Ten Days That Shook Olympia

[gmknight]

Matt,

 

I agree with you and give complete support to those that wish to participate in non-violent protests to change policy. That freedom is what makes me love my country. I call what happened here in Oly masterbation because lots of the more offensive behavior was done for little more than self gratification. Protesters created road blocks in front of civilian traffic, threw people private trashcans into the street, and even smashed out the windows of a downtown bank. For several the unrest in Olympia was just an excuse to run wild.

 

I watched the guys who had just returned home from 15 months in Iraq drive through town in fear that someone would throw a rock at them or push some obstacle in there way. This is leading towards the same behavior that led so many Vietnem vets to feel completely alienated and unwelcome in the country they thought they were standing up for.

 

By the way, if engaging in public debate is masterbation then you can count me in.

[sk]

I hope you wont bar me from the country, but I'll be back in a few days. I expect my own protest and I would like to see baby sheilds, rock throwing hooligans, and to be spat upon and a "fuck you baby killer!" would be nice too. See ya soon bitches!!!

 

 

YAYAYYA red monk is back!!!!!!!

 

That's right baby and almost whole. Missed ya sweetums.

 

I missed you too sugar!!! you better PM me and tell me what happened *worried*

[mattp]

Knight, my point about your engaging in masturbation here on cc.com is that your engagement in this "public debate" is pretty likely to accomplish nothing more than to please yourself. What those kids did actually mattered in a context broader than their immediate self-gratification (whether you view it positively or negatively). To the extent you suggest the demonstrators did nothing but masturbate yet your typing a critique of them on cc.com is "good citizenship," I would argue it is precisely the other way around.

 

What you and I are able to trade back and forth over the computer screen doesn't really matter much to anybody else. I'm still happy to spende my time this way, though, and once in a while somebody here makes a good point or I come away from the discussion with a new idea. But we really aren't accomplishing anything with these discussions on cc.com.

 

This site has plenty of impact on what happens in climbing, but not much impact on the war.

[prole]

Oooh. Scary. The liberal order that crushed the Axis Powers, and the Soviet Union trembles before the collective might of the Western Parlor Marxist...

 

Given your most recent posts, your relationship to the liberal tradition is tenuous at best.

 

I believe he was refering to the historical definition ace.

 

Yup, look up "classical liberalism" on Wiki. I think Jay's picture is there somewhere.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the definition of liberalism and its uses and misuses in the American political scene. What I'm not familiar with, and maybe you guys can help me here, is where "extra-normal influence" over the political process based on wealth, status, and prestige fits into that picture. Arguments for a political system that rejects meaningful participation based on the fear of "mob rule", while justifying an economic and political elite represents the least democratic traditions in liberal thought. Fetishizing the rule of law in the context of gross systemic political and economic inequality, glorifying the existing order as an open forum of rational and civil debate when it is clear to all that it is anything but, and demonizing dissenters as ill-informed hooligans is clearly a step backward from the best that the "classic liberal" tradition has to offer. It deserves a better spokesperson.

[tvashtarkatena]

Matt,

 

 

I watched the guys who had just returned home from 15 months in Iraq drive through town in fear that someone would throw a rock at them or push some obstacle in there way. This is leading towards the same behavior that led so many Vietnem vets to feel completely alienated and unwelcome in the country they thought they were standing up for.

 

I'd say by this statement that you probably don't know very many Vietnam vets.

 

I grew up with a bunch of them, including my father. Their own country's complete bungling of that war from A to Z, as well as the poor treatment they received by the Veteran's Administration, is what made the vets I knew feel alienated (not all of them felt that way, of course). In general, they were treated very well by their fellow citizens when they returned home. The famous 'baby killer' incident is a myth: it never happened.

