Don’t Tase me, bro!

I’m not sure why University of Florida student Andrew Meyer was tasered and beaten down by a group of gun-toting police today.  The details are sketchy.  Perhaps his questions to U.S. Sen. John Kerry about the 2004 election during a “campus forum” were considered too volatile, like the inflammatory rhetoric of a madman who refuses to stop yelling “fire! fire!” in a theatre when there’s no fire.  Perhaps Andrew was likewise considered a firebrand who might incite some unseemly public disorder or heated debate.  Or perhaps the sponsors of the event wanted to shield the patrician politician from being “offended” by the tone of Andrew’s questions.  Who knows?  One thing is certain: Andrew wasn’t given much of a chance to get his answers from one of America’s elected “trusted servants,” as the following video clip from the event clearly demonstrates:

Alas, free speech — even expressed at the supposedly hallowed ground of the State University — is now considered so potentially a dangerous a thing that it calls for deadly force to restrain it.  And please note the effete “protestations” whimpered by Mr. Kerry while all this is going down….  “That’s alright,” he mumfers into his microphone. 

What sort of a “leader” is this?  Why didn’t he tell the cops to let this kid go?  As a “Democrat,” shouldn’t he be a bit more sympathetic to the disaffected, the downtrodden, and the outcast?  Senator Kerry has become the new “poster boy” of the flaccidity and cruel hypocrisy of the political left in the United States.  This is the Democratic Abu Ghraib.

Note further the collusion and cowardice of the crowd.  Leftist groupthink.  No one dared oppose this travesty of the student’s first amendment rights, no one seemed overly concerned about the obvious police brutality that was occurring before their very eyes.  No one lifted a finger to answer Andrew’s pathetic cries for help.

Help! Help! … Don’t Tase me, bro. 

This is appalling, not simply because it bears testimony of the cruelty of our age, but because it communicates quite clearly that certain questions are considered dangerous, even if asked in a University setting.  Social programming and propaganda have so dominated our culture that those who dare to seek for truth are essentially considered “enemies of the State.”  Are questions about the validity of electronic voting so threatening to the establishment that they call for brutalizing an earnest inquirer? 

It can be argued, of course, that Andrew was out of line or perhaps acting like a boor in this situation.  Perhaps his questions were rhetorical and were disguised accusations.  I don’t know.  I wasn’t there and I don’t know this young man.  But one thing appears quite certain: this unarmed student was not a physical threat to any one, nor was he not within his rights as a citizen of the United States to express his ideas before his assembled compatriots.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The battle lines, as usual, are drawn in the realm of ideas.  The use of Tasers, handcuffs, and guns are implemented to enforce the ideas of the status quo and its operation.  Living in such cognitive dissonance that might lead to a student’s diatribe should not be handled by the thugs of the State but rather by a Statesman– of whom John Kerry certainly is not.

Help! Help! … Don’t Tase me, bro. 

But to whom was Andrew making his appeal? Certainly no one of the assembled craven crowd was willing to take a stand for this young man’s civil liberties.  It never ceases to amaze me how the “group” squelches individual conscience and dehumanizes us all.  Those gathered at this event should be ashamed of themselves for their outright perfidy against the dignity of a fellow human being.

But perhaps there will be a positive outcome to this injustice.  After all, Christians in this country have been routinely marginalized from the public square (as well as maligned by mass media and other forms of propaganda).  Now we have a left-leaning student who attends a university who is undergoing censorship. 

As a Christian I maintain that the individual is always higher than the abstraction called the State, and I therefore defend the right of others to disagree with me regarding theology, politics, and so on.  I honor their civil liberty to speak their mind, even if I find that personally disagreeable.  Perhaps the left-leaning liberals of this country should show the same sort of courtesy to those of religious persuasion, since in relation to the State, we stand and fall together on this issue.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller