Back when I was in public school in Portland, Oregon we were taught the importance of messaging by how the media and institutions had derided the messy effort to vanquish racism and inequality by dismissing it as “the negro problem.”
All onus for any disruptions and any violent reactions were put squarely on aggrieved blacks who demanded equality. Their efforts were met by Southern Democrats blocking school house doors, drenching them with water canons, and violence by men in masks. The institutional Southern Democrats and their party’s shock troops, the KKK, brought the pain, but the reactions were still considered to be “the negro problem.”
The same sleight of hand is at work by Northern Democrats in their efforts to shut down the speech by more conservative speakers. Before readers get triggered by comparing conservatives of all colors to blacks and invoke some reworked Godwin’s Law, I urge you to re-read the first sentence of this essay.
During the past two years we’ve seen Leftist institutions shut down school house doors at universities and colleges to conservative voices. We’ve seen first-hand the violence brought by groups – specifically balaclava-wearing Antifa – that seek to silence conservatives through violence and intimidation. The ensuing violence has been treated as a “conservative problem.”
How else to explain the closure of the entire campus of Vancouver, Washington’s Clark College, because of the visit to campus by Patriot Prayer to “protest a gun safety ballot measure,” Measure 1639.
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(For Mon. Oct 22nd) Closed. All locations. For more information visit https://t.co/6n1KUHQmax.
The campus visit was to underscore the provision of the measure that prevents the ownership of handguns and semi-automatic rifles by citizens less than 21 years old – even those who have wielded more deadly weapons in battle as members of the U.S. armed forces.
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Here is the full email from @ClarkCollege President Bob Knight that announces classes will be cancelled Monday because right-wing group Patriot Prayer plans to visit campus to protest a gun safety ballot measure. “This is not a decision that we make lightly.” pic.twitter.com/heIrzMNfDQ
As this OPB reporter pointed out, the school president alleged, “many accounts of violence have been associated with events organized by this group in the past.”
Indeed, there have been many “acts of violence” surrounding Patriot Prayer events in the past, all of which have been started by the institutional Left’s shock troops, Antifa. Just ask the cops.
Patriot Prayer began as a group to counter Antifa violence by punching back. Their unofficial motto appears to be, “If Antifa starts it we’ll finish it.”
On August 4th in Portland, the Patriot Prayer group marched in downtown without any violence whatsoever by the group. Why? Because police kept the instigators of the violence, Antifa, away from them.
Don’t get me wrong, they may pray, but Patriot Prayer guys aren’t choir boys. By punching back they offer on a silver platter an excuse by the lazy media and Leftist institutions, but I repeat myself, the moral equivalence they’ve sought.
Sure, Vancouver, Washington is where a pick up truck with Trump bumper stickers was firebombed:
But you’ll seldom hear about the violent political Left as a “Liberal problem.” It’s always because the right provoked the violence simply by being there, like just a few miles away at Clark College.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has cited a peaceful Patriot Prayer march, in which the police finally kept Antifa at bay, as the reason for a crack down on free speech. After that event, Antifa attacked their usual nemesis, the police. But Wheeler blamed “the conservative problem” for the move.
Talk host Lars Larson was scheduled for a campus visit to Portland State University today. The appearance coincided with the Republican Club’s observance of Second Amendment Week. But Larson carries a legal, concealed weapon, so the school shut him up and canceled his event.
See? It was a “conservative problem” all along.
