S3 E10 Call the Campus Protests "Insurrection"

There are riots on campuses from coast to coast, and the fake news calls them “peaceful protests” and warns of trampling on free speech rights.

The left’s fomenting confusion on the meaning of the word “rights” is a common tool of the left, where rioters are called advocates, and encouraged to pursue their noble cause supported by terrorists from without.

Call the rioters what they are, hold them accountable, treat them like you would protesters from the right, and the problem goes away.

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

College campuses across America first, then across the world, have erupted in violence since the Israelis started punishing terrorists in Gaza.  Stop the campus violence by calling it what it is – an insurrection – today on The Tenth Man

After the January 6th demonstrations, two hours of trespassing which broke up all by itself, there was a nationwide outcry.   Democrats scanned the Constitution for a word to apply as a label, and came up with “insurrection” as the best candidate.  They looked around for ways to blame outsiders and conservative politicians, and immediately the demonstration was universally condemned by both sides of the congressional aisle. The impeached the president for causing the “insurrection” which occurred before he made the speech in question, and put in prison members of men’s patriotic organizations like the proud boys who were in another state at the time. 

It seems that you could end the so-called, “mostly peaceful student protests” by applying the same tactics.

One big problem with the internet is there’s no calendar.  If you want to be a billionaire, if you want to be the next Elon Musk, Steve Jobs or the Facebook dweeb then do this:  create a search engine that includes the calendar. Eliminate the problem of producing obsolete results, or at least identify them. 

And do this – show differences between what government and news web sites say now and what they used to say.  When that California university said that gas stoves produced as much methane as a million cars – a facile argument – the EPA web site said that cars were not a significant source of methane.  In plain language, the EPA dismantled the gas stove argument.  Well the EPA web site doesn’t say that anymore.  It’s still true.  Comparing gas stoves to cars is a facile argument but the EPA consciously decided not to point that out.  Wouldn’t it be interesting if you could easily pull up the previous versions of a web page when you wanted them, and not get obsolete information like OJ Simpsons movie career when you didn’t. 

Well there’s this word “insurrection”.   No one ever used the word before January sixth.  Didn’t it sound strange to you, suddenly hearing the word “insurrection” repeated in the news?

It’s like hearing “good luck storming the castle” – it’s out of place.  Or “you see how he’s oppressing me? I’m being oppressed!”    Everyone recognizes those lines from The Princess Bride and Monty Python and the Holy Grail as forced and incongruous; that’s what made them funny.  This word “insurrection” – it’s the same thing.

The greatest power and therefore the most abused is the ability of the press to manipulate words.  We no longer say “cross dresser”, an objectively accurate term.  We are supposed to use the term transgender, and by our speech validate the individual’s feelings. Cross dressing is a behavior and can be applied without bias.  Transgender is making the statement that the cross dressing is justified, an outward sign of an underlying truth, and the left wants us all to be forced to perform this validation, and that’s the only reason the word was created, and you see the result.  Corporal Klinge of M.A.S.H. put on a dress to prove he was crazy and get out of the Army.  Nowdays If a man puts a dress on, he can go into the girls’ locker room. 

So just as the January 6th 2-hour demonstration was labeled an “insurrection” just to facilitate the impeachment of a President, similarly the riots, vandalism, trespassing, and assaults on campuses today are being called “free speech”.

The criminal participants are called “student protesters”, and the colleges are enjoined not to violate their free speech rights. 

If you wanted all protests to end now – and even as they are now starting to be eliminated they are taking root overseas – then start calling it an “insurrection”, point out the connection to neo-Nazis and the KKK, and threaten to impeach the President for not putting an end to it. 

The KKK?  Yes, the KKK is anti Jew as are the neo-Nazis.   Remember when the students wanted to tear down the statue of Robert E Lee in Charlottesville Virginia, and the KKK was there?  Trump was roundly criticized for condemning the KKK and the neo Nazis but for not doing it strongly enough.  It still goes on today.  Where is the criticism of the neo Nazi behavior in these campus riots, and why isn’t President Biden being called to account for not identifying the anti-Semitism as neo Naziism?

