You couldn't make it up dept. no.75: Washington DC cops and Thomas Jefferson

[fpb]

http://freethejefferson1.wordpress.com/

Comments

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

For the love of God, no bopping!

Man, this reminds me of those asshole cops in Atlanta who arrested and ticketed Scientology protesters.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

So...they went to a public memorial to make a statement-- dancing-- and one of them was asked to leave for disturbing the peace.

Didn't.

Was arrested.

Generally, I'm highly sympathetic...but I also noticed, the last few times that I visited DC, that folks who are making a statement tend to be a bit...um...inattentive. Nothing like being run over by five or six people to make you appreciate the guys who are trying to keep the peace. (Hey! I'm short, I'm shy, and I was 15! I still nearly got smushed by folks who were too busy "making a statement" to notice other humans.)

I'd need a LOT more information about what kind of "dancing" they were doing before I'm willing to be pissy about this, just from personal experience.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

There were no other humans - it was midnight. There was no question of a breach of the peace - the people were dancing to their own ipods, that is there was no noise. I think you are letting some bad personal experiences get in the way of what is actually on the page.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

I'm suspicious about ANYONE who says they're making demonstration of something, then complains about the cops shutting them down. Double that when they get it on really bad video.

Did they bother to call to see if events staged in that area required a permit? Basic decency, with a public area like that-- also took me a whole two minutes to find the number. 202.619.7225. Only open during business hours, I tried.

FYI, I watched the videos. They look and sound like a bunch of drunk and/or spoiled twits up too late, and they're pretty obviously looking for trouble from how they 1) filmed it and 2) react to the park officials like they're parents saying it's time for bed. Arguing with the cops just doesn't work, no matter what form they take.
FYI, when on Federal park grounds, you're supposed to listen to lawful orders from said officers-- such as "stop doing what you're doing and leave."

Jefferson stood up against an insane tyrant, putting his life, fortune and family at risk-- these idiots hopped around a memorial to him and want kudos? When the law-- and not an unjust law-- says "follow the legal direction of these men"?
Try again.

Looking at their website, I see no evidence of an "assembly plan notification."
http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/frames.asp?doc=/mpdc/lib/mpdc/serv/events/pdf/picket.pdf&group=1523
http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1241,q,548278.asp

Yes, it's a lot of junk, and it's annoying. But you know what? DC is a very SMALL place, and it's the nation's capital: you HAVE to be organized, and barring some actual disruption of rights, follow the @#$@ rules.

They broke the law. They then yelled at the park officials who came and told them to break it up. They were wrong.

Utter lack of sympathy from this vet. (I don't pull that card often, but I'm a bit pissed-- these little brats are breaking the law, and trying to get sympathy in the name of the guys I had to pack up gear for when they died? Screw them.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

George III was not insane (at the time) and not a tyrant. He was backed, indeed largely led, by Britain's Parliament. What happened was a conflict on what rights Britain had over its colonies, and Britain's claims were mild as compared with ordinary French or Spanish practice. As for your opinion of cops, I do not share it. Comes of my experience of calling in the cops to be protected against a thug - and finding them lining up with the thug. Since then, I have not seen eye to eye with anyone who paid too much tribute to police authority. A thug or a moron with a badge is still a thug or a moron, only rather more dangerous. And if you want to pull rank, I volunteered for Lebanon when you were not yet born - when the great conservative hero Reagan fled the country after one single terrorist outrage without telling his allies, who were supplying two-thirds of the troops (my Italian fellow soldiers alone were 2000) and leaving them to make their own arrangements. If you want any reason why we Europeans are rather reluctant to be dragged into American military adventures, remember that all the people who are generals in the British, French and Italian armies now were lieutenants and captains then (1983) and remember it even better than I do, I being a mere private.