[JayB]

Jay: last I heard, the polls are pretty clear that many if not most Americans now think an ongoing occupation in Iraq is not in our best interest yet I think it is pretty clear that our elected representatives are not really going to stick their necks out to take a hard stand against it (current electoral politics aside). I agree with your argument to an extent: just as these people did, the anti-abortionists or those opposeed to segregation DID have a right to demonstrate in the streets. Do you remember the Skokie case from your history classes? You have a right to disagree with what these folks did, and GMKnight can complain about the throwing of garbage cans or you and I can argue over whether the right to life crowd is moral or not. At the end of the day, however, you and I are simply blowing smoke here on cc.com because we find it amusing or interesting to do so.

 

Overall, I say the Olympia protestors exercised a right that I for one am glad they have. Could they have been more effective in conveying their message? Probably. And would I advocate "taking to the streets" every time someone disagrees with another groups political position or doesn't like a law? No. But in my opinion those folks can and should be proud that those shipments are not going to go through Olympia - at least for now.

 

Per your first reply, the dispute was never about the right to protest. No one here has argued against the right to assemble. However, once this crowd moved into a street and took it upon themselves to determine who could and could not pass, or the anti-abortion protesters physically prevented anyone from accessing the interior of the clinic, they cross the line from protester to vigilante. It's really as simple as that.

 

The fact that you've ignored both this fact and the clear meaning of the words that I've posted, and pretended that you are arguing in defense of the right to protest is a tacit acknowledgment that you can't defend their actions without conceding that you approve of mob action so long as its furthers an agenda that you happen to support.

 

 

 

 

[JayB]

Oooh. Scary. The liberal order that crushed the Axis Powers, and the Soviet Union trembles before the collective might of the Western Parlor Marxist...

 

Given your most recent posts, your relationship to the liberal tradition is tenuous at best.

 

I believe he was refering to the historical definition ace.

 

Yup, look up "classical liberalism" on Wiki. I think Jay's picture is there somewhere.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the definition of liberalism and its uses and misuses in the American political scene. What I'm not familiar with, and maybe you guys can help me here, is where "extra-normal influence" over the political process based on wealth, status, and prestige fits into that picture. Arguments for a political system that rejects meaningful participation based on the fear of "mob rule", while justifying an economic and political elite represents the least democratic traditions in liberal thought. Fetishizing the rule of law in the context of gross systemic political and economic inequality, glorifying the existing order as an open forum of rational and civil debate when it is clear to all that it is anything but, and demonizing dissenters as ill-informed hooligans is clearly a step backward from the best that the "classic liberal" tradition has to offer. It deserves a better spokesperson.

 

Where in the liberal tradition is there a justification for groups of people who have been deprived of no rights, who have full recourse to both the courts of law and public opinion, and the voting booth - taking the law into their own hands because they have failed to persuade either the public, their representatives, or the courts to support their agenda?

 

As for supernormal influence, how would you devise a system in which this could be neutralized, and how would that be an improvement over the existing order? Unless you grant some central administrative body the power to suppress them, how are you going to limit the appeal and influence over a great thinker, writer, artist, orator, statesman, or entrepeneur - or the ideals that they represent, or the ideas that they bring forth? Whatever power any of these have, they acquire with the consent of the voting public, who is free to accept or reject them as they see fit.

 

 

[mattp]

...you can't defend their actions without conceding that you approve of mob action...

 

...taking the law into their own hands...

 

Take a pill, Jay. It wasn't exactly the Watts riots. Where in my post did you see me justifying mob action or taking the law into one's own hands?

[prole]

Oooh. Scary. The liberal order that crushed the Axis Powers, and the Soviet Union trembles before the collective might of the Western Parlor Marxist...

 

Given your most recent posts, your relationship to the liberal tradition is tenuous at best.

 

I believe he was refering to the historical definition ace.

