October 21, 2013

“Minnesota and its two largest cities sued the Trump administration on Monday to try to stop an immigration enforcement surge that has led to the fatal shooting of a Minnesota woman by a federal officer and evoked outrage and protests across the country.” That was the first paragraph in a recent Associated Press article which paved the way for yet another biased editorial masquerading as a balanced news story from the notoriously left-wing AP.

An alternative narrative could read, “Unruly protests in Minnesota by open-border activists attempting to impede federal officers in Minnesota from doing their duty arresting illegal immigrants led to the death of a woman who had blocked an ICE vehicle, disobeyed an officer’s command to get out of her car, then attempted to flee striking the officer who fired his weapon in self-defense.”

They key words here are “led to.” What’s the starting point? If Renee Good had stayed home that day, she’d be alive now. It’s her actions that led to her death. (Just as the Japanese attack on Peral Harbor is what ultimately led to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) The ICE officers were there lawfully doing their duty. Good intentionally blocked a street with her SUV to impede ICE vehicles. That’s illegal. ICE officers ordered her out of the car. She disobeyed and attempted to flee. That’s illegal. Her car struck an ICE officer. That’s illegal. The angle on the first shot the officer fired through the front windshield as he was jumping out of the car’s path made the shot defensive and justified. But none of this would have happened if Good had obeyed the lawful order or hadn’t joined Minnesota ICE Watch, a radical left-wing group that teaches its members how to obstruct law enforcement officers from doing their duty.

It doesn’t matter how nice a person she used to be, that she has three children (two of whom live with her first ex-husband), that she had roots in Colorado, or if she’s just a naïve radicalized pawn. It’s her illegal acts that led to her death which is being called a “tragedy.” Surely by her family, friends, and fellow radicals. But all tragedies aren’t equal; there’s a relative scale from 1-10, with 1 being the least tragic. The assassination of Charlie Kirk, a wholly innocent victim, was an unmitigated 10. Jack Ruby’s shooting of JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a 1. Renee Good falls somewhere in between.

The Kent State lesson

In 1970, during the Vietnam War, four days of escalating mass demonstrations by anti-war students at Kent State University in Ohio was accompanied by violent and criminal actions by a faction of protestors that included setting fire to the ROTC building. It culminated in a confrontation between 3,000 protestors and Ohio National Guard soldiers who were deployed by the governor to protect school property and restore order. Tensions mounted on the school Commons as the guardsmen were surrounded by protestors. Tear gas cannisters were launched by the troops and thrown back at them by the protestors along with rocks. Some of the troops defensively fired their rifles. Four students were killed, nine wounded. In the aftermath, a common question was, “What’s the lesson of Kent State.” The answers were varied based on one’s ideology.

Radical protestors of any political stripe who resort to violence and disobey lawful orders from armed law enforcement officers seem to imagine they’re somehow invulnerable or bulletproof because of the self-perceived “justice” of their cause. Applying this to the radical Minnesota anti-ICE activists, in the interest of their own health and safety, at least one lesson of Kent State is “Don’t throw a rock at a man with a gun.”

Of course, anyone has the option to risk one’s life for a cause. Soldiers, police, firefighters, and ICE agents do this every day. But for what cause were Renee Good and other Minnesota protestors risking their lives? Since legal immigrants have nothing to fear, is their cause unlimited illegal immigration and the right of illegal aliens to permanently remain unlawfully in our country, even those who have committed more serious crimes. They claim it’s to protect their neighbors. That’s a pretense. This is just another battlefield of the anti-Trump “Resistance.” Are these protestors truly so welcoming and forgiving of all their Minnesota neighbors ― immigrants or not ― even gangsters, drug dealers, rapists, or those Somali immigrants who have bilked Minnesota taxpayers out of billions of dollars in Medicaid and welfare fraud?