Those fascist tea partiers

Diana West posts a video that should be seen by every liberal in America who believes that the tea partiers and Obama opponents are dangerous extremists. It shows a group of demonstrators outside a hall in Quincy, Illinois where Obama is coming to speak. Look at the demonstrators, singing “God Bless America,” and look at the fearsomely apparelled paramilitary police arrayed around them to “protect” the president from them.

Here is Mark Steyn on the Quincy cops:

The same day that [San Francisco Mayor] Newsom took his bold stand, I saw a phalanx of police officers doing the full Robocop—black body armor, helmets and visors—as they marched down the street. Goosestepping? No, it’s actually quite hard to goosestep in those steel-reinforced kneepads. So just regular marching. Naturally, I assumed they were Arizona state troopers performing a routine traffic stop. In fact, they were the police department of Quincy, Ill., facing down a group of genial Tea Party grandmas in sun hats and American-flag T-shirts. They were acting at the behest of President Obama’s Secret Service, which rightly recognized a polite knot of citizens singing “God Bless America” as a clear and present danger to the republic.

If I were a member of the Quincy PD, I’d wear a full-face visor, too, because I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror. It’s a tough job making yourself a paramilitary laughingstock. Yet the coastal frothers denouncing Arizona as the Third Reich or, at best, apartheid South Africa, seem entirely relaxed about the ludicrous and embarrassing sight of peaceful protesters being menaced by camp storm troopers from either a dinner-theater space opera or uniforms night at Mr. Newsom’s re-election campaign.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 03, 2010 08:14 AM | Send