NEW YORK (CNN) - Our compliments to the Washington, DC police... they had a tough day, controlling crowds of protestors who gathered to demonstrate against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting this weekend. The protestors burned a few tires in the streets, some threw rocks at a Citibank building, breaking windows... even a few smoke bombs were thrown by the protestors. And the police controlled the protestors, who numbered about a thousand, without any major incidents. They did arrest about 600 of them...and the expectation is that this will all be repeated tomorrow... with perhaps an even greater number of protestors.

Some of the protestors say they're anarchists... some say they're anticapitalist... some style themselves as antiglobalization. A few say they're against a war on Iraq. So far as I can tell these people define themselves entirely by what they're against... but even that isn't clear.

What is clear is that protests like these serve an unintended purpose, namely reminding the rest of us who define ourselves by traditional American values that this country is still in pretty good shape. And while I'm not in any way supporting these protestors... thank God for free speech and assembly, and their reminder of its importance to us all.