Take Away the First Amendment and You Get Crazy Extremists

Get Religion has an excellent article here on something that I always thought was linked. See
Why push the “kill” button? They quote and link a New Republic article that I think it is right on , with some caveats I shall below.

Here is a part:
Brace yourself. Shields has a motive that is logical, but will be hard for progressives to handle. Here’s the basic idea: When many, many activists are not allowed to protest, a tiny number on the fringes will be tempted to turn to violence out of frustration.

Unlike the small sit-ins orchestrated by leftist Catholics, Operation Rescue orchestrated large clinic blockages in cities from New York to Los Angeles. The promise of this campaign — and the influence of Operation Rescue — actually controlled violence-prone extremists. Throughout the 1980s, for instance, there was an inverse correlation between abortion-related violence and the success of civil disobedience. As Christopher Keleher found in the DePaul Law Review, “the drop in the number of violent incidents correlated with increase in the number of nonviolent protests.” The nonviolent, civil disobedience seemed to control violence-prone radicals by providing them with an outlet for their pro-life zeal.
But this institutional restraint largely disappeared when Operation Rescue imploded in 1992, partly because of the autocratic management style of its leader, Randall Terry. And perhaps more importantly, many activists simply exhausted their energy and vacation time in jail. These internal failures were greatly compounded by the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act under the Clinton administration, which made it a federal crime to participate in clinic blockades. The collapse of Operation Rescue released violent radicals from any institutional constraints, leaving them to their own darkest desires.

Thus, fringe people may have turned to violence — once they knew that meaningful protests were no longer possible. Take away the First Amendment, in other words, and radicals may pick up guns.

After seven deaths in the 1990s, the editors of the Harvard Law Review argued that the crackdown on clinic blockades by the federal government closed one of the only remaining “safety valve[s]” for democratic dissent. The consequence, according to its editors, is that as we have “foreclosed nonviolent outlets of dissent, violence has increased.” First Roe pushed activists out of electoral politics and into the streets, and then the federal crackdown on civil disobedience pushed many others off the streets as well — into even darker corners. So while pro-life activism is declining on a broader level, the lives of abortion providers have never been more imperiled by extremists. …

A few thoughts. First I don't think there is evidence of a TREND here. On either the left or right or especially in the pro-life movement. I have no idea where he is getting that "anti-abortion violence at an all-time high"

But I think the theory holds on both the left and right. I often have conversations with people that are very fearful of Islam. I still make the argument that America must do all efforts to assimilate these folks. If one makes it go underground then the above happens to a certain degree.

Lost in all this supposed coverage of the dangerous right wing is a little recent history. Think of the protests at the the two most recent GOP conventions. That was a lot more scary looking in some ways. In fact there was evidence of violence and there were successful prosecutions of folks who were planning a pipe bomb event at the most recent one. Still even in this case the Democratic outlet moderates on the whole the crazies.

Each side that engages the hot button issues has the extremists that must be watched. But I think Speech defuses the situations more times than not.

So people should be very careful about making absurd claims against pundits on the left and right we see on the TV shows. They serve a purpose far beyond their political goals.

On a Catholic note we saw this recently in a way with Pope Benedict and the whole SSPX situation. No doubt there are some crazies in that group and there is evidence of anti Jewish thought. However Pope Benedict realizes the key to stopping that is to include the whole SSPX into the fold(the majority of which do not hold to these crazy theories) so not only to moderate them but to make sure error does not just increase. Again it gives an outlet.

One now wonders if for instance the Notre Dame reaction to the pro-life protesters at the big Obama Speech was wise at all.