[lametiger.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a third party to this discussion, what I am seeing here is one of the two of you siding with the police in part because of previous bad experiences with demonstrators and the other siding with the demonstrators in part because of bad experiences with cops! Overall, I tend to agree with headnoises in one respect--I would not want to make a final judgment about whether the police overstepped their bounds or the dancers purposely provoked the situation in hopes of the sympathy they are garnering, without having been there to see the whole thing myself. I largely agree that tyranny is in the eye of the beholder. In this case I would have preferred to behold with my own eye before coming down on either side.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

So, you're not going to reply to them apparently breaking the law AND getting pissy with the cops who were enforcing a valid law?

I really don't care about what you did-- unless you were one of the bopping idiots.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Hey, I wasn't the one who started bringing in her own experiences and pulling rank because she was a vet. And I still say that yours is a very peculiar way of celebrating Jefferson of all people. What was that about the tree of liberty and the blood of tyrants?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

A cop who arrests someone for what was once called "giving lip" is not a model of the defence of liberty, and I doubt whether Jefferson of all people would have been impressed.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

It is relivant because I went into mortal peril(and that was just the food--*rimshot*) for their right to assemble-- and they couldn't even be bothered to follow the rules or be mature when caught?

BTW-- tyrant is Tommy's word, and Britannia says he had bouts of madness that jacked up the Revolutionary war.

[lametiger.livejournal.com]

I'm still reserving judgment. I can not make out nearly enough from the videos to tell what really went down, and I am not going to automatically take the word of those who were involved in this "party." Since I was not there myself, I would be very interested in hearing the testimony of anyone who might have been there as a simple tourist, with no investment in either side of the conflict.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"Tyrant" is Jefferson's word, true, in a piece of writing which, however sublime its opening - and I have stated repeatedly that I rank it only a couple of steps below the Gospels - is, one must remember, a piece of war propaganda. By the time Jefferson and his allies put their names to the Declaration, they knew that they were, under British law, liable to be hanged (not even shot) for high treason. The element of propaganda is clear in the insistence on the person of poor old George, when even Patrick Henry's great speech spoke always of "the British government" and never of the King. It is a rhetorical convenience - it is easier to rouse anger against a figurehead than against two chambers full of rich aristocrats. And if you read Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation, you will find that the twelve points in which George's "tyranny" was set out are clearly imitated on the manifesto of the Dutch invader William III in 1688, so there is an element of turning Parliamentary propaganda against itself ("if you have the right to turn out the legitimate king James II Stuart, we have the right to turn out the far less legitimate king George III of Hannover"). As for George's mental illness, which had no effect on governance, it only became permanent in 1808, by which time Jefferson had himself been President for a while. And that it had no effect on governance may easily be seen by the fact that England's policy of enduring opposition to Napoleon remained unchanged from 1804 - when the treaty of 1802 collapsed - to 1815. Were the unfortunate George at all important to the government of Britain, the collapse of his mind in the midst of a life-and-death struggle with the mightiest enemy Britain had fought in a century would have been a catastrophe to the kingdom, but as a matter of fact everything passed off smoothly; because the true masters were the nobles assembled in Parliament.

Incidentally, George himself was so little of a tyrant that, when told, in 1783, that Washington, having won the war, would probably just want to retire to private life, exclaimed: "Why, if he does that, he will be the greatest man in all the world!" A believer in tyranny would never have said that: indeed, if he were serious about his belief, he would have berated Washington for refusing to fulfil his historical destiny.

side note

[fpb.livejournal.com]

and that was just the food
In a month of Basic Training I was stomach-sick four times, which I never am as a rule. Once I was so bad I fainted on morning parade and had to be taken to the infirmary. HOWEVER! I was then assigned to a unit attached to the Alpini, the elite mountain corps, who are to the Italian armed forces roughly what the Marines are to the US. The culture of excellence and self-respect bred in the bones of that body of men extended to the kitchens, and I never ate badly again. Given that I was not an Alpino but a miserable infantryman, that was lucky. The Alpini work hard and train hard - and have to share their barracks with hundreds of mules, whose smell sometimes reached right into the parade ground - but their officer corps is the best in the army, hard but totally fair and trustworthy. Indeed, comparing my commanding officer - an infantry colonel - with his deputy - an Alpino lieutenant colonel - was to compare ignobility with nobility. And as if that was not enough, they have the best male choir singing in Italy. I still have the highest respect and affection for the Alpini - so this (http://fpb.livejournal.com/180480.html) delighted me.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

*grin* So you're saying he wasn't insane, and if he was it didn't matter?

