Those protestors did very little, and I see absolutely no reason to take political free speech away from everyone because a few people in Seattle 4 years ago broke a few windows (or a few people at ANY large demonstration). That is a ridiculous standard for valuing freedom of speech and assembly.
The right to free speech was worth lives and blood during the revolutionary war- it is still worth lives and blood. If you are willing to give up your rights, because of what happened in Seattle, rights your forefathers fought a war for, you obviously do not care very much about those rights, in fact, you value them not at all, and are willing to surrender them because a few hooligans get out of control. Does that make sense? The rights which protect us FROM our government are the most important rights we have, without them we are defenseless. If you do not value them, if you hold them cheaply, you contribute to the death of those rights, imo. They are not to be given away because a few people abuse them. They are not to be dispatched because 3000 people are blown up by terrorists. If we give them up like that, then the terrorists have won- by destroying our society. Those rights are the basic foundation upon which a free society rests. If you give them up, you are no longer free. (or as free as we can be in the information age) |
