The G-20 Summit "Protests"

I flew out of Toronto in the middle of the G-20 so I was spared the "bloodbath." To hear the whiny-leftist fellow-travelers of the adolescent violence addicts who broke windows, burned police cars and acted like anti-social jerks talking in the media you would think that (1) Toronto had descended into lawless anarchy and desperation and (2) that Toronto also had turned into a police state with all human rights abolished forever by a military government. How the two scenarios go together is something no can understand. The whiners need to get their stories straight. It was not a big deal; it just criminals out in the daylight for a change.

I planned to write something on the "protester" but Rex Murphy was more eloquent than I and hit just the right note in his piece in the National Post: "Hooligans Coddles for Too Long."

For this set of malcontents — they’re not protestors; protestors have moral standing — the deliberations of heads of government in a time of crisis are merely a background stage on which to engage in violent and arrogant abuse of the idea of civic action.

They degrade protest.

Don’t buy their muddled mendacious rhetoric either. They care as much about the general well-being of the rest of us as the stone or brick in their hand, or that hammer cares for the well-being of the Starbucks window.

Some people are saying that Toronto shouldn’t have hosted the summit of world leaders — because this crowd would cause trouble. Absolutely wrong.

Cities and governments don’t choose to do or not to do things because a couple of hundred hit-and-run artists put up a smarmy threat of “direct action.” The splinter doesn’t direct the oak.

Yesterday’s mini-riot had one irony that will be very hard for some to digest. It gives at least partial cover for the extraordinary one $1-billion cost that went into security for the G20 meeting here in Toronto.

The Black Bloc, and you can bet they will love this, is Stephen Harper’s best political friend today.

For very long the pseudo-anarchists have been coddled and played with.

The costs of that approach showed up in the images of Toronto broadcast all over the world yesterday — Toronto the mild looking like Toronto the war zone.

Insofar as it is at all possible, those who are responsible for the criminal activity and damage to property should be arrested and charged. They should be banned for good from any like event in future. Penalties should be heavy.

Toronto is a decent, civilized city — hooligans and thugs should never be allowed to twist those virtues into a shield for their own ignorant and dangerous ends.

To the extent that the protesters have any ideology it amounts to little more than nostalgia for the Communism of the Soviet Union. They deserve no sympathy from the public, no leniency from the courts, and far harsher treatment than they received from the police.