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Comment by throwlogon | Hacker News Reader

A burnt-down courthouse is less of a threat to civil liberties than actual paramilitaries literally grabbing people off of the streets. We're better off when vandals are the bad guys, rather than state security.

EDIT: I'm not sure why I took your false dichotomy at face value in the first place. A burnt-down courthouse and an informal military occupation aren't the only two options; but even if they were, the former is preferable.

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Conservatives would LOVE the Portland Ninth Circuit Courthouses all burned down. They are the most Progressive Courts in the country.

...not sure who's side the anarchists are on.

I disagree. A mob burning down a courthouse isn't a minor thing: it's a clear symbolic statement that the justice system is illegitimate, the law has no power, and mob rule should be established. If I were confident that everyone would peacefully disperse and things would return to normal, I'd be all in favor of letting it burn, but I'd expect to just see more arson.

As the person above you has said, it's a false dichotomy. We can both respect people's civil liberties and prevent federal buildings from burning down.

He's saying that if those were the only choices he'd prefer those buildings burning down over the suspension of civil liberties. But they are not the only choices, we can protect both. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

I'm not sure we can. What ideas do you have in mind? The obvious strategy would be for local leaders to show up in person to express sympathy and solidarity with the cause, but that's been tried and doesn't seem to have changed anything.

I've seen some people float "do everything the mob demands so they won't have to follow through on their threats", but I hope we can agree that doing that would itself constitute mob rule.

The presence of federal agents and the police who are defending the court house is not illegal, it's their job. That helps defend the building from arson.

However federal agents violating 1st and 4th amendment rights by teargassing peaceful protests and unlawfully detaining people that's what needs to stop.

I fail to see why people are defending that behavior. You can support the deployment of those federal agents while still being critical of their overreach.

I'm critical of their overreach, but my criticism is muted, because I see the mob they're fighting against as a larger threat to the freedom of Portland residents. The police abuses we've seen are limited in scope and severity; as anyone who remembers 1992 can tell you, mob violence is very capable of engulfing an entire city.

And because of that overreach the criticism of the arsonists and rioters is muted as well, because the protesters see the police abuses as a larger threat to the freedom of Portland residents. It's what their entire protest movement is based on in the first place.

Both sides abandoning the middle ground is the reason we're in such a divisive political time. If you can't come to the defense of arguments you agree with because they're voiced by people you disagree with then you're contributing to the divisiveness.

Let's dispense with the residents per se because neither side cares about them, really. It's about power and institutions. The residents will vote soon enough anyway.

I don't believe I've abandoned any middle ground. I can come to the defense of those arguments. They just don't seem relevant to the urgent question of how to get rid of the mobs trying to burn down the courthouse. I'm sure we can agree that federal agents manning siege defenses every night isn't a workable long-term solution.

It certainly is not a workable solution, but given that the protests are about police abuses, perpetuating those abuses will only exacerbate the problem. The arguments might not seem relevant to you right now, but to the protesters they're fundamental to everything they stand for.

There is no easy fix for the problem, because any solution requires both the protesters and the police to come to the middle ground.

The police and federal agents need to show respect for the peaceful protests during the day and the protesters need to respect a reasonable curfew so police can do their work stopping rioters and arsonists at night.

Showing up in militarized uniforms and teargassing/shooting peaceful protestors doesn't bring us closer to that middle ground. Neither does destruction of property and defending rioters/arsonists.

Entirely true, but what's the hard fix? I'm skeptical of the federal plan to arrest a bunch of people until the problem stops, but it's at least a plan - if no one else can come up with one, I don't see much choice but to accept it.

> The police and federal agents need to show respect for the peaceful protests during the day and the protesters need to respect a reasonable curfew so police can do their work stopping rioters and arsonists at night.

That was the hard fix. I don't believe the feds will be able to solve it this time by doing what they did in LA in 1992.

And if we simply restore the status quo using a show of force then these riots will happen again and again.

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