About an hour ago I was shopping at the local Mother’s Market health food store. Outside were two protesters from Lyndon LaRouche’s faction of the Democratic Party, a man and woman, both about 25. They had a sign in front of their table with a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache. Below the picture, the sign read:
LaRouche to Obama:
No Hitler State
Health Care Cuts
I wondered what they meant: Obama would cut health care too much? Or Obama’s socialist program wouldn’t be socialist enough for LaRouche, who has a heavy communist background, thus bringing cuts?
Trespassing
I didn’t ask them, because something more was at stake — something I bring up whenever I confront similar protesters in front of stores: property rights.
“Why are you trespassing on Mother’s property rights?” I asked.
“Are you going to join the revolution?” the man asked.
“This is private property,” I said, sticking to my point. “If you want to protest, go out there.” I pointed to the public sidewalk about 100 yards away — where, of course, there were few people walking by.
“America is falling apart,” the guy said. “Do you want to be part of that?”
“You‘re part of that. Violating property rights like this is destroying America.”
“You’re referring to the Confederate Constitution,” he said. I didn’t pursue the point. But I could have said that the Confederate Constitution copied the property rights protections of the U.S. Constitution.
Instead, I said, “The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees property rights.” I didn’t quote it directly to him, but the words guarantee that a person not be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Instead, I pointed to a sign that Mothers had brought out and set up next to the LaRouchie table. The sign said Mother’s didn’t approve of the people there, but couldn’t remove them. I said, “Mother’s clearly doesn’t want you here, on their property. It’s only some nutty court decision that redefined private property in shopping centers as ‘public property.’ Free speech is an essential liberty, but so are property rights. How would you like it if I came into your living room and squatted there with a protest sign?”
The woman finally spoke up and tried to get me to join their revolution. I walked off.
LaRouchie run-ins
I’ve had numerous run-ins with the LaRouchies over the years. Around 1983 a friend of mine picked me up at National Airport in Washington. In ther terminal, a LaRouchie protester held a poster (this was before airport security was tightened) reading, “Support the Beam!” — a LaRouchie scheme to shoot down Soviet missiles with laser beams.
“I though Ed Koch was mayor of New York,” I quipped to my friend. He laughed because Abe Beame had been mayor of New York from 1974-77, but had been defeated in 77 by Ed Koch. (It was funny back then. Not so much now.)
In 1986 I was writing editorials for The Washington Times (an unpleasant experience itself) and wrote a signed column attacking the LaRouchies. The afternoon after the paper came out, when I came home from work my phone lines, located outside my apartment in a common box, had been cut. No other apartment denizens were affected. I called the phone company and the cops, but nothing came of it. I don’t think it was just a coincidence.
LaRouchies — Democratic leftists
LaRouche’s history is one of the stranger ones around. He’s a Democrat who has run for president seven times with his party. His ideology combines Marxism, Trotskyism, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories about the Queen of England running the world drug trade, high-tech schemes, classical culture, and much else. The ideology changes every several years.
He has a long list of likes and hatreds. He likes Plato and hates Aristotle. Pythagoras is in but Euclid out.
He says he’s given up Marxism. But if his followers violate property rights, as I witnessed today, then he hasn’t.
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