And in every campaign, the anti-mining activists utilize social media techniques on iPhones and laptops that draw on dozens of the very specialty metals they want to keep in the ground, without even a hint of irony.
In ways that should make its adherents supremely uncomfortable, the protest movement is repeating the early error of the revived American Conservative movement, which in William Buckley, Jr.'s famed phrase, consisted in 'standing athwart History, yelling Stop!'
But history seldom listens. The evolving genius of the American Conservative movement was to move beyond pure protest to a positive program - not just 'freedom from,' but 'freedom for.'
Without a positive program, protest can be a profoundly status quo - even reactionary - phenomenon. In the manner of Juvenal's 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?,' it falls to us to ask: who will lead the protest once the protesters enlarge the powers of the State at home and the power of dictators abroad?
