An even application of justice would be appreciated

Christine Flowers on Sep 11, 2023

The last time that I wrote anything about the Proud Boys, I got into some hot water.

There was a young man from the Bon Air Fire Department in Delaware County who had attended one or two Proud Boys meetings, and decided that it wasn’t for him. However, the mere fact that he had dared attend a meeting was considered sufficient grounds to treat him as a Nazi, which is what many people called him.

When the YouTube video of me defending this young man’s First Amendment rights was made public, several Antifa sympathizers started trolling me on social media, and I responded in kind. That was a big no-no for a news organization that thought I needed to be “nice” to people who hated me, and eventually they decided I was too much of a liability to keep.

Score two (the firefighter and the columnist) for Orwell.

I haven’t paid much attention to the Proud Boys since that incident. Nothing in their platform seems remotely legitimate, and their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol make them repellent, repulsive and stupid. And, they have too many tattoos.

That being said, their members also happen to be U.S. citizens entitled to all of the protections of the laws including the First Amendment.

They deserved to be convicted, and sentenced, commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.

But in order for us to have some sense of confidence in our legal system, we need to believe that the laws are applied fairly, and consistently.

We need, for example, to believe that someone who is rioting in the streets of Philadelphia, smashing store windows and stealing flat-screen TVs under the guise of social justice, is going to be charged with a crime.

We are not asking that they receive 17-year prison sentences. We are not asking that they be kept in solitary confinement. We are not calling them traitors to the state.

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