A group obtains a legal permit to protest. Okay -- that has gone on for as long as I can remember. By being granted a permit allows a group to carve out an area to exercise the right(s) it is granted via the permit. This country allows for freedom of speech, rights to personal opinions, and the right to demonstrate/protest. Many states allow residents to "carry" a variety of weapons -- some of which need to be registered, some of which require background checks of the purchaser. The KKK and a variety of other "not popular" groups have obtained permits for parades, protests, and events. Some have taken place without incident, others have not. "Popular" groups have the same rights. Personally, I see that as a beautiful thing.
What is NOT a beautiful thing is when the law is broken. The USA has laws against violence, destruction of property, obstruction of rights, arson, manslaughter, and the list goes on and on. ANYONE who breaks the law needs to be willing to accept the consequences of doing so. If the people of Charlottesville, VA, objected to the white nationalists being allowed to protest, then the group should have never been granted the permit to do so. However, for decades they have obtained permits across this nation for various events. The outrage this time is, in large part, because Trump is in office; and his NY style of delivering messages is not very eloquent. So the whole thing has turned into a soap opera because comments bounce off another, and another, and another.
We need to look at facts and reality. One person goes WAY off the edge (and hopefully that person will be prosecuted to the highest extent, along with subsequently everyone else who broke the law on ALL sides of the fence), and a mini-war breaks out. The flames are fanned with the media as well as a lot of people holding onto old vendettas. Removal of Lee's statue was already decided. Fine. The white nationalists obtained a permit to protest. Fine. Anti-protesters showed up to signify their disgust. Fine. Violence erupted. Criminal. A killing and lots of injuries ensued. Not acceptable. Time to disperse the crowds, sort through who did what to whom, and let every criminal act be judged and the perpetrators sentenced.
As for the racial and history arguments? Are we so pathetically naive as to not value history and recognize that it certainly has a part to play? And are we so insensitive that we cannot come to some agreement on how to make our public places less offensive while at the same time not pretending the past never happened, despite the artifacts being proof it did? There are places that accommodate artifacts, and there are documentaries that bring understanding of how and why various events in the past took place.
Now there is talk of removing monuments to fallen Confederate soldiers. Does it not occur to people that some of their families, as a result of their personal loss of a loved one, came to have an altered perspective of life and what it means to be an American? Many southerners and some northerners, as a result of the Civil War, settled our western states with changed attitudes and ideas of how to be a better united country. We have become such a throw-away society that some of us are now even ready to throw away our deceased for, in my opinion, no valid reason. Just remember -- we all die. Does any of us just want to be tossed aside as though we never existed?
We in America need to get a grip and look at what we are doing. We need to cherish the freedoms we have, recognize that some groups are more "out there" than others, respect everyone's rights, and be accepting of who is acting within the limits of the law and be willing to prosecute those who are not.