First among the misuse of vocabulary is the word “rights”.   The colleges need to stop the demonstrations while protecting the students’ right to free speech.  This is just silly.  This is similar to violent criminals caught speeding getting pulled over by police and opening fire at the police – when the police shoot back the news declares “he should not have been killed just for running a stop sign”.

Here’s a basic explanation of rights that most people understand – by most people we mean the ones who didn’t go to college.   Your rights mean you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it doesn’t interfere with someone else’s rights. 

As eight-year-old boys we were taught, “your right to swing your arm ends where the other fellow’s nose begins”.   That’s pretty simple, right?

Well it’s too complicated for college students.  There are on-screen interviews of students at the Michigan State University asking what they think of the riots and these girls say “they have a right to free speech”.  A diligent reporter would ask “wait a minute, who’s saying their right to free speech should be violated”?   That’s asking too much of today’s journalist. 

Here’s an example of a conflict involving rights.  In 1977 the Ku Klux Klan applied for a permit to demonstrate in Skokie Illinois and the permit was denied.  There were tens of thousands of Jewish residents in Skokie at the time, many of them literal Holocaust survivors, and many of us thought the KKK were being real jerks for demonstrating in Skokie of all places.  But with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union the KKK went to court, and it was determined that the city was violating their right to free speech.  Other organizations were allowed to demonstrate, so the KKK had to be allowed as well. They got to have the same parade as any other group could have.  That’s freedom of speech, that’s the American way.

There is no comparison between Skokie and the campus riots.  The KKK had a parade.  They obtained a permit, followed the rules, and did what everyone else was allowed to do. They made no encampment.  They did not occupy buildings.  They didn’t threaten people.  They did not vandalize, attack police or refuse to disperse, making demands that everyone else had to think and act like they did. Because that would violate the rights of others.  That would make them criminals.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Campus Rioters followed the same pattern of behavior as the Ku Klux Klan?  Wouldn’t it be nice if they followed the rules and respected the law, and the rights of others.  Maybe the reason Biden doesn’t associate the campus rioters with the neo Nazis and the KKK, is because the Ku Klux Klan is actually better behaved. 

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech which is your right to hold an opinion.  No one inside the campus enclaves is being threatened for just holding an opinion.  They are breaking laws.   What the news calls “student protesters” are trespassers, vandals and thugs.  No one minds if they hold an opinion. People DO mind that they are interfering with the mission of the colleges and universities.  The purpose of those institutions is to prepare young people to face the world and they’ve stopped doing that in order to provide a forum for terrorists.  They are forgetting about their purpose and their mission.  Forgetting our mission is a very common problem these days.

 One of the best tools for guiding us in our lives is purpose.  Institutions fail when they forget their purpose. Everything from American companies, to the churches to the Jeopardy TV show are failing because they have forgotten their purpose.

We’re all guilty of this.  Most of us are not a bit surprised that there are terrorist (student protester) camps at colleges.  Let’s see if I can make you think about it. 

These kids are at a school where they are spending a fortune to secure a credential that will get them a career and earn them a better living than my family who are getting ready to retire after turning a high school diploma into a fleet of trucks, or a construction company or other business who are laughing at them and their advanced degrees. 

Now these young women – the majority of students are women and a greater majority of advanced degree seekers are women – are leaving school with debt, without jobs that will pay of that debt, and the colleges have put them into this position, so what are they angry about?  Their debt? Their career prospects?

No – they’re putting on scarves with little swastikas on them and protesting that terrorists in the middle east are getting the punishment they deserve. 

They went to college supposedly for a career, but their biggest concern is a police operation they don’t understand and could not explain.

I don’t know why they’re calling it a war in Gaza.   There’s no declaration of war.  The people fighting are terrorists or some other category.  It’s not two nations but Israel versus an enclave no one else wants.

The rioters are protesting something that has nothing to do with them, and educators are supporting this.  Watch out where this goes.

