Blocking roads is not a legitimate way to protest and is not protected by the First Amendment; not only is impeding traffic inconvenient for citizens, but it may well be dangerous in that it could prevent an emergency vehicle (or a private vehicle carrying a person suffering from a medical emergency) from proceeding or that it may result in an accident due to a driver who may not have expected the road being blocked by idiots.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) agrees and is now on record urging people delayed by pro-Hamas protestors to remove them forcibly.
Sen. Tom Cotton on Tuesday doubled down on comments urging people delayed by traffic stemming from pro-Palestine demonstrations to “forcibly remove” some protesters who are blocking streets.
“Absolutely, I support people, if they’re blocked by traffic, by pro-Hamas vigilantes in the street, they should get out of their cars, they should move them to the side of the road, and they should let traffic continue,” Cotton, R-Ark., told NBC News on Tuesday.
While there are many ways that this could go badly for all parties, there is only so much people will put up with, and in our major cities, people’s daily commutes are all too often stressful enough without having the roads blocked by protestors. Yes, these people have a First Amendment right to protest — but not in the roadways. They have a right to speak, but they do not have the right to interfere with other people’s rights to go about their daily business unimpeded; every one of these protestors should be cuffed, transported, and charged, but that’s not happening, and people are getting good and sick of it.
We’ve seen examples of this frustration already — in Rome and Berlin, for example:
As a certain famous sci-fi character might have observed, this is The Way.
Senator Cotton did make clear that he wasn’t calling for violence; just removal, although he did offer some thoughts on what might happen to such protestors in his home state.
“If something like this happened in Arkansas, on a bridge there, let’s just say I think there’d be a lot of very wet criminals that have been tossed overboard — not by law enforcement, but by the people whose road they’re blocking,” Cotton said.
“And if they glued their hands to a car or the pavement, well, it’d probably be pretty painful to have their skin ripped off, but I think that’s the way we’d handle in Arkansas,” he added.
I won’t speak for Arkansas, but I suspect Alaskans would likewise be pretty intolerant of this nonsense.
In San Francisco, where pro-Palestine protestors blocked the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday, police stood by for a prolonged period, doing nothing while traffic stacked up. That’s not to lay any blame on the rank-and-file cops; smart money says they were ordered not to interfere. Other jurisdictions, though, are less passive. Florida gets it.
Previously on RedState: New: Florida Law Enforcement Confirms FAFO Strategy on Pro-Hamas Protesters After Video Clips Go Viral
WATCH: Pro-Hamas Simps Learn That Florida Isn’t New York, and Consequences Are Delivered
A few road-blockers ending up in San Francisco Bay may have sent a strong message to the others — as Voltaire would have it, pour encourager les autres.
Senator Cotton makes a good point, and it’s too bad that we have come to such a pass that ordinary citizens are required to physically drag these Darwin Award candidates off of the roadways just so they can go about their daily affairs. Enough is enough. It’s time cities and states stopped enabling these “protesters,” who resemble nothing so much as the north end of a southbound horse.
