Denouncing violent protesters

By Steve Collier, Colorado Springs

What I fear may happen during August's month-long recess is taking place. Some of the protests against nationalized health care are starting to get violent, which gives groups like the TEA Parties and the 9.12 Project a bad image, as, and I quote Sen. Harry Reid, can make us look like "the lunatic fringe."

I can understand people's frustration, I really do. I'm seething mad that our country would even concoct anything remotely resembling a socialistic program to implement on all of us (it's bad enough we have Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid). Cooler heads must prevail, and the hot, August summer doesn't help much either.

Case in point, we have some situations brewing (pardon the pun) in St. Louis and Tampa and where protesters have been arrested and some have been injured in altercations. While this is concerning, people should be reminded of this point: the far-left has been protesting anything from environmental policies to wars since the late 1960s, many times, those protests turned violent. Fast forwarding to today, organizations like the Earth Liberation Front and Code Pink are notorious for violent-laded approaches to getting their word out. So why is it that conservative-leaning protests, like those of 9.12 and TEA Parties, are scrutinized even more than the far-left protests?

From Tampa Bay

From St. Louis

The answer I think is simple: conservatives are held to higher standards and, might I add, it is those conservative values which launched us into a Revolutionary War in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. The far left and their radical protests are to be expected, and many average, every day people just write them off as "crazies." However, if conservatives protest, that tends to be more "mainstream," and people take a closer look at WHY they are protesting because the majority of Americans, party affiliation aside, are conservative in nature. We enjoy lower taxation, we enjoy clean and safe neighborhoods for our children and we believe in God and go to church. These are the "silent majority;" the ones never portrayed on television because we are the mainstream... the cogs of our economic might. Because I have never seen our country rely on far-left hippies to ensure industry hums along.

So, we should protest and have our voices heard. But is it worth anyone getting hurt in the process? If violence happens, it should have but just one outcome: an American Revolution. But violence is being used for intimidation, our organizations are no better than that of Chicago politicians.