Comes now an email with a link to treehugger.com and this comment: "Not a good situation, when the police get like this... reminds me of the 60s... yet another reason the 2nd amendment (sic) is so important."

No, it's not a good situation -- when the authorities allow squatters to defecate in public spaces for weeks on end until there is an outbreak of diseases. When they finally shut down Occupy Santa Cruz the other day they hauled away 200 lbs of human feces. That's progress? That's a statement? That's free speech? Sorry, but I think that was not what James Madison, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson had in mind with the First Amendment.

When you total up the instances of drug overdose, assault, rape, suicide, shooting, public masturbation, and other outrages at the Occupations, a rational person just might ask, These are idealists? These are gentle pacifists who want to do their own thing? These are the activists that are going to change the world, one defecation at a time? Excuse me, but can anyone name one positive outcome from these pathologies?

The real question is this: Why have these festering cesspools been allowed to go on for so long? My only regret is that the police did not break out the pepper spray at the outset, when the first tent went up. This video from Davis shows police restraint -- they should have hosed down the whole chanting mob and sent them all home.

Here's an overwrought comparison:

When people talk about the photos that changed the world, there is this one at Kent State and this one in Saigon, both of which show what happens when you have power without restraint. Like those images, this one will not be forgotten.

Yes, pepper spray is just like shooting into a crowd with a Garand, exactly the same as executing a prisoner on a city street. I'm sorry, but the self-absorbed bedwetters at treehugger.com with their charges of police brutality are like a spoiled child who demands a trip to the ER for a hangnail. They should journey to Cairo, where the military killed 35 last night. Now that's repression. Getting pepper sprayed when refusing to leave "your" tent encampment on public property hardly qualifies one as a victim of the unbridled use of power. But that's what the lawyers for these poor lambs will argue for their clients in court. Yes, I am sickened -- by the motley crew called students.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre for a technical writer living in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.