All Activism Is Not Created Equal

I had to muse at Kevin Richert’s blog entry:

On Tuesday, Fischer decried the Nampa Library Board’s decision to return sexually explicit books to the main shelves (where they’d be more likely to be ignored if Fischer et. al. would stop stirring up a fuss about them). Fischer affixed the blame squarely with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The ACLU once again has used merely the threat of an expensive lawsuit to intimidate a community into cowering in meek submission to its bullying tactic.”

Considering Fischer’s continued hectoring of Boise City Hall — aimed at pushing city leaders into installing a Ten Commandments monument at Julia Davis Park — he’s the last guy to lecture another activist group about bullying tactics. You know, the whole glass houses thing.

The left seems blissfully unable to tell the difference between the legitimate use of the democratic process and the use of courts as the sole method of achieving their ends. The two suits that Fischer filed related to the refusal of the City of Boise to hold a public hearing (in the first place) and their blocking of a vote on a duly qualified citizen’s initiative. All Fischer wanted was a right to get a fair and public vote

If saving two pornographic sex manuals for the library were a big enough cause, recall petitions could have been launched against City Councilmen, an effort could have been made to recall Council Members who disagreed with them or a voter education drive could be ran against them.

Why didn’t this happen? Truth is that there’s been a very small portion of the Nampa electorate that really cares about this issue. You’d never get petitions signed, you’d never get people to volunteer, you’d never have a popular outcry, and you’d never win a public vote on recall. Even if you could somehow finagle a voter initiative, it would be voted down.

What Bryan Fischer sought in Boise was to gain access to the tools of democracy available to him through volunteers from a large coalition to pursuade his fellow citizens that a 10 Commandments monument was a good idea.

What those advocating for these books in the Nampa Library sought to do is to take the Sledgehammer of legal thuggery to try and intimidate a board of five volunteer board members who really didn’t want a fight.

These people knew they couldn’t win through the political process, because when it comes to the tools of democratic activism, all they had was a clown hammer.