In another topic the issue of people protesting the President being arrested was brought up. That topic was Secret Service Investigates College Art Exhibit.., the post that got me thinking was by ralou, and can be found Here. Since this seemed worthy of it's own topic I figured I would start one.

I can understand when the government restricts protestors from the streets, both to avoid accidents and to allow traffic to flow, emergency vehicle access, etc. I can also understand why the government would not allow people to gather on privately owned property without the owners permission. But moving them blocks away, to a fenced in area (effectively pens) just goes too far IMHO.

What bothers me is that protestors in general seem to be more and more isolated, and away from the subject person / place they are protesting. This may improve security concerns for the government, but it also limits peoples ability to express concerns about their government, and actions the government has taken, or is considering taking.

America has always had protesters, counter-protesters, etc. It seems reasonable to say that if you cannot be seen, you will not be heard, and the whole point of protesting is to use your freedom of expression to attempt to effect change. If your free expression is limited, then your ability to effect change, air grievances, etc is also limited.

I don't think these actions, are reasonable, and they could be seen as an abuse of power, but I am unsure if they would pass constitutional muster if put to the test.


Questions for Debate:
Is there a Constitutional basis to support restricting protesters from being on public property (but not in the streets) within the same area as the person or place being protested? Is there a Constitutional basis to treat protesters differently in regard to Presidential visits, speeches, etc?

If your answer is no, then what are the Constitutional grounds that can be used to fight these recent "hear no evil, see no evil" tactics? Are there any legal decisions that relate to the matter?

Which really creates a greater homeland security problem? The protesters and the possibility of an assassin hide among them, a riot breaking out, etc, or the loss of the right to protest, and as a result the loss of this effective tool used to hold government accountable to the people?

Great minds think alike. I started to write up a response to ralou's post in that topic, then realized it consituted topic drift, so I resolved to create a new topic... just as soon as I took care of some other things. You beat me to it.

Questions for Debate:
Is there a Constitutional basis to support restricting protesters from being on public property (but not in the streets) within the same area as the person or place being protested? Is there a Constitutional basis to treat protesters differently in regard to Presidential visits, speeches, etc?
Absolutely not. In all cases such as these, the courts have balanced First Amendment rights against public safety, and almost always come down hard in favor of the First Amendment. And there is absolutely no Constitutional foundation for restricting speech on the basis of its political content.

If your answer is no, then what are the Constitutional grounds that can be used to fight these recent "hear no evil, see no evil" tactics? Are there any legal decisions that relate to the matter?
There are tons of First Amendment precedents, such as the recent flag-burning cases. There's just no question in my mind about the constitutional issue. I believe some of these cases are wending their way up to the Supreme Court, where again I have no doubt as to the outcome. For example, the South Carolina free speech zone case should have been decided by the appellate court by now; does anybody know its outcome? I can find hundreds of references on the web to the original case, and the decision to appeal, but nothing on the outcome.

Which really creates a greater homeland security problem? The protesters and the possibility of an assassin hide among them, a riot breaking out, etc, or the loss of the right to protest, and as a result the loss of this effective tool used to hold government accountable to the people?
Security isn't an issue in any of these cases, as unchecked citizens were permitted the same access that was denied to protesters. In other words, an assassin holding a "Bush for President" sign would have had the access denied to the protesters.

I found this:
source

Which created more questions then answers for me.




I was actually trying (poorly) to get at something else. More plainly:

Is America more secure when we make it harder for citizens to challenge government?

I was trying to frame the question in a way that it would not come across as "loaded" to one side. Unfortuantely, clarity suffered as a result.

Is America more secure when we make it harder for citizens to challenge government?

Surprisingly, yes. The CIA has had a field day with democratic governments it didn't like in Latin America. And then there's the likely CIA connection to the protests in the Ukraine. When the people can participate, an outside force can manipulate the people quite a bit, weakening or altering the nation to suit that outside force's own ends. If the CIA can and has done it (and they can and have and do), there's little reason to think someone from outside the US won't try it.


