reprehensible.
> For that matter, so do the killings of David Dorn and especially Dave Patrick Underwood.
Dorn's killing wasn't obviously connected to protests, and Underwood was killed by far-right "Boogaloo Boys"[0]. Who would be explicitly and vehemently unwelcome at most BLM protests. I'd once again ask you to take the time to re-examine your preconceptions here.
> So yes, I would say stealing weapons from a public agency and opening fire with those weapons is much closer to “insurrection” than peacefully carrying your own weapons.
You've missed the point. I'll reiterate in more detail. There's a respect given to white right-wing protestors carrying your own weapons, both by police and many people that isn't extended to the BLM protests.
For example, you claim that they were "peacefully carrying weapons". Let's ignore for a moment the question of whether "peacefully carrying weapons" is even possible[1], but instead focus on what that respect means.
Most importantly, police actively de-escalate when dealing with armed protestors, but actively escalated with BLM groups. If you take the time to watch videos, you'll see that the large protests are mostly peaceful and self-policing. It's only once police escalate, using weapons and force protestors to break up and lose the civility that was present.
At that point you no longer have a protest but a confused, scared mob. Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention. Mine is to treat unarmed black protestors the same way you treat armed white ones: don't escalate in the first place. Let them protest, peacefully assemble, and leave. In locations where police have allowed that to happen, almost without fail protests have been peaceful, only escalating in direct response to new examples of police violence (Atlanta).
> If you were an elected official who represented the interests and attitudes of some broad group of constituents, I would find value in hearing what you had to say even if I found it reprehensible.
I'm not clear what the point of saying this is. I'm not saying anything about any representatives, not that they should be silenced. If anything, I'm suggesting you listen to even more people: directly listen to those who are oppressed and aren't represented. In the words of Dr. King, "A riot is the voice of the unheard." When you see one, take some time to listen. Not to the system which is clearly not doing a good job of listening, but directly to the people who felt the need to riot.
[1]: Consider that brandishing is a crime in many jurisdictions and open carry isn't legal everywhere. Open carry is an implicit threat, and calling it "peaceful" implies that there's a sort of peaceful intimidation which seems like a questionable premise. Intimidation basically requires the threat of force or harm.
> There's a respect given to white right-wing protestors carrying your own weapons, both by police and many people that isn't extended to the BLM protests.
The tactic of openly carrying firearms during protest marches was pioneered by the Black Panthers and there have, in fact, been a number of predominantly black and pro-BLM open carry marches since the killing of George Floyd. There was one over the weekend in Oklahoma.
> Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention.
This is a straw man. To reiterate, my position is that Sen. Cotton’s proposal of invoking the Insurrection Act was a premature but understandable suggestion. I disagree with it but especially given the precedent of the exact same measures being taken during the 1992 Rodney King riots, it wasn’t an unconscionable suggestion and it was perfectly reasonable for the NYT to publish it.
In other words, my position is that it’s justifiable for the NYT to publish an oped neither of us agree with. Your position is that arson is a legitimate form of political protest.
> Your position is that it’s justifiable for people to burn down private businesses.
I'm unsure in what sense you mean justifiable. If you mean "rationally explainable from a set of observations" then yes. If you mean "morally justifiable", I don't believe I've made any claim to that effect, and once more I'd ask that you examine what led you to believe such a thing.
I previously responded to this at length, but I think we're leaning into territory that dang would prefer we not. So I'll leave it at that, with two final requests:
First that you take some time to actually listen to the protestors and their complaints. Second, that you look into the use of the Insurrection Act in the US, and ask yourself why since 1965 five of the six times it was invoked were to put down civil rights protests.
> First that you take some time to actually listen to the protestors and their complaints.
I have. Please examine your assumption that I haven't.
However, I'm not the one conflating the protesters with the people committing violent acts. The evidence I've seen appears to indicate that most of the violence has not been carried out by protesters, but rather from a variety of extremists who are trying to exploit their cause. I've seen groups of protesters forming perimeters to guard riot police who got separated from their formations, or seizing vandals and instigators and physically shoving them into the police lines so they can be removed from an otherwise peaceful protest.
Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe you thought the rioting and violence was all at the hands of BLM protesters. You definitely didn't seem to know the history of demonstrators openly carrying rifles. But that all leaves you in a very poor position to be misrepresenting my own statements to me directly and asking me to educate myself about things I'm better informed on than you seem to be.
I know literally every thing you've stated. The question I'm asking is not whether we know those things, but if you honestly believe, after having read Tom Cotton's op Ed, that his preference is for the national guard to go in and work with protestors to help control violent groups, or if instead his goal was to quell legitimate protests.
You are repeatedly asserting the opposite: that "riots are the language of the unheard" (rather than, rioters are bad actors using otherwise legitimate protests as cover), that open-carry protests are something only white people do, and so forth.
> The question I'm asking is not whether we know those things, but if you honestly believe, after having read Tom Cotton's op Ed, that his preference is for the national guard to go in and work with protestors to help control violent groups, or if instead his goal was to quell legitimate protests.
I'd prefer if it was done with the federal marshals, or some other civilian organization. Something like the way that Ruby Bridges was escorted to school during desegregation.
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.
