You've probably seen the video and heard the late night talk show hosts laugh and quote "Don't tase me bro..." but there is something verry disturbing about this.
Andrew Meyes who is a journo student at University of Florida was forcibly removed from the question stand after asking John Kerry too many questions. Force escalated when he pulled away from the Campus police who were attempting to remove him and it ultimately led to him being dragged to the rear of the auditorium and was taken to the ground by several cops who began to zip-cuff him. It was here that he was tasered.
Now over the years I've done some man-handling of men and on some occasions women. Here was difference between those situations and this. There was a viable threat against my principal or myself, or someone else. I NEVER removed or put my hands on anyone who was running off at the mouth. I did try and talk reasonable to them, and as corny as this sounds got one of the best pieces of advice I would ever employ from Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse. "Be nice". It may sound completely soft, and limp but here is the thing, it is also completely disarming in 80% of the situations. I never said that I wasn't ready for something to go down or go bad, nor that I was not firm in my request or apologetic about what I was doing I simply asked a question in a gentler tone.
It works in most cases because when you make an approach your adversary expects you to try and bully them, so they don't want to lose face and nobody likes to be pushed around. Being nice will get you far.
In the Andrew Meyer situation everything was wrong. Instead of saying to him that everyone is allowed a certain amount of time, they cut the mike off and the cops moved in. They put their hands on him to move him from the rear and blindside. Meyer had just finished when hands are put on him.
This is a very serious situation on a constitutional level that occurred on an American University of all places, where free speech is taught as a corner stone of America.
This is the hall marks of moving towards a Police State.
And where was John Kerry in all of this. The man who wanted to be the leader of the Free World should have looked to the police and requested (he had no actual authority to do anything granted) that they immediately remove their hands from this man, and it would have been a great place to go on the necessity of protecting free speech. What Kerry says instead after mumbling in a weakish manner about answering his questions is "Well I guess he won't be swearing me in up here as President" ???
While everyone is very much obsessing over unimportant issues like O.J. So called "small" issues like this are showing the turning of the tide. The Universities are always a good meter to measure against how society is going. And as a man was being assaulted and his constitutional rights clearly being violated America has laughed at it.
In a post 9/11 world our borders are still wide open to illegal persons who can in some parts obtain a drivers license and hundreds of thousands of them can protest that they have rights to be here and work illegally. And no one moves in to arrest them. Mean while private citizens bent on doing the right thing of protecting our borders both armed and unarmed are criticized and called "extremist". Homeland Security has issued warnings of school buses being used in an Islamic funded terrorist attack, presumable in the Northwest, and very few even know about it. The leader of Iran himself, a known terrorist and state sponsor of terrorism, has been asked to speak to students at an American University, all the while an over zealous journalist student is being tasered and escorted out in handcuffs.
We the People have a very reasonable, inalienable and lawfully expected right to ask questions both publicly and privately, aggressively or passively no matter who agrees or disagrees with the position one has taken. That my fellow Americans is free speech, plain and simple!