As soon as the Gaza tents come down, what’s to stop the vegetarians from demonstrating?  They have the same rights. The can create an encampment and demand the schools divest from all industries that oppress animals.

Next it will be “just stop oil”.  They will demand divestment from ExxonMobil, Toyota and DuPont.

The campus protesters are uninformed idiots, what if they start complaining that the earth is flat and want to outlaw shipping which could fall off and land on the giant turtle.  It makes as much sense as what they are saying now. 

Just wait until the right realizes they can do the same thing.  If the comparison and contrast between the campus occupations, and with Skokie Illinois, Charlottesville, and January 6th aren’t informative enough, how about when some right wing groups moves on to a college campus now in the very shadow of these illegal demonstrations which were tolerated by everyone.  They were coddled and protected and food and water delivered to them.

Imagine a thousand Pro-life demonstrators moving into Harvard and demanding divestiture from McLaren, or Kaiser or Blue Cross, or Eli Lilly for their support of the abortion industry.  What basis would the schools have for breaking up such a demonstration, even if few or none of the demonstrators were students?  It’s free speech after all.

Or it could be an anti-electric car demonstration.   I just bought an EV and it’s surprising how many people demand an explanation for Chinese children mining cobalt.  A few hundred people could announce a campus car show and arrive with their big V8s and demand the schools divest from Tesla, Rivian and LG – the battery company.  Free speech.

Or how about a giant gun rights occupation.  Students automatically lose their second amendment rights when they go to most colleges.  Their actual constitutional rights – not an imaginary right to pitch a tent in support of terror.  I’d go to that one or send money, or both. 

The reason it doesn’t happen is that all these groups have respect for others and for the law.  But this won’t last if the law keeps breaking down, and worse – the law keeps favoring the neo Nazis, the Palestinian terrorists, the supporters of Hamas.

It is sad just how ignorant the students are.  Israel’s supporters have said that although the war is tragic, we have to remember what Hamas stands for and press on until they are eliminated.  True, but that’s the least of the hypocrisy.

There are many conflicts in the world today, and most of them are, Muslim conflicts.  No offense to our Muslim friends, it just happens to be true.  There is a civil war in Syria, a rebel uprising in Nigeria and a revolution in Yemen.  The students are fine with these wars because the combatants are Muslim on both sides.  Selective outrage like this is the worst kind of racism. 

When there’s a law against spitting on the sidewalk but the police only enforce it against black men, we call that racism and try to put an end to it.  But the rioters are fine with all these conflicts.  Four conflicts, eight sets of combatants, but the students only have an issue with one of the combatants - Israel. 

But the second problem is the conflict in Yemen.  These “educated” people on campus seem to know nothing about the Yemen conflict which has killed a quarter of a million people, and where there is currently a famine.  Not healthy people in Reeboks and polo shirts fighting over MREs in the food line.  A real famine with the distended bellies, flies in the eyes and people dying. Even the United Nations is calling Yemen the worst humanitarian crisis in the world right now. 

Yet students in the West are standing united with Iran which is sending – not food – but missiles to Yemen so that the Houthi rebels there can attack our ships.  Are they this ignorant?  Then why is their speech so important?

The students with their meaningless slogans – I hope it’s meaningless when they chant “from the river to the sea” because the actual meaning is scary, the students say one thing they want which is tangible – a cease fire.  But again, they don’t know what a cease fire is.

A cease fire is when the two sides are in a stalemate and agree to stop shooting for a moment in order to collect and treat casualties.

They don’t want a cease fire and there is no stalemate. 

In war the only acceptable outcome is victory.  For the shooting to stop all that has to happen is for the Gazans to hand over the Hamas leaders.  You can’t have it both ways.  You cannot cheer for the October 7 attacks  and protect Hamas, then complain when you get bombed.  Just ask the Germans. 

As soon as the Hamas leaders stop shooting, go on trial, and their rich masters in Qatar stop sending them money, then the Israeli Defense Forces will go home.  

That’s because they don’t like getting shot at either, and they are the only combatants in the middle east, who don’t kill civilians for fun.