Ted Cruz, stopped clock
by digby
He's not right very often but in this case he is:
"Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds. But we don't have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence against others. So it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation."
This is absolutely correct.
Like you, I assume, I think these militia members are completely full of BS in almost every way. But they do have a right to protest. In fact, I suspect many of us might join in a protest against a mandatory minimum with which we disagree, particularly if a friendly liberal judge had purposefully ignored it to make a point and the appellate court had reinstated it. I happen to believe that arson is a particularly heinous crime and I'm not surprised that someone would get a long term for starting fires but that's not the point. The principle is the same whether or not we agree with the particular mandatory minimum sentence or the protest itself. And they can protest and even occupy a federal building as part of it. There are many, many precedents for this.
The problem here is that they are threatening to shoot people and go down in a hail of glory to make their point. Armed protest is not a protest, it's violent intimidation. These people are dead wrong in that regard and even Ted Cruz agrees.
Using guns to make a political point is never ok. It's undemocratic, thuggish behavior and this insistence that "armed revolution" is a constitutional right is one of the most outrageous aspects of the NRA campaign to sell as many guns to Americans as possible. It's cynical and dangerous.
I've written a lot about this over the years. This piece talks specifically about the use of guns and the First Amendment.
Update: Brian Beutler reminds us that Cruz was once more sympathetic to the Bundy cause until he realized he was dealing with open and unrepentant white supremacists. I'm sure many of Cruz's supporters are also unrepentant white supremacists but they have learned not to talk to the press about African Americans being happier as slaves. I'm sure they all think that's just more PC but for the most part they're willing to abide by it.
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