However, I'll take my chances with the outside influence. Better to be freer and less secure than securely enslaved.

Excellent observation. Something I did not think of at all when considering trying to simplify the question. The point I was trying to make is obvious, but when I said America, I probably should have said the American People. If I had, then I think the answer would be clearly no.




Ditto!

This country was founded by men with the the spirit to throw off the shackles of tyranny and go it alone. If they can see us now, I doubt that out efforts to put the shackles back on ourselves would sit very well with them.

I used to think that's what this country was founded on, too. Then I researched the subject for a paper, and guess what? They had the same problem I brought up, only they had an even bigger worry: internal turmoil. Madison was terrified of Democracy for this very reason. Many of the framers of the Constitution, and even many who did not want a strong central government, feared both internal and external influence. External worries include France and Spain. Internal worries didn't start with Shay's Rebellion, but that is a fine example.


More surprising, prior to the Revolutionary War, they had reason to be afraid. Even as Samuel Adams, John Adams and others were stirring up dissent against Great Britain, they were terrified of the masses. The masses, you see, had to be riled up so they would rebel against Great Britain. But the problem was, they were riled over the idea of freedom. A say in the political process. "No taxation without representation." And that's why many wealthy landowners sided or considered siding with Great Britain. Because they understood that they, too, were a ruling party. And they, too, were in danger.

Many of the founders wrote pamphlets and newspaper articles to stir up rebellion. But the thing is, ordinary people did, too. And one of the things they wanted was a say in, for example, the boycotting of British goods. They didn't think the merchants and landholders alone had a right to decide what would be boycotted and when.


In “The Americas in the Age of Revolution,” Lester D. Langley describes the pitfalls of stirring outrage in the masses:




James Otis said, “’When the pot boils, the scum will rise.’”




Massachusetts was contentious well before 1787 (Shay's Rebellion). They called for a return to paper money, greater representation, and an end to the laws that essentially robbed the veterans of their backpay (by depreciating currency), while speculators who bought up those IOUs were able to trade them in for guaranteed bonds. See, the veterans and the poor couldn't trade them in, because you had to have a certain amount of money before you could exchange it, and only the wealthiest had that money.

This information is paraphrased from:


Brooke, John L. The heart of the Commonwealth: society and political culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861. University of Massachusetts Press: ( 1992). ACLS History E-Book Series.


Not only that, Madison's 10th Federalist specifically addressed the attempts of the people to have for themselves the reality of the Revolutionary War's ideals. They wanted greater liberty, an end to ruling classes, and of course, their backpay from fighting the war and giving supplies to the Continental Army in exchange for IOUs!



Samuel Adams attacked the leaders of Shays Rebellion. He compared them to the murderers of Christ, according to: Pencak, William. “Samuel Adams and Shays Rebellion.” The New England Quarterly 62 no. 1 (March 1989)


This, after he was one of the main propagandists in the War with Great Britain!

These men wanted to be free of Great Britain, but the evidence shows that most of them had no desire to share their decision making powers with the masses. And they feared that the wealthy, menaced by the poor, would create a monarchy to stop the spread of dissent. In other words, the Constitutional Convention was a balancing act between utter demolition of the rights of the people and the freedom of the 'common' people to shape their new nation.


As you can see from the George Washington quote below, the fear of outside agitation existed prior to the Constitutional Convention.:






Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the greatest lover of the ideals of widespread liberty of all the founders (and he was not a proponent of the Constitutional Convention), but even he, when reality intervened, was inclined to choose his own interests, his own class and gender and race, and a road more secure than the road that would have needed to be taken to ensure liberty for slaves, women, and the poor.

I disagree because I think that the notion of "security" involves a great deal more than resistance to manipulation. Security is not just physical safety -- it's the confidence that we have in all those rights we consider vital to our existence. Yes, security of life is important; but so is security of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We can trade off one form of security against another, but we must realize that we losing one security even as we gain another.

