Discriminations

I recently referred to the "storm-trooper tactics" of those opposing equal rights in Michigan. Now comes Thomas Bray, Detroit News columnist, noting that "Fascism on the Left on Display in Michigan."

... no sooner had the meeting started than a mob of mostly black students from Detroit schools, led by a radical national outfit calling itself By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), stormed the building, overturning tables, jumping on chairs, stomping their feet and yelling “They say Jim Crow – We say hell no.” When a black Democratic member of the board dared to suggest that he might have no choice under the law but to approve the measure – as a Michigan Court of Appeals panel has twice ordered – he was shouted down: “Be a black man!”

Cowed by this show of force, the board once again failed to muster the three votes to let the ballot go forward. In the end, few observers doubt the courts will approve the measure. The state’s rigidly nonpartisan Bureau of Elections has certified that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, as it is called, received 465,000 valid signatures, 150,000 more than necessary. And the three-judge appeals court panel that ordered the Board of Canvassers to ballot the issue included two judges who are widely viewed as left of center.

Had a mob of student conservatives invaded a meeting of state officials, it would have been denounced as fascist. The fascism of the left tends to be excused, even by those who know better, as a case of overwrought idealism. But voters may not be so easily fooled.