A Dec. 5 incident in Michigan shows again that it is past time for a simple rule to apply to protesters of any kind: Stay away from private houses. Period.
If this rule is broken, police should strictly enforce any and all relevant laws against harassment, incitement, trespassing, and disturbing the peace. More importantly, even when laws aren’t broken, social norms should apply. The legal right to free speech should bow, by custom if not by state force, to standards of civility and decency.
The topic of improper “protesting” arises again because several dozen protesters, some of them reportedly carrying weapons, gathered last Saturday night outside the private home of Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state. There, they yelled megaphoned imprecations against her for her support for certifying Michigan’s election results. As Benson’s 4-year-old attempted to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas, at least one of the protesters repeatedly yelled that the Bensons were “murderers.”
Yes, murderer. This, for asserting the legitimacy of Michigan’s election results, which gave an obviously insurmountable margin of more than 150,000 votes to President-elect Joe Biden over President Trump.
Let’s set aside any consideration of just how ludicrous the protesters’ point is. The legitimacy of a protest’s message is not the determinant of the propriety of the protest’s form. These protesters could have chosen any public square, any public forum, or reasonable medium to make their grievances known. Instead, they showed up — armed, no less — outside the home of an elected official at night and with children inside. And it was no dignified, candlelight vigil. It was a protest with bullhorns and epithets and demands that the official be arrested.
In short, it was a demonstration intended to bully, to intimidate, and to instill fear. And to do so not just to the official but to the official’s family, including children enjoying Christmas-related festivities.
This is unconscionable. Whether it comes from the Right or the Left, whether the “cause” is legitimate or not, protests of this sort are unacceptable. People’s homes should be off-limits. People’s families should be off-limits. And, come to mention it, people’s neighborhoods should be off-limits. Neighbors have done nothing to deserve having their home lives disturbed by noisy mobs yelling expletives, much less armed ones.
Peaceful, well-behaved, respectful, law-abiding demonstrators can be a blessing to a republic. Disruptive, bullying mobs, though, should be shunned. And if those mobs break any laws, the lawbreakers should be arrested, booked, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced. Freedom of speech is not a license for mayhem.
