A teachable moment at an otherwise apparently education-free university. The always interesting
Jazz Shaw at HotAir notes that Columbia students are slowly waking to the fact that arrests aren't all
cachet.
[T]he students are fearful that their arrest records and suspensions will "follow them into their adult lives." Based on their recent actions, I realize that we're not dealing with the fastest set of tractors on the farm here, but I have a news flash for these rioters. Nearly every one of you is at least 18 years old and some of the juniors and seniors are in their twenties. You are already in your "adult life," despite the fact that you're not acting in a very mature fashion.
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As of this morning, [the Columbia students'] encampments are still in place and the university is still "negotiating" with them. This is precisely the type of "education" that they shouldn't be receiving. The school is teaching them that they can get away with violating the law without consequences under the guise of free speech. All freedoms have limitations when they begin adversely affecting others. It's a harsh lesson, but it's one that these rioters need to be taught.
11 comments:
The school is teaching them that they can get away with violating the law without consequences....
I take a different view of what Columbia's managers are doing. They're not teaching this; although that's one consequence of their actions. Rather, Columbia's managers are actively abetting terrorists and terrorist supporters, hiding behind their cynical claims of "negotiating" and which the press just as cynically is downplaying as "dithering."
Eric Hines
If you don’t start treating people like adults until they start acting like adults, then you won’t need the legal system at all.
Thank you for this, T99. Something similar is happening in Austin but people are being arrested there. I cannot tell from the news stories what kind of "peaceful protesters" those are, the ones who are just in the way and annoying folk or those who are intentionally disrupting despite warnings to disperse according to rules known to and observed by all.
Another site I visit is convinced that the Austin protesters are targeted because they are pro-Palestinian, not because they were disruptive.
I cannot tell from the news stories what kind of "peaceful protesters" those are....
Given the Left's mantra that words are violence, these crowds' chants along the lines of death to Israel, stop the genocide, Jew go back to Poland, and so on are violence indeed.
...intentionally disrupting despite warnings to disperse according to rules known to and observed by all.
That's the stuff of civil disobedience. Unfortunately, the arrest rate doesn't seem sufficient to drive the point home, either for the civil disobedience-ers or for those who say this is just disruption for the sake of antisemitic bigotry.
Eric Hines
I might suggest that this indicates something different- that they had assumed going in that their fellow travelers would be with them and therefore they could wave away their arrest with "it was for the cause" and it would be fine. Perhaps now they're sensing that a lot of people who they may have thought were fellow travelers are not so much anymore. If so, that's a good thing.
Might I suggest checking the student ID cards on these...ahem..."student protesters".
One might find a sizable number are not students at all but paid provocateurs. My reasoning is, if they are are not registered students, they have no reason, grounds or right to protest there.
nmewn
Or even separate the protestors. "Student protesters over there by the fountain, non-students over there in the parking lot." It might teach everyone something, eh?
I asked for solid info because it is at least possible that the police and the administration are reacting differently to some protests because of their content rather than their means. I have a secret opinion how it is going to turn out, but sometimes I like to know.
I read the same post, AVI. Wasn't unexpected from that crew (sadly) but the report on the police being uninterested in an armed man threatening pedestrians compared to the response to the protest does make it sound like somebody ordered the protest stopped, and there are a number of groups that could have an interest in that.
I'd be more sympathetic to an argument that protestors were being targeted for the content of their views if I hadn't gotten so tired of seeing (1) people threatened with serious prison time for praying outside abortion clinics and (2) people overtly threatening Jews and physically obstructing them from moving freely on campus. Ditto the bizarrely unequal response several years ago to (1) people daring to walk outside for their own purposes or (Heaven forbid) to protest a very stinky election or the destruction of their businesses or ability to attend weddings or funerals during lockdown and (2) people burning down police stations or murdering shop owners to protest white supremacy.
Whatever is going on in this country recently in the area of freedom of speech and assembly, it's not discrimination against progressive content. Contrary to apparent popular opinion, it's possible to stage a rally and express a political viewpoint without shutting down a street or a campus or terrifying any particular ethnic group.
@ Christopher B - I have been tempted to leave several times over the unacknowledged antisemitism that pretends it is isolationism, and this may do it.
Whether the police are doing their job WRT dangerous psychotic people is a worthy subject, but not relevant to this question.
I'm unimpressed by protests against wars of aggression by imperialist colonial powerful nations that steal and occupy land from the original peoples -- who somehow fail to notice Russia and the Donbas.
The 18th century's LITERAL imperial forces of the Tsar took in area previously inhabited by nomadic Nogais. The "Union of Soviet Republics" inherited the empire and colonies and similarly had barely a fifth of ethnic Russians in the area, dominating ( "oppressing"? illegitimately asserting rule over?) the locals. It's an area history has stomped back and forth across for centuries. And while there are both similarities and differences between that situation and the one in "Palestine" there is only one single principle that really seems to be applied by left-leaning activists that informs their demands: The United States is wrong.
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