 

Yup, look up "classical liberalism" on Wiki. I think Jay's picture is there somewhere.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the definition of liberalism and its uses and misuses in the American political scene. What I'm not familiar with, and maybe you guys can help me here, is where "extra-normal influence" over the political process based on wealth, status, and prestige fits into that picture. Arguments for a political system that rejects meaningful participation based on the fear of "mob rule", while justifying an economic and political elite represents the least democratic traditions in liberal thought. Fetishizing the rule of law in the context of gross systemic political and economic inequality, glorifying the existing order as an open forum of rational and civil debate when it is clear to all that it is anything but, and demonizing dissenters as ill-informed hooligans is clearly a step backward from the best that the "classic liberal" tradition has to offer. It deserves a better spokesperson.

 

Where in the liberal tradition is there a justification for groups of people who have been deprived of no rights, who have full recourse to both the courts of law and public opinion, and the voting booth - taking the law into their own hands because they have failed to persuade either the public, their representatives, or the courts to support their agenda?

 

As for supernormal influence, how would you devise a system in which this could be neutralized, and how would that be an improvement over the existing order? Unless you grant some central administrative body the power to suppress them, how are you going to limit the appeal and influence over a great thinker, writer, artist, orator, statesman, or entrepeneur - or the ideals that they represent, or the ideas that they bring forth? Whatever power any of these have, they acquire with the consent of the voting public, who is free to accept or reject them as they see fit.

 

Again, in spite of ample evidence obvious to all, you suggest that we envision our current political landscape as some idealized high-school debate meet. Are we to believe, in contradiction to our very senses that we are living in some modern-day Athenian democracy, that Cheney, Limbaugh, Murdoch, Exxon, Lay, Raytheon, Wackenhut, WR Grace, Walton, Clinton, Cargill, Monsanto, etc. and all their lobbyists on K Street represent the modern equivalents of great orators and statesman who've gained influence by swaying public opinion through their mastery over rational debate? That US policy is determined by rational and informed representatives of educated and engaged voters with their best interests in mind? That power is determined by persuasion to the most reasonable, enlightened course of action? Answering yes to any of these questions would indicate either a complete disassociation from historical reality or a willful obfuscation of how our political system actually works and has worked for quite some time. Personally, I don't think you're fool enough to believe your own crap, so it must be the latter. You think the system is working for you and others in your tax bracket? Fine, but don't try to dazzle us with abstraction and theory.

 

As for the use of extra-legal tactics, civil disobedience, illegal demonstrations, turning over garbage cans, terrorism, armed revolt, revolution, sit-ins, illegal wars for empire, bombing of civilian targets from space, whatever, have been and will continue to be used in the service of white-power, black power, free-trade, anti-colonialists, antiwar protesters, abortionists, anti-abortionists, tax revolters, religious wackos, peasants, monarchists, fascists, corporate paramilitaries, and (not least) by freely elected officials. That such tactics are, by definition, illegal is a matter of fact. That they are simply "politics by other means" is also a matter of fact, and one that is certainly not lost on the current political administration. The question is when such tactics are appropriate and for whom. Okay, a bunch of students blocked arms shipments with their unarmed, (mostly) peaceful bodies and garbage cans against an obviously corrupt (though God help us, freely elected) government body waging an unjust and illegal war in contradiction to overwhelming public opinion. Nope, can't say I have a problem with that. They've drawn attention to their community's participation in the war machine and may have stopped the shipments out of Olympia to boot. Well done. Do I support religious anti-abortion white supremacist monarchists doing the same thing? No. I don't have to, nor does anyone else. Through your posts, it seems as if you've found your personal threshold. But despite all of your protestations to the contrary, I don't think we all have the same access to the formation of public opinion through the media, recourse through the legal system, or the shaping of the laws that we are subject to. If we did, you wouldn't be backpedaling like a motherfucker trying to find justifications for "supernormal influence" while disregarding the evidence of your own (and everyone else's) senses.

