You know, one wonders what really happened in Chicago in August 1968.
Yeah, sure, we have all these books and accounts of the riots during the Democrat National Convention, but one wonders how true, how accurate, those descriptions really are.
When I was in college, I wanted to do a research paper on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), at which the professor balked, saying it was "too difficult" of a subject for a sophomore to treat decently.
This professor was the one who constantly alleged that franksolich understood and utilized the "Marxist theory of history" better than any student he had had at the University of Nebraska (the professor was there for three years, borrowed from.....Yale).
He was hard-core rabid Trotskyite professor, but in those days, professors were made of different material than they are these days; he actually believed in, practiced, and tolerated dissent from his own party line.
A real gentleman.
Anyway, he made the unusual (unusual in those days, usual these days) comment that all books and accounts of the Spanish Civil War should be burned, as there wasn't a whit of truth in any of them.
Now, I'm not sure if anybody else knows this, but both the professor and franksolich knew, and know, that nearly all books and accounts--something damned close to 99.99% of them--of the Spanish Civil War were written by professional rabid left-wing radicals.
And so the mass murders and broad cruelties of the socialists were minimized and even denied outright, and sporadic acts of justice by the nationalists were twisted into orgies of bloodshed.
When I wanted to write the paper, this was decades, generations, after the Spanish Civil War, but the passions had not yet died down. The professor let me do things my own way, and he was right; it was damned difficult to sift through things to get the truth of all that really happened.
I don't think I even managed to get within ten miles of the truth.
Anyway, so we have all these books and accounts of Chicago in August 1968.....books and accounts written by those sympathetic to the spoiled brats rioting on the streets of Chicago. And of course the news-media strongly favored them against normal decent civilized people, and did their reporting accordingly.
Discounting for this bias, when looking at Chicago in August 1968, I suspect the "protestors" didn't get a tenth, a hundredth, of what they deserved, for all the problems they caused.
For example, a "protestor" alleging a skull cracked by the billy-club of a cop had probably, in real life, simply been kindly and politely asked by a cop to move over ten feet so an ambulance rushing to help someone could get through.....but the "protestor" "felt" it was as if his skull was cracked by a cop.
Or another "protestor" alleging being tossed to the ground and his back beat by cops, probably in real life had accidentally been brushed by the shoulder of a cop rushing to help someone--the cop saying "excuse me," too.....but the "protestor" "felt" he had been knocked to the ground and beaten black-and-blue.
I don't think the "protestors" in Chicago in August 1968 got anything near what they should have gotten.
I'm very much for free speech and all that, but it seems to me that when one crosses a line denying others the same right of free speech (as these "protestors" wished to do, and pretty much succeeded), then one loses his own right to free speech.
