I deleted a paragraph from your comment because it was of a personally slanderous nature. I do not know the truth of the situation to which you referred, and it’s not relevant to the political/legal issue being discussed. Given those circumstances, I’m not willing to publish the select paragraph of your comment.

As for asking for financial help for her education, that doesn’t bother me at all. I like some of what she has written and done, even though I vehemently disagree with the actions she took in this particular event almost two years ago. If people approve of her activism, I’m all for them contributing to her degree! Dude. If people approve of my activism, I’m all for them contributing to my degrees, too!

This is a person who thinks she can do whatever she wants, whenever. And that as long as it’s “not violent” she is not breaking the law. She’s the one on the team that I wish would pick another sport.

[Paragraph REDACTED — Lorien]

Either way, if you like, you can donate to her education on her website. She’s asking for you to help her financially so she can finish her degree. …twit.

If we accept your argument that government is always the initiator of force because it operates with large-scale threats, and therefore an individual may respond with force when he/she chooses, then you are effectively claiming that citizens have the moral right to engage in force with representatives of government at will. That simply doesn’t play out in day to day life. It does not work.

She was in the officer’s face, in his car, in his personal space. She was yelling and screaming at him. She was making it personal. She was engaging in mild violence. Was violence justified? I don’t think so; to be certain I would have to the evidence of what led up to the first man being arrested, but I see nothing in the behavior of the officers in her video to suggest that they had done something extremely inappropriate. Viewing it from the police officer’s perspective. He was doing his job and he was being attacked. Was his job appropriate in the initial arrest? Legal, probably yes; morally, probably no… but again, I don’t have that data. Is the system that he represents healthy? No. Acknowledging these factors, he still did not deserve the violence. He was morally justified in arresting Bleish in order to protect himself, his fellow officers, and his duty.

Relevant historical comparison: the Boston Massacre of 1770. Genuinely horrid situation. Standing army representing a system that was deeply flawed and lacking moral justification. An officer was doing his duty standing guard. Angry people began to verbally harass him. The harassment increased and the crowd became a mob. After a long period of time and having withstood verbal and physical violence, the officers fired away from the crowd to threaten them (and two fired directly into the crowd). A few people were killed and others injured, and the officers were tried for murder. John Adams defended the officers at extraordinary risk to his family and for a pittance in pay. Adams, who greatly opposed standing armies in a free society, argued that the officers had the right to protect themselves from the endangerment posed by the mob.

So let’s apply this legal precedent, established by the man most directly responsible for the 1776 Declaration being written and approved, to the Bleish case. This case is much, much smaller. No items were thrown (at least that I could see) at the officers. No direct physical violence was enacted by the activists. The activists, however, were a) engaging in verbal violence and b) indirect and passive physical violence. The officers responded with similarly scaled measures to defend themselves and complete their jobs.

If Bleish and her team want to say that, yes, they were using violence and that they were justified… then that’s a different thing. We would have to analyze that for what it really is (a form of revolution). Fair enough. However, Bleish is denying that she engaged in disorderly conduct! The argument stands, then, at the point of determining whether she engaged in disorderly conduct. My article presents my argument that she was engaging in disorderly conduct.

Then I take it a step further: it was lousy. That type of behavior paints all of us and our causes in a very poor light. As an act of civil protest it failed. As an act of civil disobedience it was lame and personally rude. As an act of revolution it was pathetic and useless. Where’s the upside to any of this?

It’s definitely a tough position. It’s really difficult to keep one’s cool in that sort of situation, so I understand the emotional pressure.