Incivility rules

Harassment is not politics by another name

Just as our constitutional guarantee of free speech does not protect us from shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, our right to express ourselves in protest does not extend to actual harassment.

Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife should be able to eat dinner without being drummed by hecklers from their seats. But, it happened Sept. 24 at a Washington, D.C., restaurant.

Mr. Cruz was being taunted for his friendship with and support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The “protest” — which included people surrounding Mr. Cruz’s table — was caught on video by the protesters who posted it to the internet with a statement: “You are not safe. We will find you. We will expose you. We will take from you the peace you have taken from so many others.”

Is that a threat? If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Ambushing public figures at restaurants seems a developing trend.

On Aug. 13, conservative activists Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk were confronted at a Philadelphia restaurant by protesters from a local “antifa” group — short for anti-fascist. Ms. Owens and Mr. Kirk were eating breakfast when protesters began shouting and throwing things at the pair. Along with a photo in which Mr. Kirk has a glass of water dumped on him during the protest, the group wrote in a tweet: “Charlie Kirk’s disgusting homophobic, racist, bigoted presence is met by some proper Philadelphia hostility.”

On June 19, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to leave a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., when protesters began shouting “Shame!” A video shows employees trying to calm the situation as one member of the group played an audio recording of children crying at a detention center in Texas and yelled, “How does it make you feel?”

On July 8, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell was chased from a restaurant in Kentucky.

Just as shouting “fire” in a crowded theater could yield a criminal charge of reckless endangerment, chasing people from public places may well constitute legal harassment — generally defined as conduct that alarms, annoys, threatens, intimidates or puts a person in fear of safety.

There is a place for vigorous protest. But criminal conduct, mob behavior and abominable manners are not protests, just as they are not politics.