These right-wingers don't know much about the First Amendment. It does not entitle citizens to say anything at any time and place. Every first-year law student learns the First Amendment has reasonable "time, place and manner" restrictions. To cite a cliche, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater and claim it's protected speech. Similarly, you cannot take a protest march from the streets into a federal courthouse.
The Patriot Prayer provocateurs are pushing the limits of these time, place and manner thresholds. They are prompting the city police to track them, close city parks, divert bus and transit lines, and monitor counter-protests. This is not a game, not after the white power-sparked violence in Charlottesville. Somehow, they think their antics are patriotic and that any ensuing chaos left in their wake is not their fault.
If anything, their inability to march in public without props like guns and military-style uniforms has cut them down to size. They have retreated to the insides of vans and shuttered apartments, where they are broadcasting via the safety of the internet as opposed to standing on the streets of a city they've taunted.
Just before 2pm, Crissy Field rally organizer Joey Gibson broadcast an "interview" on his Facebook page. He was seated in an apartment beside Kyle Chapman, who faces charges in state court for engaging in violent brawls in Berkeley during pro-Trump and alt-right rallies in March and was ordered by a judge to stay away from further planned protests.
"Often times when you incite this type of hatred within liberals they have no ability to filter their emotions and they act out violently," said Chapman, as if nobody had seen the video of him maniacally swinging a bat at counter-demonstrators in Berkeley.
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