The High Moral Ground

Since Sunday, August 24, as reported briefly on August 26 by the Associated Press on the Yahoo! news service, protesters have been attempting to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I could understand their anger and outrage if it was directed at the apparent hypocrisy of the candidates of both parties who pay lip service to the basic principles of the natural law that underlie the American system while doing as they please to advance their private agendas.

Unfortunately, they appear to be protesting the party most sympathetic to their stated goals - such as they are. In an article of some length, there was only one specific issue mentioned in two brief sentences: "[Kaycee] Ryann and [Eric] Finch described themselves as anti-capitalists who were protesting ecological devastation. They said others in the crowd were protesting other issues." As the article continues,

Ron Kovic, a paralyzed Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist who led a peaceful march the day before, hurried to the scene in his wheelchair from his downtown hotel after he heard about the confrontation.

"We must remain nonviolent. We must have the high moral ground," he told the crowd.

"There's a powerful police presence here. The chill of 1968 is in the air of Denver," said Kovic, whose story was chronicled in the book and movie "Born on the Fourth of July."

Frankly, the situation sounds like people anxious to experience or recapture the feelings, passion, and enthusiasm of the protest movements of the 1960s, but without anything substantive to protest, at least against the party that, to all appearances, supports them. Rather than any specific issue, protest itself has become the issue.

The irony is that, if they are so desperately seeking something to protest, there is no lack of serious issues with substance. Why not, for example, protest the deafness of both candidates and all parties concerning the Just Third Way? If they're against the war, why not express anger over the fact that "the establishment" has consistently refused to give serious consideration to CESJ's Iraq oil proposal? And if they're pro choice, why not protest the fact that pro life American taxpayers are denied the very right to choose that they themselves demand by being forced to pay for what they can only regard as murder? Have any of them even considered demanding that the State stay out of the abortion business altogether? As the State is the guardian of the common good, is it too much to ask that the State neither subsidize nor criminalize an issue that has the potential to plunge the country into civil war?

If the protestors are having difficulty finding a party that satisfies their demands on "other issues," have they bothered to check out the platform of the American Revolutionary Party?

What and where, exactly, is this "high moral ground"?

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