Shame on You, Pete

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia

 

Some time ago, your Head Trucker concluded that the only person left in the Administration with good sense was Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation (who is young enough to be my son).  But now I see I was mistaken.

My truckbuddies will have already read about Buttigieg's defense of the protesters outside the restaurant where Justice Kavanagh was dining the other day, citing their First Amendment rights.

Now I have no high regard at all for Kavanagh and the other Trumpists who voted to overturn Roe - and by direct and indirect statements, threatened also to undo the whole concept of a constitutional right to privacy that has been settled law for half a century, and which underpins many other rights that have come to be accepted as normative - like the right to contraception, and to same-sex marriage, to name but two.

It was a nasty thing those five justices did, who voted to overturn Roe and have precipitated us all into a constitutional crisis whose full extent and effects have yet to be seen.

Nevertheless, no matter how much I despise a public official's acts, I cannot endorse hounding and harassing him in the ordinary course of private life - whether at home or in a restaurant or store.  This is a repugnant thing, and I will give you three good reasons why:

1.  It violates the Golden Rule - often summarized as "Do as you would be done by."  Although it was stated by Christ, it is not an exclusively Christian rule; in fact, it appears in the same or very similar form in the teachings of just about every religion around the world, and even among primitive tribes without a set of scriptures.  Even oh-so-modern atheists are sometimes heard mouthing it.

2.  But if course, if you don't give a flip for anything even remotely connected to religion, well then, surely you must consider an invasion of privacy to be at the very least a violation of the good manners you learned at your mother's knee.  What's that, you say?  Free speech trumps good manners?   Well, I can only reply that my mother also taught me that Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right.  Free speech is not the only right, and it does not justify doing anything you feel like doing, to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

And how do you justify disturbing the peace - a crime - of the other people in the neighborhood, the restaurant, the store?  Perhaps you will say that the end justifies the means - a favorite line of dictators.  But just exactly what good result will come of your disturbance?  What exactly will it accomplish?

3.  And if all that rings no bell with you, how about this:  if it's just fine and dandy to harass the hell out of people at their homes and in restaurants, why then, what's sauce for the goose is certainly sauce for the gander, is it not?  This nasty behavior invites retaliation in kind.  Suppose a crowd gathered outside the Buttigieg home, or around the place where Pete and his husband were dining, shouting ugly words and carrying signs - would you like to see that happen?  Say what?  Oh, you wouldn't?

Well, I guarantee you it will be happening if you and Pete and the rest of the good liberal folks don't wake up and stop this stupidity.  It's a great way to spark that civil war we have all heard rumors of.

I've warned about this kind of stupidity before.

Shame on you, Pete.  I thought you were a bigger, better, wiser man.  Now I don't see anyone under 80 on the Democratic side to admire.  You were my last hope.  

The Democratic Party that I knew is changing beyond recognition and dwindling rapidly into insipid uselessness - a cake left out in the rain.  It makes me ill to see what is happening to my party and to my country, the steady erosion of common decency, the fragmentation of society, the descent into madness.  I really hope I don't live to see the final act of this tragedy.

My hat is off to the valiant Liz Cheney, though - one of the few Republicans left with moral character and BALLS.

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