 

As for the mitigation of elite rule, lest I sound like some utopian, I think some modest reforms would be helpful in the short and medium term. Including, but not limited to, abolition of the electoral college, a more balanced division of labor between the branches of Congress, breaking the stranglehold of the two major parties and winner-take-all victories over American politics through some form of proportional representation, and rolling back Bush's concentration of power in the executive branch, federal funding of election campaigns, and more transparency in the lobbying industry.

[Crux]

We got the best freely elected government money can buy, all mostly at the cash expense of big corporations. What's wrong with that? Utopia is here already!

[Off_White]

Prole, sounds like you've got a beef with the sacred doctrine of One Dollar - One Vote.

[tvashtarkatena]

Some protesters committed acts of civil disobedience (remember the Boston Tea Party?), which, by definition, entails breaking the law to bring attention to an issue. It's a time honored and effective method of doing so. They expected to be arrested. They were. Message delivered. Awareness raised (if this forum is any indication). Last time I checked, civil society remains intact. No one is making a run on toilette paper and bottled water as far as I can tell. Cormick McCarthy need not be retained to write the screeplay.

 

Give the laughable histrionics a rest, will ya, Jay?

Edited November 26, 2007 by tvashtarkatena

[Off_White]

They expected to be arrested. They were.

 

For the most part, they weren't arrested. Instead, they were pepper sprayed and forcibly removed. They weren't rioting or running amuck, they were merely obstructing, and assault rather than arrest appears to be the preferred response.

 

Perhaps we have a new legal tactic to deal with those slow parties in our way on Outer Space.

 

dgi5ESpueX8

[JayB]

...you can't defend their actions without conceding that you approve of mob action...

 

...taking the law into their own hands...

 

Take a pill, Jay. It wasn't exactly the Watts riots. Where in my post did you see me justifying mob action or taking the law into one's own hands?

 

Yes, Matt. I'm sure that if a group of neo-Nazi's had used the same methods to to prevent relief shipments from departing to Africa, I'm sure you'd be impartially applauding their zesty civic action. Spare me.

[tvashtarkatena]

...you can't defend their actions without conceding that you approve of mob action...

 

...taking the law into their own hands...

 

Take a pill, Jay. It wasn't exactly the Watts riots. Where in my post did you see me justifying mob action or taking the law into one's own hands?

 

Yes, Matt. I'm sure that if a group of neo-Nazi's had used the same methods to to prevent relief shipments from departing to Africa, I'm sure you'd be impartially applauding their zesty civic action. Spare me.

 

Another bizarroid flutters to earth from the mythical planet Hypothetica.

 

What if only neo-nazi CHILDREN were preventing relief shipments to Africa? EVEN STICKIER SITUATION, huh?

 

 

 

 

[chucK]

Or perhaps an army of evil civil-disobedient Hitler clones!

[mattp]

Give it up, Jay. I've already acknowledged that I don't know the specifics of who did what as in their tactics, that some of what they did was misguided at best, and in case it makes you feel any better I'll even point out that all along I've agreed that some of them should probably have been arrested and charged.

 

Really, this is getting pathetic. If a group of neo-nazi college students blocked one or two vehicals full of goods from a massive airlift of litterally thousands of boat and plane loads of supplies to Africa, and if the police broke up their little party and arrested a couple of them, I sure as hell wouldn't be whining about the disintegration into mob rule.

 

You're right, though: I'll heap more praise on the anti-war demonstrators than the neo-nazi's every time. Won't you?

[JayB]

Again, in spite of ample evidence obvious to all, you suggest that we envision our current political landscape as some idealized high-school debate meet. Are we to believe, in contradiction to our very senses that we are living in some modern-day Athenian democracy, that Cheney, Limbaugh, Murdoch, Exxon, Lay, Raytheon, Wackenhut, WR Grace, Walton, Clinton, Cargill, Monsanto, etc. and all their lobbyists on K Street represent the modern equivalents of great orators and statesman who've gained influence by swaying public opinion through their mastery over rational debate? That US policy is determined by rational and informed representatives of educated and engaged voters with their best interests in mind? That power is determined by persuasion to the most reasonable, enlightened course of action? Answering yes to any of these questions would indicate either a complete disassociation from historical reality or a willful obfuscation of how our political system actually works and has worked for quite some time. Personally, I don't think you're fool enough to believe your own crap, so it must be the latter. You think the system is working for you and others in your tax bracket? Fine, but don't try to dazzle us with abstraction and theory.

