I’ve been watching the legal proceedings against the G-20 hooligans… the self-righteous, I know better than you, idiots who steamrolled over the legitimate rights of people to protest peacefully against their own governments and the international community.
This morning, one of the charged protesters was on TV moaning about illegitimate leaders trampling human rights and creating a police state. Give me a break. At least most of these leaders had the benefit of being chosen by their people to speak for them; the radical protesters decided to take away the rights of legitimate protesters entirely on their own initiative.
By rioting and looting – and making what happened at the G-20 all about THEIR issues – they closed down discussion on the things that bothered everyone else … including me.
Like many people, I have severe misgivings about the additional powers that governments gave police to arbitrarily arrest and detain people and to curtail the right of people to gather and protest.
I don’t believe that governments should be able to curtail rights without some official consensus from the people, at the very least a vote of support by Parliament or legislatures. This isn’t criticism of the police – they were just doing what they were ordered to do – it was a political failing.
As Canadians, either we have rights or we don’t. Either we are protected from arbitrary detention or we aren’t. If our rights can be suspended by governments… at will… behind closed doors, then they aren’t rights. They are only favours granted to us by politicians until they decide to take them away.
So the rights of Canadians were trampled twice, once by our governments and then by the hooligan protesters. As a result, we have never had a real discussion about our rights and judging by the circus surrounding the courthouse in Toronto today we probably never will.
