Hilton Head vigilantes, chill out. It’s still no crime to be from New York | Opinion
Hilton Head Island, can we please take a deep breath.
I know, I know. It’s your breath you’re worried about in the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
But the rising mob instinct to remove, or at least shame, everyone in a car without a South Carolina license tag is disgraceful.
The No. 1 target is New York.
The problem with mobs is that they are brainless.
And mobs obliterate a keystone to American life: due process.
Here’s part of an email sent to Hilton Head Plantation residents from the POA on Monday:
“We have received reports of ‘vigilantes’ that have targeted vehicles in driveways with (out-of-state) tags by placing notes on their vehicle indicating the individuals riding in the vehicle must self-quarantine.
“Among the vehicles targeted were a rental vehicle with Wisconsin tags. This vehicle was rented while the property owner’s vehicle was in the auto body repair shop.
“A vehicle with New York tags was also targeted that belongs to a property owner who had moved into their home late last year and had not had time to register their vehicle in South Carolina.
“Neither of these individuals had traveled out of state.”
Also, a woman wrote a letter to the editor on Sunday trying to teach the mob a little geography.
The problem being, of course, that mobs are brainless.
She said she is sick of the nasty looks and comments she’s getting because she has New York plates on her car.
She said she’s had a second home on Hilton Head for 29 years, a slight bit ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I also happen to live in Upstate New York, nowhere near New York City, Westchester, or New Rochelle,” she writes. “If you check your geography, you’ll see that there is a huge area of New York State that is nowhere near the ‘hot spot’ areas.”
Maybe the mob wants to do this: Pay for local school operations.
Second-home owners in South Carolina pay for our schools with their property taxes. We residents do not. We enjoy that windfall, worth thousands of dollars in many cases. Out-of-state property owners are our bread and butter.
Suppose you have been paying for our schools for many years, and you have a second home for the express purpose of using it as you please, but a mob tells you that you cannot.
The mob also wants local governments to thumb their noses at the Constitution and tell all outsiders — everyone, apparently, who isn’t a full-time resident — to get off our lawn.
The governor has the power to do that, but not the mayor, according to our state attorney general on Friday. Attorney General Alan Wilson on Monday said it’s OK for towns to write their own law and he won’t object.
But the mob doesn’t care about such trivialities, and that mob instinct is something the mayors must consider.
But dealing with the pandemic legally would require thinking through a problem. It would require due process.
We don’t have time for that. We’ve got too many pitchforks and torches to round up.
