These two are not the same

I’ve seen these two stories connected over the last day or so.  In one story, a school teacher and adviser of the yearbook committee did a fine Stalin impersonation by erasing any mention of Donald Trump from yearbook pictures.  Statements on shirts or hats that were pro-Trump were inexplicably gone in the final product.

In the other story, a woman stormed the stage in New York to protest the production of Julius Caesar that replaces the great Roman leader with the current president.  She was arrested and fined, as you typically would be if you disrupt such a performance.

Here’s the thing.  The two are only related in terms of subject material.  They are not proof of some greater trend.  At least not the protest.  Whether or not you agree with Caesar’s portrayal, you still can’t break the law.  You break the law, you get arrested.  A time honored understanding among conservatives.  And a healthy one.  Breaking the law doesn’t offer exemptions for doing it with right thinking.

The school story, on the other hand, was chilling.  But the teacher has been suspended pending an investigation by the school district.  What was done has not been defended.  If it happened as it appears to have happened, then the school has already condemned it.  In other words, this was a ‘lone wolf’ rather than a coordinated assault on free speech.

Not that it isn’t bothersome, and I hope they can somehow redistribute the yearbooks as the students intended.  But the two are not related stories, nor do they, in themselves, point to some greater left-wing conspiracy.  Just keeping it real.