Boston

On MSNBC, the Free Speech Rally in Boston on the Common, and the counter-demonstrators all around the area.

They say 20,000 counter-demonstrators far outnumber the demonstrators, no number give for them.

Police have been actively taking from people anything that could be used as a weapon except signs.

So far it looks like the CDs are demonstrating, in their view, against hate but not hate speech, not in favor of denying First Amendment protection to the extreme right.

The Ds are supposedly not the racist far right seen in Charlottesville, but libertarians and others on the right who are there to insist on and support First Amendment rights for all.

So they claim.

The CDs describe the Ds as "so-called free speech demonstrators, wink-wink."

How would they have described the very numerous left-wing free speech demonstrators of American history, I wonder.

MSNBC has shown precious little sympathy with the idea of free speech for all since the mess in Charlottesville began.

In recent decades, it seems the mainstream-ish left and many leading Democrats have grown more and more favorable to criminalizing speech that has been protected in the past, and advocacy that has been protected in the past.

Update, 08202017, 1012 hrs EDT.

A photo of the CDs shows a row of them carrying a sign stretching almost across a broad Boston street, "We will not accept a fascist America."

The CNN story is running a video of a helpful interview with a Holocaust survivor who must be nearly a hundred years old, and black and white video made by the allies when they found the death camps.

Right around the corner, it is.

According to some.