 

A self-annointed Marxist *and* an enemy of abstraction and theory. That's quite something, considering how much better any society planned along lines you'd approve of has worked out on paper than in reality.

 

If I had been arguing that we live in a perfect society, then you'd have yourself quite a rebuttal. My only point was that whatever the imperfections associated with our present society may be, granting a central administrative body the powers that would be necessary to completely neutralize any extra-normal influence that a citizen, collection of citizens, or organization might exert on the opinions of others would create something far worse.

 

Some people are more rational, intelligent, better informed, more industrious, more amiable, more eloquent, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc than others. Even those endowed with the least of all of these qualities have the right to vote, if they choose to exercise it. If our legislative priorities and policies deviate from an arbitrary standard of perfection as a consequence of this, I can live with that.

 

 

 

As for the mitigation of elite rule, lest I sound like some utopian, I think some modest reforms would be helpful in the short and medium term. Including, but not limited to, abolition of the electoral college, a more balanced division of labor between the branches of Congress, breaking the stranglehold of the two major parties and winner-take-all victories over American politics through some form of proportional representation, and rolling back Bush's concentration of power in the executive branch, federal funding of election campaigns, and more transparency in the lobbying industry.

 

Woah? This from an implaccable enemy of the existing order, waiting impatiently for the economic equivalent of The Rapture to hasten along the end-times so that Jesus - oops - Marx will finally be ascendant.

 

Guess what? None of those reforms will bring about anything like a state in which all citizens will have an equal capacity to influence their fellow citizens or their elected representatives.

I can see why someone who's ideas have been tossed on history's shitheap would want to equate influence with corruption, but the sad fact is that the two are not the same. You can impose measures to limit corruption - which few will object to - and still do nothing to address the fact that in real societies composed of real humans, some individuals will be more influential than others.

 

 

As for the use of extra-legal tactics, civil disobedience, illegal demonstrations, turning over garbage cans, terrorism, armed revolt, revolution, sit-ins, illegal wars for empire, bombing of civilian targets from space, whatever, have been and will continue to be used in the service of white-power, black power, free-trade, anti-colonialists, antiwar protesters, abortionists, anti-abortionists, tax revolters, religious wackos, peasants, monarchists, fascists, corporate paramilitaries, and (not least) by freely elected officials. That such tactics are, by definition, illegal is a matter of fact. That they are simply "politics by other means" is also a matter of fact, and one that is certainly not lost on the current political administration. The question is when such tactics are appropriate and for whom. Okay, a bunch of students blocked arms shipments with their unarmed, (mostly) peaceful bodies and garbage cans against an obviously corrupt (though God help us, freely elected) government body waging an unjust and illegal war in contradiction to overwhelming public opinion. Nope, can't say I have a problem with that. They've drawn attention to their community's participation in the war machine and may have stopped the shipments out of Olympia to boot. Well done. Do I support religious anti-abortion white supremacist monarchists doing the same thing? No. I don't have to, nor does anyone else. Through your posts, it seems as if you've found your personal threshold. But despite all of your protestations to the contrary, I don't think we all have the same access to the formation of public opinion through the media, recourse through the legal system, or the shaping of the laws that we are subject to. If we did, you wouldn't be backpedaling like a motherfucker trying to find justifications for "supernormal influence" while disregarding the evidence of your own (and everyone else's) senses.

