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"sick of immature liberals" ... remember the Clinton-bashing? Someone being told his opinion isn't welcome, is someone who doesn't live in America, as far as I'm concerned. If the President were not so clueless, inept, moronic, illegal, lying, stealing, and cheating, people wouldn't complain as much. Don't shoot the messenger, just because you don't like the message. And realize, probably at least one good reason it bothers you so much, is that it hits so close to the truth. If he were self-evidently a genius with a strong grasp on foreign policy and national security, the complaints would just be laughable. They aren't. They're RIGHT.
But ...
The man's sign was an irresponsible mode of political non-violent protest. The irresponsibility disturbs me -- using curse-words and other "tpically objectionable" things, I can't support. If you have a legitimate complaint, state it legitimately. So, he could be silenced on those grounds, and everything got confused and mixed up because of that. His irrationality was the problem.
But the idea that dissent, in general, is kept away from this President in a way that is unprecedented in American history means, to me, the guy was right. We are losing, slowly but surely, civil rights such as protest and free expression. To state, "You can't oppose the War in Iraq because that means you don't support the President" is quite common now. It's factually and legally totally wrong, but it is heard often anyway. Scary.
And why does the President need so much "support" anyway? I mean, what, he's sensitive and doesn't want to have to go to bed without his supper? He might cry and feel bad about himself? He gets my "support" if he does the INTELLIGENT, or RIGHT thing. He doesn't when he fails. Period.
Unfortunately, First Amendment advocates more often than not have to come to the aid of lunatics. To defend the cause, we must use distasteful examples as our test cases.
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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche
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