SignOnSanDiego.com: Two hurt, eight arrested in Orange County protest against Minuteman Project – A protest against the founder of the border-watching Minuteman Project turned violent when a car drove into the crowd, slightly injuring two people, and at least eight people were arrested, police said.

It’s not that there was a protest of a speech that’s the Rant… oh no, the Rant is in the back story.

OK, so you see a group of people listening to a speech that’s being given by a self-proclaimed vigilante. You gotta know that the speech giver is talking to a group of people that are interested in his cause – why else would you be there to protest? – so you have a group of self-proclaimed vigilantes that you’re going to protest.

You protest by driving your car into the crowd… and then act surprised when they swarm your car and yell at you. To defend yourself, you bounce out of the van, knocking people down and wonder why it gets ugly? Ever wonder what happens if you light gasoline on fire? Feh!

On top of that, the sole foundation of your protest seems to be that of racism.

Just a bit of background… for the most part, I’m not for vigilante justice. “Mob rule” is a dangerous thing and it almost causes more harm than good – i.e. the Rodney King Riots in LA. For the minutemen, they’re more of a self-appointed border control than they are a group of vigilantes – I think they keep using that label in the press because it gets them more press. In fact why would they be using the name minutemen, if not for press? Great play on the patriotic heartstrings…

The truth is that our government is asleep at the wheel with our southern border, so this might even fall into the “Something had to happen” category… whether it will do more harm than good, time will tell.

But to protest this group with an accusation of racism? Errr…

At the most basic of levels, the minutemen are trying to stop the flow of illegal aliens into the US. Because that border is shared with Mexico, does that make them anti-Mexican? Anti-hispanic? If an English citizen tried to illegally cross over the US/Mexico border and got rounded up by this group, do you think they would check their ID and say “Oh, you’re English, come on it!”? Or for a Japanese fisherman that dipped into too much sake and wound up in Baja California… do you think he’d get a free pass? Uh, no, I don’t think so.

Attack the group with issues over civil liberties, or that they’re toying with vigilante-type justice, or the fact that they’re acting as an illegal law agency (like the Guardian Angels of NYC once were… which would be classically ironic, since they’re only holding up the law in the first place) or any number of other things… but the race card? Good God man, that’s idiotic! By the same argument, I would be anti-bee’s because I keep bees out of my house. Or anti-wind, because I have my windows closed. Anti-eating because I have my mouth closed? Anti-skin because I stir my pudding in the cup?

There’s a lot wrong with the situation in the article – this was just picking out the biggest one – but oi… I just wish the government would take whichever lobby that’s causing them to neglect our border and shove it into a box… and then get on with their jobs of enforcing the border laws.

Jeesh.