Breaking windows: when shouting racial epithets is not enough

by David Safier

The Kansas City Star wrote this about the multiple vandalizing of Democratic offices.

. . . on Monday, a former Alabama militia leader took credit for instigating the actions.

Mike Vanderboegh of Pinson, Ala., former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, put out a call on Friday for modern “Sons of Liberty” to break the windows of Democratic Party offices nationwide in opposition to health care reform. Since then, vandals have struck several offices, including the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita.

“There’s glass everywhere,” said Lyndsay Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party. “A brick took out the whole floor-to-ceiling window and put a gouge in my desk.”

Stauble said the brick, hurled through the window between Friday night and Saturday morning, had “some anti-Obama rhetoric” written on it.

Vandals also smashed the front door and a window at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ office in Tucson early Monday, hours after the Arizona Democrat voted for the health care reform package.

Over the weekend, a brick shattered glass doors at the Monroe County Democratic Committee headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

Attached to the brick was a note that said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” — a quote from Barry Goldwater’s 1964 acceptance speech as the Republican presidential candidate.

And on Friday, a brick broke a window at Rep. Louise Slaughter’s district office in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Slaughter, a Democrat, was a vocal supporter of the health care reform bill passed by the House on Sunday.

Here's more of what Vanderboegh said.

“We can break their windows,” he said. “Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”

Vanderboegh told The Kansas City Star that the action was meant to “get everyone’s attention.”

“What I was trying to get across was that people do not understand how on the edge of civil conflict this country is,” he said.

I know, just another kook. This isn't about the constant barrage of hateful lies the Republicans have spread since the moment Obama was elected . . . hell, since he got into the presidential race . . . hell, since Lee Atwater ran Bush I's campaign. Naw. That has nothing to do with it. I'll bet the guy is a Democratic plant. Right? Am I right?

Keep denying it, guys.

NOTE: I don't blame Barry Goldwater for the use of his famous phrase, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” on one of the bricks. He would be genuinely outraged by all this. Then again, I don't blame him for The Goldwater Institute either. His name and words have been appropriated by the twisted right for its own ends.