#OccupyOakland: never bring uptwinkles to a gunfight

**Posted by Phineas

I think Oakland has just met its next mayor, who knows how to handle rioters:

“We had people who attempted to break into our building,” the landmark Rotunda Building on Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, [Oakland developer Phil] Tagami said Thursday. He grabbed a shotgun that he usually keeps at home, went down to the ground floor and “discouraged them,” he said.

“I was standing there and they saw me there, and I lifted it – I didn’t point it – I just held it in my hands,” Tagami said. “And I just racked it, and they ran.“

Clint would be proud:

Compare Tagami’s action to the pusillanimous whines of appeasement coming from Oakland’s elected “leaders:”

City Administrator Deanna Santana apologized to business owners for the “chaotic events” that enveloped the city. Mayor Jean Quan called the rioters “a small and isolated group.”

“It shouldn’t mar the overall impact of the demonstration and the fact that people in the 99 percent movement demonstrated peacefully and, for the most part, were productive and very peaceful,” Quan said.

Neville Chamberlain is alive and well in Oakland’s city hall.

Citizen Tagami, however, isn’t buying it:

Tagami disagreed, calling the Occupy Oakland encampment “basically concealment and cover for anarchists who are doing this to our city.”

“We’re very concerned that a group of people can be allowed to do this type of destruction to our town and to our image without any repercussions,” Tagami said. “They need to be held accountable.”

Exactly.

In all seriousness, this is what happens when muddleheaded governments break the social contract and fail to protect the rights of all people equally, as they are supposed to. The right to have one’s livelihood and possessions secure from violence is as fundamental and natural to liberty under the rule of law as freedom of speech. When government officials such as Mayor Quan vacillate and refuse to do the job for which they were elected, it is left to citizens such as Frank Tagami to defend their rights themselves in a state of nature.

Again, no one is saying the Occupiers don’t have a right to protest — they most certainly do. But our very open, very tolerant society provides wide-open avenues for protest that don’t require the logic of violence that lies at the heart of the Occupy movement.

In contrast, witness the myriad, often huge rallies held by the Tea Party: all done within the law, everyone’s rights respected, and the movement’s point forcefully and effectively made through freedom of speech and association.

And not a broken window in sight.

Meanwhile, it’s time for the mayors of the various “Occupy” cities to do their duty by their residents and taxpayers and put an end to the camps, with their lawlessness and their squalor.

Enough is enough.

PS: Tagami for Mayor in 2014!

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)