Unhinged Leftists

No, that really isn't redundant. Plenty of Leftists that I know are completely hinged. However, this story (found on Michelle Malkin's site) shows how dangerous some of those who consider themselves 'progressives' and 'pacifists' really are.

From the Columbia Tribune;

It started out as a typical Wednesday for [Rita] Preckshot, a 49-year-old who stands about 5-foot-2 and has hearing aids in both ears. She was standing on her normal spot on Providence Road, holding her signs in support of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. For nearly four years now, this has been Preckshot’s life from about 4:15 to about 5:45 in the afternoon once a week. She started her solo troop-support effort to counteract the peace protesters who stand a couple of blocks away at the intersection of Providence and Broadway. The peaceniks hold signs that say things such as "honk for peace" and "end the occupation."

They outnumber Preckshot every Wednesday, but she stands out there just the same, sometimes drawing another supporter or two to help her effort.

On this particular Wednesday - it was March 16 - her effort seemed to annoy a couple of the protesters. Not satisfied with their own peace protest, a pair of peaceniks grabbed their signs and made their way to Preckshot, who normally stands outside the Bloomers flower shop near Locust Street.

"Two of the guys from the corner walked down with a big sign that read ‘End the occupation,’ " she remembers. One of them started taking pictures of a Preckshot supporter across the street, she says. "At some point, the other guy starts coming toward me."

For a diminutive woman, Preckshot can handle herself. She’s a former police officer, and she isn’t easily intimidated. Still, a young man coming at her waving a sign in her face seemed a little aggressive, particularly from somebody supposedly advocating peace.

The man stepped closer. She backed off a step. He shoved a sign in her face, and she backed off once again.

"Don’t touch me!" she told him.

Then, she says, he pushed her.

"He started taunting me and reached out and pushed on my shoulder," Preckshot says. "Each time he pushed, it got a little harder. When I saw his hand come at me again, I grabbed it. I felt fearful."

As Preckshot pushed the man’s hand away, "he slugged me right in the face," she says.

Perhaps "Punch for peace" would have been a more appropriate sign.

The man, Paul Allaire, doesn’t live in Boone County. He lists Arcadia as his home, though he’s a frequent attendee at the Wednesday protests. He has been charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault for his alleged attack on Preckshot.
[...]
After the incident, Preckshot went to a nearby gas station to call the police, and they quickly arrived to take statements.

None of the peace activists, however, would give up Allaire.

That’s what steams Preckshot more than the punch that smashed her glasses and knocked her hearing aid to the ground.

That didn’t stop police from getting their man. A few days after the conflict, Preckshot and her husband, Geoff, were at the local military recruiting office on Broadway when the peaceniks marched by on their Palm Sunday protest. The Preckshots saw Allaire, holding the same "End the occupation" sign. Geoff snapped pictures of the alleged scofflaw while Allaire flipped his middle finger in his general direction. He called police, and they tracked Allaire down.

Apparently, he didn’t go quietly. He also faces a charge of resisting arrest.

"The great irony is the lack of cooperation with the local peace people," Preckshot says.
[...]
"If you can’t handle the conflict and the occasional negativity that comes with it, you shouldn’t be in the street," Preckshot says. She hasn’t had much conflict at all in her years standing along a busy road seeking support for troops...Still, she’s not willing to let the incident go, Preckshot says.

"I draw the line at getting punched in the face."

It really mystifies my why some people, raised in a culture that encourages debate and dissent, have to resort to violence over nothing. Rita Preckshot, whatever you think of her support for US troops, is not the enemy. If you disagree with the liberation of Iraq, fine. Hold up your signs, stage your marches, vote for people who agree with you, and so on. But, why would you walk up to someone you have a political disagreement with and hit them? Particularly a woman? Is Paul Allaire such an impotent, ignorant little bastard that he cannot handle dissent? Probably; and, in that, he resembles 'progressives' throughout history, who built their perfect societies on the corpses of millions (like the USSR, the PRC, Nazi Germany, etc).

It is a straight line of progression from hitting someone you disagree with to have organized genocides that slaughter millions. Given that we are in the early days of World War IV, people like Allaire should be punished harshly. Our enemies want to bring our culture and society down around our ears; it does not help when American citizens aid them by rejecting our ideals of discourse and compromise. This applies not just to people who oppose the war effort; it also means that those who support it and use violence against their political foes are equally dangerous.