Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [105]
No Democratic politician has ever been rushed by a conservative and hit in the face with a stupid sign, as was done to Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul in 2010. Indeed, no conservative has rushed anyone, other than maybe a laggard waiter.
No conservative has ever thrown food at a prominent liberal. This is done all the time to conservative public figures. Limiting this review of liberal food-throwing to the baked dessert section—and liberals throw all sorts of food at conservatives—liberals have thrown pies at William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, Milton Friedman, Bill Kristol, David Horowitz, and G. Gordon Liddy, among others.
No conservative has ever demonstrated outside a private citizen’s home. This is done repeatedly by liberals—to the Duke lacrosse players;5 to AIG officials;6 to Republican House speaker John Boehner;7 to a Wal-Mart developer;8 to a Bank of America executive (who was a Democrat, but SEIU didn’t care);9 to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker; and to Wisconsin State Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald.10 (And that was despite a union rule prohibiting work on Tuesdays!)
When the Bank of America officer’s young son was trapped, alone and terrified, inside his home with fourteen busloads of Service Employees International Union thugs pouring out onto his front yard to protest, the police refused to arrest the trespassers so as not to “incite them.”11 His parents had both worked in the Clinton administration. Even liberals know that they are in danger of a physical assault only from their fellow liberals. But they still playact terror of anti-ObamaCare protesters.
It is possible that, somewhere, at some time, an audience of conservatives has shouted down an invited liberal speaker—though no such incidents come to mind. But it is not possible that conservatives would defend or embrace the hooligans. Conservatives think civil society needs to be, you know, civil.
We are not counting the voices in Maureen Dowd’s head that heard Representative Joe Wilson shout, “You lie, boy!” rather than “You lie!” during Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address. First of all, we’re in trouble if people can be found guilty for what Maureen Dowd knows they really meant in their hearts—especially since Maureen seems to base her experience of the world on having recently read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Second, if Democrats are going to be interrupting the president’s speech every three minutes with raucous standing ovations, that makes it a participatory speech. A rule condemning Wilson’s two-syllable shout-out “You lie!” would mean that only one side is allowed to participate. Third, and by the way, Wilson was roundly condemned by everyone but me and quickly apologized.
Liberals, by contrast, defend and even celebrate outrageous behavior on their side. By now, it has become so expected for liberals to aggressively disrupt and shut down conservative speakers that people hardly notice it anymore. They shout down conservatives with alarming frequency on college campuses—those crucibles of enlightenment—and are invariably protected by college administrators.
No conservative has ever tried to stage a “citizen’s arrest” of a political opponent. Republican presidents and their staff are constantly being threatened with “citizen’s arrests.” In 1984, liberal nut and third-party presidential candidate Sonia Johnson stood in front of the White House announcing that she planned to make a citizen’s arrest of President Reagan for “war crimes.” This was based on Reagan’s invasion of Marxist Grenada to rescue American medical personnel trapped there. Many considered this the high point of Sonia’s presidential campaign.
A few years later, Greenpeace employee Terry Fernsler showed up at the Westin Hotel in Seattle, where President Reagan was speaking, and tried to make a citizen’s arrest for his “war crimes” against the communist regime in Nicaragua in violation of “international law.”12 In 1987, the liberal group Pledge of Resistance plotted to kidnap a federal official