Reminds me of an old lawyer joke....
A lawyer borrows a bucket from his neighbor. When he returns it, there's a hole in the bottom. Well, it went to court, and the lawyer's defense was thus: he'd never borrowed the bucket, the bucket had a hole in it when he borrowed it, and the bucket was whole when he returned it....

On a serious note, porphyria is what they think he had, and he had a dire attack in 1765. So it is very possible that he had what they charitably call "personality changes" for almost his entire rein. Honestly, he was could've been pretty normal for most of it-- but random bouts of huge psychological change generally gets referred to as insanity. (This could also be applied as an argument to either side about your quote, honestly--"he was nuts" is pretty general purpose!)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The important point is that he didn't matter. Jefferson used him as a rhetorical convenience, knowing full well - as Patrick Henry knew - that it was "the British Government" that was the real enemy. He also consciously intended to raise the shadow of the still existent Stuart claim, using Parliament's own claims against them. England/ Britain has, through most of its history, an aristocratic republic disguised as a monarchy.

Re: side note

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Now I'm starting to wonder if you were in the same places my grandfather was during WWII. No way to know, since he's been gone for far too long and didn't talk much about it anyways.

The Holy Father is a delight in many ways--like a good cook, he just makes stuff better.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Which was the seeds of the revolution, in most figuring I've seen.

Re: side note

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Likely enough. There was lots of fighting around L'Aquila, in the mountains of central Italy, which was where I served. (I did basic training in Sassari, Sardinia, which was not a major area of fighting and was occupied by the Allies without resistance in the autumn of 1943.)

Re: side note

[fpb.livejournal.com]

According to an Alpini webpage I just visited, this seems to be a bit of a tradition. In 1979, Pope John Paul II wore an Alpino hat at a national gathering of veterans.

Your grandfather

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Actually, it ought to be possible to find out, if you are interested. If you can find out which unit he was in (are there any surviving family records?), it would be quite easy to find out the exact areas and times in which he served. There are such things as regimental histories and army archives, after all.

Re: Your grandfather

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

About all I (think that I) know is that he was in the 10th mountain division, he was drafted in '41 and he got promoted to Sgt because some kid Lt nearly got them killed in a rowboat accident and he saved 'em.... Oh, and he did something that he got a purple heart for that he didn't think he deserved.

My grandmother isn't "there" much anymore, or I'd ask her-- last time I asked about what he did, I ended up listening to her explain how very angry she got when she finally found out on accident that he'd gotten a purple heart.

I might try again some time-- thank you for sparking the idea!

Re: Your grandfather

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I heard of the Tenth. The way I heard it, which is probably bullshit, it was actually partly modelled on the Alpini and some of the people who forged it were Italian mountain veterans from the First World War. It really does look likely that your grandfather may have served somewhere I knew.

Re: Your grandfather

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://www.10thmtndivassoc.org/chronology.html

I haven't looked yet, but from what I see, it seems that the Tenth might have arrived in Italy after fighting had moved north of Rome and L'Aquila.

Re: Your grandfather

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Well, my grandmother claimed that the skiing part came about because someone pointed out to the guys in charge that a when you're trying to get around an area, it's generally a good idea to see what the locals do.

Looking around, apparently there's a good chunk of truth to the story: at least one of the instructors was a WWI vet, although he was Austrian, so there may have been other vets who were Alpini. There's LOTS of stories about the Alpini interacting with the 10th--some very sweet.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/travel/escapes/10ski.html

Yeah, I found the website(mentioned below), but Grampa didn't join these kind of things-- too practical, I think; he loved his guys, not any organization-- and they don't seem to have any lists of the enlisted guys. Ah well. Bet my dad knows...he learns a lot by being quiet and listening.