 

 

First part - still no case for zealous minorities who have full access to the voting booth and the courts attempting to accomplish with force what they failed to do with reason. Probably be cause such a case simply can't be made. I also think that you have overestimated the efficacy of millitancy. Any movement that relies upon millitancy alone, *especially* in those cases in which the militants constitute a distinct minority of some sort, are doomed. Any lasting gains that have been achieved by millitant groups have come not from bullying or terrorizing the majority into submitting to their demands, but from persuading them to adopt their causes as their own and lending them their support.

 

Second part. Here again we have the invocation of utopia as an indictment of reality. Unfortunately for you, whatever defects are associated with the present state of affairs are much more likely to be addressed effectively by piecemeal reforms enacted through the present system of government than they ever would through radical changes precipitated by actions outside of those defined and limited by the Constitution.

[JayB]

...you can't defend their actions without conceding that you approve of mob action...

 

...taking the law into their own hands...

 

Take a pill, Jay. It wasn't exactly the Watts riots. Where in my post did you see me justifying mob action or taking the law into one's own hands?

 

Yes, Matt. I'm sure that if a group of neo-Nazi's had used the same methods to to prevent relief shipments from departing to Africa, I'm sure you'd be impartially applauding their zesty civic action. Spare me.

 

Another bizarroid flutters to earth from the mythical planet Hypothetica.

 

What if only neo-nazi CHILDREN were preventing relief shipments to Africa? EVEN STICKIER SITUATION, huh?

 

 

 

 

Feel free to address the example of the abortion protesters, anti-integrationists, etc - at your leisure.

 

 

[JayB]

Give it up, Jay. I've already acknowledged that I don't know the specifics of who did what as in their tactics, that some of what they did was misguided at best, and in case it makes you feel any better I'll even point out that all along I've agreed that some of them should probably have been arrested and charged.

 

Really, this is getting pathetic. If a group of neo-nazi college students blocked one or two vehicals full of goods from a massive airlift of litterally thousands of boat and plane loads of supplies to Africa, and if the police broke up their little party and arrested a couple of them, I sure as hell wouldn't be whining about the disintegration into mob rule.

 

You're right, though: I'll heap more praise on the anti-war demonstrators than the neo-nazi's every time. Won't you?

 

There are quite a number of policies and practices that the government either endorses or engages in that I'd like to see changed. One example is drugs, all of which I'd like to see legalized for use by mentally competent adults, even though I limit my own use to alcohol and caffeine. However, I wouldn't support groups of citizens encircling coast-guard ships in their Bayliners, rowboats, and dingies in order to physically prevent the DEA from intercepting speedboats full of blow off of the coast of Florida, much less would I praise them in any fashion for doing so. There are many other such examples that I could muster but I think the point is clear.

 

What you've done in this and other posts is simply concede that you're cool with groups of private citizens gathering and interpreting and enforcing their personal notions of right on the rest of society - so long as they are doing so in service of a cause that you support.

 

 

[mattp]

Read again, Jay: "I've already acknowledged that I don't know the specifics of who did what as in their tactics, that some of what they did was misguided at best, and in case it makes you feel any better I'll even point out that all along I've agreed that some of them should probably have been arrested and charged."

 

You call this conceding that private citizens should impose their will upon the rest of society?

 

Apart from that, do you really feel that this handful of protestors HAS actually imposed their will upon "the rest of society?"

 

I get what I think is your point, and I largely conceded it several posts ago (to the extent that this activity represented mayhem, destruction of property, threat to personal safety etc. and yes - even to the extent that it was just plain illegal - it should be not only discouraged but punished). But really: get a grip. This was a clumsy demonstration, addressing the larger issues in a manner that (like you) I would not have chosen, but these folks made or tried to make a bit of a point about how MOST OF AMERICA IS AGAINST THIS WAR and nobody but a couple of unnamed garbage cans was harmed in the process.

 

Donate some money to the Unnamed Garbage Can Relief Fund if you feel so bad about it.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Wait a minute. INNOCENT GARBAGE CANS WERE HURT????!!!

