The Vice President of the United States comes to Utah to visit and what do we do? We focus on a little minority of blathering knuckleheads that think that it would be a great opportunity to ‘protest’ the war. The headlines are all about the ‘alternative commencement’, I see blog posts and comments all over the place that are giving these people kudos for excercising their freedoms and for ’standing up for what they believe’. WHATEVER.
YES, these people have the Freedom to assemble, the Freedom of Free Speech, the Right to do the things they did. We also have the right and freedom to ignore them – but could the press do that? Apparently not.
While these people have the Freedom and Right to do what they did, there is also an Expectation of decency and decorum that goes with those rights. What I saw today sickened me. What is happening in Washington D.C. and in several areas across the country sickens me. What I see is self-righteous opportunists with a gang mentality who have absolutely no sense of reason and absolutely no respect for their fellow man or respect for an office. Their idea of ‘Right to Assemble’ boils down to a gang of people holding vitriolic, hateful and rude signs while marching down the street – all 15 of them. Since when does assembling mean getting a little group of people and being as in-your-face as possible? Assembling used to mean gathering a large group of people together to have debates and discuss issues in order to be informed and to learn. What these people are doing isn’t assembling, it’s disrupting – and it is intentionally designed to be disruptive and overboard in order to create the most sensationalist possible in order to get media attention – because that’s how the media works today.
There was no communication generated by what these people did, they failed at getting their message out because they were incapable of contriving a method of presenting their ideas in a way that stimulated discussion. Instead, their methods only invoked anger, frustration and nerves.
Why is that?
It’s because the person visiting is the Vice President of the United States! Regardless of how you feel about his supposed actions, whether you feel he ought to be impeached, whether you think he’s a liar and a war monger, he is still the Vice President of the United States, he’s not guilty of ANYTHING you accuse him of until proven so, and he was here in Utah. If you can’t respect the man, at LEAST respect the office! If you want him impeached, do that on your own bloody time, don’t embarass our state and the other several million people who live here and disagree with you by acting like a child having a temper tantrum because you don’t like somebody and you’re forced to see him. He was here in his Office as Vice President, he was here to speak about education and the future with a group of people who have just graduated college. He wasn’t here to try to recruit you to his cause or to convince you that your feelings about him are wrong.
If you sincerely believe that he deserves to be impeached or that he has done something wrong, then do something about it, but be respectful and don’t make a total idiot of yourself! Gather together all the like minded people and actually assemble! Rent the McKay Event Center and fill it with all the people you can and have a huge debate and discussion (if you were smart, you would invite the opposing side of your issue so that you were actually informed of the facts from both sides, and if you were really smart, you would actually listen to both sides and THEN make your decision of how you should act). At your assembly, you should draw up a resolution of the people, agree on the wording of it and then have everyone there who agrees with it sign it. Then have each of those people take a copy of it to everyone they can and get them to sign it. Then, once you’ve shown that you actually have a LOT of people (note: a couple hundred is NOT a LOT, there are a couple million people around here) who agree with your position, petition your local government to endorse it, then petition your state government to endorse it and petition them to petition it to the Federal Representatives to submit it to Congress or the Senate. THAT is how you will actually get things done, THAT is actually what it means to Assemble, and THAT is how our Democratic Republic is designed to work!
The problem for you is, this is a Government OF the people, that means the majority rule, if your feelings and beliefs aren’t supported by the majority then the people are saying you’re wrong and therefore we shouldn’t change. It’s up to you to communicate your beliefs in such a way as to convince other people you’re right until you have a majority. How do you do that? By having another Assembly, by distributing your information, by educating people about why you feel the way you do. In short, it’s by getting people to listen to you!
So, did the dissenters get their message across today? Not by a long shot! What they did was piss off and embarass everyone else in this state. They showed the Vice President of the United States that Utah doesn’t give a crap about his office, that we’ll smear him if he comes here. That our selfish Minority thinks they should do whatever immature actions they want in order to get attention to their minority cause.
So, what did they accomplish? Well, in the future, when there is a Vice President of the United States that those people actually like, if he’s smart he’ll look at our record and see the way the minority here acted when a past VP came to visit – how are people going to act this time? Why should he waste his time gracing our state when the people living here clearly don’t have respect for the 2nd highest office in our Government? Oh, but no, we have the Right to Assemble! And they seem to think that means the right to make a mockery of anything we don’t agree with!
While they may have accomplished getting a few kudos from their like minded friends across the country, there are natural consequences for our actions. They certainly accomplished showing people across the country that the people in Utah don’t have respect or decorum. How did they do that? Well, our media outlets focused on the minority. They of course produce the most sensational stories they can, giving these so called protesters even a mention in the news is ridiculous. The majority of the people in this state will read or hear those news stories and shake their heads and talk about the idiots making a fool out of us.
You know, if you don’t agree with the majority of the people here in Utah, you’re welcome and have the Freedom to leave BYU and move to a state that takes pride in dis-respecting our leaders and loves to show a total lack of decorum – you’ll fit right in!
