The University of Florida police prevented a journalism student from completing his questions of guest speaker Senator John Kerry by dragging him from the room, tasering him (while he was down, as far as I can tell, but bad nonetheless), and then arresting him on a phony charge of “disrupting a public event.” I don’t agree with the young man’s views and he was being a little antagonistic (angry Democrat), but as the videos show it was the police department that created the disruption. The young man had done nothing to warrant the campus police doing what they did. Do they not realize that public debate like that can sometimes get quite heated and this is a normal and desirable feature of democracy? (Note the scene illustrating freedom of speech and democracy in the first couple minutes of this video.) No, apparently, they do not; rather, they seem to think that anything other than soft ball questions of “our great and dear leaders” warrants being assaulted and falsely arrested.
As a public figure and one of our so-called political leaders, Kerry should have done something to stop the abuse and protect the young man. Instead, Kerry did nothing except attempt to talk over the disruption and make a show of answering the young man’s questions. Obviously, Kerry is not concerned with defending civil liberties and keeping government power in check.
Read about it here.
And here’s yet another disturbing example: the September 17, 2007 beating of David Snyder in Roseland, Indiana. What’s more disturbing is that 27% of the readers of that article seem to think what the police officer did was proper. Say “bah,” sheeple.
And here’s yet another. Video of such cases seem to be popping up on the internet more and more often.
Geoffrey is an Aristotelian-Libertarian political philosopher, writer, editor, and web designer. He is the founder of the