Protest the Protests!

My commentary is on the blog post “Blog #5 Texas State and Local Government”.  This blog’s driving point seems to be a concern that protesters fail to engage their critical thinking skills before engaging in protests at the capital and that they are just being riled up by media coverage.  The author does not provide their name, but from their profile information I find that they consider themselves a staunch conservative and are studying Agriculture at Texas A&M.

I found his commentary level headed and reasonable, with little to no inflammatory language.  He seems to have a genuine concern for his topic, and quite frankly I agree with almost all of his post.  I would say his target audience is probably conservatives, but I can see almost anybody from any stance agreeing with him.  The only blatant political leaning was in the example he used where he specifically targeted people opposing the bill.  From what I can remember, there were protesters from both sides of the debate that were there protesting, and to single one out as being more ignorant of the topic than the other is shortsighted.

One of the underlying tones of the post that I found a tad naive is the thought that these kinds of protests are something new.   I would argue that if you take the time to look back on history you’ll see that this is anything but out of the ordinary and that our lack of protests in recent years is actually what is out of the ordinary and in fact more worrying.  I was personally ecstatic that people finally felt impassioned enough to get off their couches and go make them selves heard.  I wish more people would get this involved on topics other than the few that the media decides to cover.  Even if they are not that knowledgeable to begin with, the act of being involved will often times produce self education.