Protest is not a Leftwing Monopoly

Leftists have been out of power so long that they seem to think they invented the whole idea of protests and demonstrations. Whereas it’s true that they’ve had a lot of experience in this sort of thing – street theatre dovetailing nicely with the Left’s tendency toward sloganeering and histrionics, and with an ample supply of misfits who are only too glad to fill up the idle hours of their day doing yeomen’s work as placard-carriers and bullhorn yodelers – right-wingers are not exactly without experience when it comes to protest (e.g., the pro-life rally held in Washington, D.C. every year). Protests are, in fact, fun for the whole extended American family. What distinguishes the Tea-Party protests from the typical mob of BDS sufferers, smash-and-grab anarchists, and ageing, pot-befogged, hippy war protestors (whose general appearance, ironically, now tends to put one in mind of a shambling troop of Civil War veterans in a July 4th parade circa 1915) is that they consist of hardworking, productive members of society who are trying to assert what should be the commonplace, commonsensical and unobjectionable idea that the state does not have the right to wantonly deprive its citizens of the right to enjoy the fruit of their own labor, or to mortgage the economic welfare of generations unborn. If these folks turn out to have misread the “tealeaves”, and we ultimately discover that President Obama and the Democrats actually abhor the concept of socialism and are working around the clock to put genuine capitalism back on its feet, then no harm done. Since, on the basis of the evidence so far, the president and the Democrats appear to be doing rather the opposite, then the Tea-Party protests will add value by drawing attention to a viable alternative, to wit, that our unalienable rights do not represent a dispensation or gift from the federal government, and that “that government is best which governs least.”

Leftists, of course, will invariably holler, “You lost, get over it.” We know we lost, comrades; but the proper response, after a defeat in an honorable cause, is never to “get over it.” The defenders of freedom didn’t “get over it” after Pearl Harbor and Dunkirk. Conservatives didn’t “get over it” after Goldwater’s defeat or Jimmy Carter’s victory. For that matter, leftists didn’t get over it when Bush won two terms, and the Republicans controlled the legislature. It has been said that lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. But I do know that a cause, no matter how good, will lose if people don’t fight for it.