Citizen protest against government is important not because it allows people to have fun letting off steam -- it is a vital balancing agent. And in fact we can see no better example of the value of citizen protest than in the recent behavior of President Bush. He lives in an emotional coccoon, unaware of the intensity of opposition to his policies. Yes, I'm sure that he reads the polls and takes them into consideration, but he remains emotionally isolated from reality. If you read the memoirs of modern American political figures, almost all of them include comments about how strongly affected they were by seeing direct popular opposition. President Bush is perhaps the first President in American history to be isolated from this experience, and it shows in his decisions. He has charged ahead with privatizing Social Security, a futile and stupid effort that wasted time and political capital -- and he still doesn't seem to understand that it's a dead issue. When Democratic Senators filibustered a handful of his judicial nominations, he simply re-nominated them, triggering a political confrontation that's bad for the Republic and worse for the Republicans. The John Bolton nomination is in serious trouble, but all he does is twist arms, not realizing how bad Bolton looks to the public. This President has been so coddled with emotional attaboys, and so isolated from emotional condemnation, that he is operating in a dangerous emotional alternate reality. That's definitely not good for our security.

I think that the confident security we have in our rights as active, effective participants in the political process is falsely placed, and this is exactly what some of the Framers of the US Constitution wanted: ineffective or weak participation by most citizens that would prevent a rebellion they thought would bring the destruction of the nation into anarchy, leaving it open to attack from without, or would cause the wealthy and powerful (including many founders themselves) to fight to keep their position by installing a tyrant.

Jefferson saw education as the way to actually bring about a greater level of freedom among the masses, but part of the education he emphasized would teach people to be happy 'in their place', no matter what that place was. Meanwhile, Hamilton asserted only the very wealthy could be allowed real power, because the rest were untrustworthy rabble. Washington seemed to have a paternalistic view of the 'common people' over all, and when Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, asking him to remember the ladies, he was contemptuous:




The Founders didn't have widespread liberty in mind when they wrote the Declaration or the Constitution. And our leaders, I believe, fear widespread liberty just as much, because there are only two ways to prevent rebelliousness and so disorder, in my opinion:

1. Give Americans true liberty, a strong say in the policy of the nation, an excellent, thorough education that will allow them to make decisions based on facts, and not based on propaganda (I think it was Jefferson who said education would do this for citizens), and the time to think about these matters. Then they'll own their government, and won't be susceptible to internal or external forces who want to crumble its structure.


2. Prevent most citizens from having any actual influence on policy. And it was Madison who favored this. That's why he wanted a large nation with a strong, centralized government. Because factions couldn't spread easily across a large area and large numbers of people. So it's harder for outside or inside influences to stir up a force that will create change even if the leaders don't want it. But it is possible to do, especially with our greater communications and travel speed. And these internal and external factions can find easy purchase in our society to raise a ruckus, because Americans know we aren't as free as we should be, and we don't own our political process. Many shake off the apple pie, rosy history book indoctrination and then they're furious. The first reaction is unthinking, when they learn how little they really know about how things work. It's a throw the baby out with the bath reaction that can be cultivated and used by people who want to bring down the nation or set it into turmoil. Myself, I think we need some turmoil, but it's going to have to be reasoned and thought through and non-violent. Because otherwise, we will be in danger from without, or in danger of a brutal dictatorship within.


The greatest enemy of constructive change is an organization with the resources to shape a movement to its own ends. The CIA, as I've said before, has twisted popular movements or created them for its own ends. It once ran a radio station that broadcast fake reports of bombings and coups to drive a leader it detested out of a Latin American nation. It's very hard for people with few resources to prevent this corruption. And of course there are the old and favored tricks of convincing movement leaders that others are plotting against them, planting fake evidence (or real), of affairs and betrayal, stirring up illegal and counter productive activity, and of course, manipulating communications so that the movement's progress is distorted, slandered, or ignored.


So to sum up, it seems to me that, as I type this, freedom, including freedom of speech, is willingly stifled to prevent insecurity from disorder and disobedience. I don't approve in the least, but it has been, and unfortunately continues to be, quite effective.