A week ago I attended and spoke at a private conference in California, which was hosted by two very successful and prominent businessmen. These businessmen and their wives have hosted this same conference in Palm Springs for the last eight years, and many of the invited attendees are also successful people.
Attendees heard presentations and participated in discussions on issues of national importance. The conference was held at a very nice private resort, but this year for the first time the conference was protested by 1,000-plus union members representing various labor organizations.
They gathered across the street from the main entrance of the resort, hoping to get some media attention such that the conference would be disrupted. They did get some media attention, but the conference was not interrupted. Maximum on-site security plus local police assistance prevented that from happening.
Many of them wore their union-identifying T-shirts, such as Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and carried signs objecting to a private gathering by private citizens on private property.
They had megaphones leading chants toward the resort, expressing their objections to those assembled. They rushed the police line knowing that they would be arrested. About 25 of them got their wish.
Their objections? The attendees were successful and conservative, with the audacity to have a meeting and talk about shared beliefs in limited government, our free market system and constitutional liberties.
My initial reaction, and that of many others, was to wonder how anyone could object to a group of citizens peacefully assembling — people who happened to be like-minded conservatives in a free country like ours. The only obvious answer is that they do not want a free country consisting of people who can think and make decisions for themselves. They want a country dominated by big government in our lives and union domination of businesses and of our workforce.
Conservative voters are fighting back against big government and unfair union practices against businesses through the ballot box. Just consider the impressive result of last November’s elections in Congress, governorships and state legislatures around the country. As conservatives continue to make congressional and legislative gains, the liberals and the unions are resorting to demonstrations and even violence to shut us up, or worse yet, to stop us from even daring to think and believe differently from their view of the world.
This type of liberal lunacy and attempted intimidation is not going to work. Too many people are smarter than that, and too many people are not going to just surrender their right to assemble, or any other rights in a free country. The people of Illinois successfully made their case to a federal judge to remove an injunction that prevented school children from having a moment of silence at the beginning of their school day.
I can only speculate that the lunatic that filed for the injunction in the first place was afraid that the school children might think about God. If the liberals are that afraid of an energized conservative movement in this country, then we are winning.
Big Brother government not only wants to tell us what to eat, how much to eat, when to eat, when to retire, how much to retire on, when to get sick and how to die, it wants to tell us when to think, what to think, and when to not think at all.
That dog won’t hunt. Liberal lunacy is not in our national DNA.
Herman Cain is a former CEO, a radio talk show host on AM 750 and 95.5 FM WSB in Atlanta, and a FOX News contributor.
