Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Discretion Is the Better Part of *Something*...

Seen last night in Gunblogger Conspiracy chat:

LSU Student Decides Against Burning Flag as Thousands Stage Counter Demonstration


A student’s plans to burn an American flag on the LSU campus were cut short Wednesday when thousands of combative counter demonstrators arrived on scene, prompting police to escort the student to safety.

Crowds wearing red, white and blue and chanting “U-S-A” threw water balloons and ice at Benjamin Haas, a communication studies graduate student, while he tried to read a prepared statement in front of an estimated crowd of 1,500 to 2,500 students and community members.

The "protest" was apparently in support of a malicious bit of vandalism performed under the guise of "protest" whereby another student stole, then burned, an American flag that had flown over the LSU war memorial. It was apparently some sort of protest after bin Laden took his dirt nap - because destruction of public property and arson are protected free speech, right? When thousands gathered - complete with water balloons - to "counter protest", Haas realized that he stood a pretty good chance of being stomped into pudding...

Or, as DaddyBear commented in GBC chat, "does the name Custer mean anything to you?"...

That is all.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will look good on his resume to NPR or MSNBC.

Run hippy run!

Gerry

Borepatch said...

I don't much care to see the flag burned, but I don't much care to see a mob intimidate subdood's right to speak his mind, either.

Jay G said...

I'm a lot less sympathetic given that he was staging his protest in support of an arsonist and vandal.

And as much as he had every right in the world to protest and burn his own flag, those other people *also* had every right in the world to gather to show their disapproval.

Freedom of speech works both ways.

zeeke42 said...

They have a right to gather to show their disapproval, but emphatically not to suppress speech the disagree with through threat of violence, which is what they did.

TinCan Assassin said...

Umm, minor correction. Osama sleeps with the fishes. The only dirt involved in his burial was well, himself.