[sk]

this thred is now officially flogging the dead horse. you now when i was a teen i didn't believe my dad when he sat me down and told me that the best way to change the system is from inside the system. but damn it all he was right. you will not effect true change with out convincing a majority of people that you are in the right. that takes time, logical debate, constructive conversation. the civil rights movement was fought on many fronts. it wasn't just the activists in the streets. there were many people on capital hill working for equality. and as time marched on more and more people with that mind set were elected until it was a majority.

[prole]

A self-annointed Marxist *and* an enemy of abstraction and theory. That's quite something, considering how much better any society planned along lines you'd approve of has worked out on paper than in reality.

I am an enemy of abstraction and theory when it contradicts anything resembling empirical reality. Nor am I interested in planned utopias, neither was Marx. You might check out his debates with Bakunin. Marx's main complaint against anarchism was its utopian foundations, utopianism stands in contradiction to any political practice with historical materialism at its foundation. But I'm sure you knew all this, after all you're the expert.

If I had been arguing that we live in a perfect society, then you'd have yourself quite a rebuttal. My only point was that whatever the imperfections associated with our present society may be, granting a central administrative body the powers that would be necessary to completely neutralize any extra-normal influence that a citizen, collection of citizens, or organization might exert on the opinions of others.

Actually, I'd argue, as I did in the post itself, for a decentralization of political authority and more participatory political institutions.

Some people are more rational, intelligent, better informed, more industrious, more amiable, more eloquent, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc than others.

Calling all more rational, intelligent, better educated, better informed, etc.

Guess what? None of those reforms will bring about anything like a state in which all citizens will have an equal capacity to influence their fellow citizens or their elected representatives.

I didn't say they would, the issue was modest reforms that would mitigate the rule of a privileged elite. Read first, respond later.

First part - still no case for zealous minorities who have full access to the voting booth and the courts attempting to accomplish with force what they failed to do with reason. Probably be cause such a case simply can't be made. I also think that you have overestimated the efficacy of millitancy. Any movement that relies upon millitancy alone, *especially* in those cases in which the militants constitute a distinct minority of some sort, are doomed. Any lasting gains that have been achieved by millitant groups have come not from bullying or terrorizing the majority into submitting to their demands, but from persuading them to adopt their causes as their own and lending them their support.

I actually agree with most of this. You seem to have misunderstood me, I was never making a case for militancy absent any number of legal activities politically acceptable to the mainstream that most, if not all, the Olympia protesters are already engaged in. That they were able to stop arms shipments for a short period (maybe longer) and achieve that goal makes the action a success in those terms. The media, police, and portions of the public's negative response shows that much "persuading" still needs to be done, a point made in the group's original communique. Whether or not this particular non-violent act of civil disobedience strengthens or undermines that effort remains to be seen. My point in the post was that tactics are tactics are tactics. Whether or not they are illegal is entirely irrelevant. When, where and by whom is exactly what is at issue. Does that mean that I would support suicide bombing? No. What you have unceasingly failed to show in this thread is how support for one group's tactics, illegal or otherwise, represents tacit support for another group's program when they use similar tactics. As one who rails against "relativism" on a regular basis, you must certainly see the point.

...whatever defects are associated with the present state of affairs are much more likely to be addressed effectively by piecemeal reforms enacted through the present system of government than they ever would through radical changes precipitated by actions outside of those defined and limited by the Constitution.

Piecemeal reforms are exactly what I suggested. That you are suggesting the reforms I proposed are radically utopian speaks more of your own conservative fears than the fact that the US Constitution is a historical document that has been and continues to be revised and that other states that have adopted such proposals are politically more advanced, have more open, more democratic, more progressive "classically liberal" forms of governance than our own. Wake up Jay, the "End of History" has been abandoned by its own theorists and lies on its own "shitheap".

[gmknight]

I think Off White might be on to something. Maybe BD will design a harness holster for some hippy strength pepper spray.