When the administration's friends demonstrate, the guards look the other way, soon after the rules went into effect a little over a ago, a large anti-Soviet demonstration protesting the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 violated most of the regulations without so much as a reprimand. Judge Bryant also noted that 60 people have climbed the White House fence in recent years without using signs or parcels as springboards the ornamental ironwork offers many easy foot holds and every one was stopped within yards of the fence by the commendably thorough White House grounds security system manned and operated by the Secret Service. By exalting tourists' desires to photograph Aunt Minnie standing at the White House fence over the fundamental constitutional right to express often unpleasant views in sometimes distasteful ways, the Court of Appeals has stepped on to a slippery slope. Protesters will move, always just one step ahead of the regulations, to public places which they had previously ignored, and the government will then amend the rules to prevent each new desecration of a famous monument or important building. Thin-skinned politicians could use last week's decision to remove all protests from public parks and government property everywhere, not excluding the city dump.
Protesters are necessarily unpleasant, even irritating.
Presidents, governors, and, legislators tend to move rather quickly with the flow of public opinion, at least if they're interested in re-election. Few among us are angry at government policy for very long, and it's only a minority of that dissident minority that has the time, energy, and non-conformist attitudes one needs if one is going to make a public spectacle of oneself. Free speech is not an ideological issue. The protest against the downing of KAL 007 centered at the White House because a D.C. law prohibits hostile demonstrations within 500 feet of' the Soviet or any other embassy. Conservatives and liberals alike will have to live with these limits on their freedom of' speech until the Supreme Court rules.