A Discomforting Thought Experiment

Let's say you've got two kids. You're on the way home from a weekend baseball game with Kid 2. Kid 1 is home alone, because he's a little older and he's been instructed not to leave the house and provided with an emergency contact list. If you're a modern day uber-parent, you've also probably told a couple of neighboring adults that Kid 1 will be home, and you've asked them to keep an eye on the place for the 2~3 hours that you're gone.
Now, on the way home, you turn onto your street and find an angry mob outside your house. They're carrying signs denigrating you and your profession, and are on your yard and porch. The mob's vitriol is way past aggression, and looks to be edging up to full-out violence. Kid 1 is terrified enough that he's locked himself in the bathroom.
Apparently, this all part of the new politics of intimidation.
Interesting. Whatever martial prowess I've been able to matriculate over the years, I certainly never considered portable mobs of protesting union rent-a-thugs in the gamut of potential bad-guy opponents.
So, the thought exercise: what if it were your house, your yard that had come under the protesters' siege? What if it were your child that was so terrorized he felt compelled to lock himself in the bathroom? I know the automatic, knee-jerk reaction would be that it's "game on." Note to SEIU thugs: Casa de Mongo is a bad, bad place to decide to hold a protest and threaten aggression. I've a lovely assortment of street-sweepers that would more than level the playing field. Punks.
Most states' laws dictating use-of-force by citizens use the reasonable man test as one of the elements of the justified use of force. In most states, the way I've heard it phrased is that if a reasonable man has a reasonable belief that he is under threat of life, grievous bodily injury, or sexual assault ("man" and "he" being used in the proper English sort of way to include women), then the man can use the appropriate force necessary to defend himself and/or extricate himself from the situation.
So, where does this fit in? How would you react? And it would be, I'm sure, pure reaction. I don't think anyone plans to come home to a (possibly violent) mob on one's property.
Fortunately, you look over the crowd and--whew!--see some police officers. They'll surely help you out to...ooh, yeah, sorry. See, the police are there to escort the protesters from DC to your neighborhood, well, to your house, actually. They are out of their jurisdiction. So, what the hell are they doing there? Can they act to protect you if the crowd goes bad? Will they (since they escorted) "defend" the mob from you if you feel threatened enough to employ violence? If the crowd does go bad (throws rocks or bottles, hits with sticks (from the protest signs) or displays with intent to employ any type of weapon, are the cops legitimate targets, as they are out of their jurisdiction and have, through overt action, demonstrated that they are with, conceivably part of, the mob? What'n hell are the police doing escorting thugs to a demonstration that is on private property??
The guy this happened to, Greg Baer, is a white-collar, business-type lawyer who probably hasn't had a fight since the third grade, if ever. Apparently, the SIEU decided to protest at his house because he's the deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America. The SIEU thugs say that they chose Mr. Baer's to protest at his residence because BoA has been foreclosing on so many people, and they're just looking out for the common man, the little guy who has no resources with which to combat the nefarious bank. They fail to mention that the SIEU is in hock to BoA to the tune of about $90 million.

Schmucks.

The sad thing, for our country, is that Chicago rules cut both ways. I would highly encourage political activists to tone down their assaults on citizens in their private homes, and assaults on families. We are, I get the feeling, edging up to the border of a place we don't want to be. The video below is a classic, but what if the terms weren't how far you were willing to go to "get Capone," but instead to "defend your family? Your property?"





H/t Powerline