Protest Warriors are carrying the genuine torch of democracy
Here is some news to light your fire. A group of young people calling itself Protest Warriors is going to protest the protesters at the upcoming Republican convention in New York City. They claim the left-wing loonies have hogged center stage for too long, and the Protest Warriors intend to beat them at their own game. Their motto is "Fighting the Left and Doing It Right."
For more years than I can remember, anti-whatever protesters have gotten a free ride. The media give them considerably more attention than their numbers merit - Remember the G-8 Summit? - in part because the media and the protesters are interchangeable parts. Each could handle the other's job and we wouldn't know the difference.
The anti-whatever group's modus operandi is to criticize and ridicule everything imaginable about our country, only because they live in a country that allows them to do so. Most couldn't hold a regular job if you welded on handles. They aren't pro-anything. They are simply anti-everything. Their grass is greener only if it is located somewhere other than on U.S. soil.
Well, now the Birkenstock is on the other foot. Enter the Protest Warriors, a self-described group of "right-wing freedom fighters" who will be armed for battle with picket signs, T-shirts and video cameras to offer up another point of view.
The kids have already had their first confrontation with anti-war demonstrators in - where else? - San Francisco. According to news reports, the peace-lovers threw their signs at the Protest Warriors and called them "fascists." Maybe it was because the young people carried signs saying, "Except for Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism and Communism, War Has Never Solved Anything" and "Communism Only Killed One Hundred Million People. Let's Give It Another Chance." One Protest Warrior feigned surprise at the animosity his group felt at the peace rally. It looks like the Protest Warriors have a keen sense of humor, which must be galling to the ski-mask crowd. Leftists are a lot of things, but they aren't possessed of a strong sense of humor.
These days we live in a nation that doesn't really encourage free speech, only politically correct free speech. You can disparage your own country, but no one else. You can denigrate the large majority of Americans, but no one represented by special-interest groups. You can declare God irrelevant, but not the gay rights movement. You can call the president of the United States a Nazi, but you can't call Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP, an out-and-out racist.
I hope the Protest Warriors have an abundance of courage and determination, because they are going to need it. The left wing and their movie star and media friends aren't going to willingly share the spotlight. The Protest Warriors are going to be called "homophobes," "racists," "war-mongers" and, yes, "fascists." Whoopi Goldberg and Alec Baldwin will sneer at them. Barbra Streisand will write a song about them. The New York Times will airily dismiss them as irrelevant. Al Gore will assume his usual pose of righteous indignation and might not allow them to use the Internet he invented. Who knows, Michael Moore might even make a documentary ridiculing them and win his second Cannes Film Festival Gold Leaf Cluster for Sucking Up to the French.
I wish the Protest Warriors the very best. I am glad that they care enough to get engaged in what promises to be an ugly fight with a mean enemy. I won't always agree with what they say, but I will heartily support their right to say it. I pray they don't lurch so far right in response to the anti-whatever crowd that they become as irrelevant as the left-wing loonies.
If we are lucky, they will eschew the ski masks and the stupid rhymes and battle the left wing to a draw. I sure hope so. Go get 'em, Protest Warriors, and remember: Illegitimi non Carborundum.
Reach ****** Yarbrough at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139, at
[email protected], or at www.dickyarbrough.com.
Web posted Friday, July 23, 2004 By ****** Yarbrough | Guest Columnist
--From the Saturday, July 24, 2004 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle
