TEARING DOWN THE BARRYCADES TO FREEDOM

A crowd of "thousands," composed chiefly of veterans, descended on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Sunday to remove "barrycades" blocking access to the World War II, Vietnam, and Lincoln memorials.

Police in riot gear blocked road access to the World War II memorial, but didn’t interfere as the vets took down the barricades.  Younger vets helped the veterans of World War II — now in their 80s and 90s — past the barricades and up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Some of the protesters — including a vet who had lost both legs — carried a few barricades more than a mile to the White House and dumped them there.

"I’m totally, thoroughly disgusted in our government’s decision to close these monuments," Mike Freeman, a retired Green Beret who served in Vietnam, told the Daily Caller.

The National Socialist Park Service had set up the barricades — which resemble bicycle racks — Oct. 1, the day the government "shut down" began. 

"The memorial is an open plaza," noted Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard.  "Putting up barricades and posting guards to ‘close’ the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than ‘keeping it open.’"

Nothing like this was ever done in previous government "shut-downs."

"We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as possible," a Ranger replied when Wes Pruden of the Washington Times asked him why the NSPS tried to block access to George Washington’s estate, which is owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, not the government.

Nowhere was this order followed more faithfully than at Yellowstone National Park, where a busload of senior citizens was held at gunpoint inside a lodge adjacent to "Old Faithful," to make certain none could catch a glimpse of the famous geyser.

On the two and a half hour bus ride out of the park after their release from house arrest, the seniors were denied the customary stop for a bathroom break.

The park service was using "Gestapo tactics," Gordon Hodgson, the tour guide, told the Livingstone (Wyo) Enterprise.  "The national parks belong to the people," Mr. Hodgson said. "This isn’t right."

*No thirsty jogger or biker could drink from the fountains along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, because the "Greyshirts" removed the handles from them.

*In Newport News, Va, a Greyshirt was posted to keep patients at a clinic from strolling down a nature path in the Lake Maury Recreation Area.

*Unsatisfied with just closing Mt. Rushmore, Greyshirts tried to block off highway viewing areas of it.

The National Socialist Park Service ordered hundreds of privately run businesses on federal land to close, throwing thousands out of work. 

The closings were capricious.  In the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Greyshirts forced cancellation of the annual sandcastle contest on Ocean Beach, and ordered the Cliff House restaurant, which overlooks the beach, to close, but left open the Presidio Golf Club, where fatcat Democrat contributors play.

And very likely illegal.  The affected businesses "should immediately file a lawsuit," said former Justice Department attorney Hans von Spakovsky.

After the Pisgah Inn in North Carolina and the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in McLean, Va. did just that, they were permitted to reopen.  A federal judge ordered the NSPS to reopen Langley Fork Park after the McLean Youth Lacrosse organization brought suit.

"If the government shuts down in a forest, and nobody hears it, that’s the sound of liberty dying," said National Review’s Mark Steyn. 

Turning Smokey the Bear into a Nazi will overshadow all the other scandals swirling about President Barack Obama, Mr. Last thinks.

"The Park Service, which is supposed to serve the public by administering parks, is now in the business of forcing parks they don’t administer to close," he said. "As Homer Simpson famously asked, did we lose a war?"

Not yet. Americans are shocked a president would inflict pain to score partisan political points, shocked the National Park Service — which is supposed to serve all Americans — would act as stormtroopers for a political party.  But they aren’t putting up with it. All across the country, Americans never before involved in civil disobedience are standing up to NSPS bullying.

Never more so than on the National Mall Sunday.  Those who fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have made it clear they’ll defend freedom from enemies domestic, too.  Those who won’t be bullied strike fear in the hearts of bullies.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.