A Little Rebellion Now and Then
Thomas Jefferson once famously claimed that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." Jefferson, like many other American revolutionaries, defended not only every citizen's right, but also their responsibility, to dissent. In a country where lawmakers are elected to represent the views and carry out the will of their constituents, it is not just our right to speak out when we feel that we are not being fairly represented, but also our patriotic duty. Only by speaking out against government policy will change ever be implemented. Without the impassioned and dedicated protest of its citizens, America might still be a country where women are not allowed to vote, where black Americans do not have equal rights, and where free speech is systematically repressed. The United States has been as prone to misjudgement in its history as any other country, and it has only been through the dissenting voices of its citizens that things have changed.
Those who think that any dissent against the government is un-American misunderstand both what protest is all about and what it means to be patriotic. To dissent is to be American. The result of not allowing people to speak out against what they perceive to be the wrongs of their country is Russia in the 30s or Nazi Germany. Dissent is the sole reason that America is America today and not The Fifty Colonies. The view that protest is ineffectual, and therefore a waste of time, is also grossly misguided. If the voice of the average American citizen has no power, then democracy is already dead. When people feel that their voice is no longer being heard, two things can happen. One is giving up on America as a true democracy by relinquishing the right to vote. This has already happened to some degree, with less than half of eligible Americans bothering to vote anymore. The mistake is blaming low voter turnout on apathy or laziness, which may be partly at fault, but a feeling of powerlessness is also to blame. Why vote if you know that your state is going to be swept away by the other party, or that your vote, along with thousands of others, is not even going to get counted due to voter fraud? The other thing that happens when people start to feel that their voice is being ignored is that at a certain point peaceful protest gives way to violence, committed by those who feel that nothing else can be effective. This is how we breed our own homegrown terrorists like Ted Kazinski and Timothy McVeigh, or anarchists who violently disrupt conventions, or the Weathermen, bombing their own countrymen. Martin Luther King once said that "those who make peaceful protest impossible only make violent protest inevitable." When people have exhausted other more peaceful tactics to no avail, violence can seem like their only recourse.
At the Democratic National Convention protesters were penned, free speech zones were established, and robust debate was not allowed. The world is a different place now than it was when Jefferson first drafted the US Constitution, and some precaution is necessary to avoid mass violence. But for an illusion of safety we are losing actual freedom. Penning the protesters in Boston was a more powerful statement about the state of free speech today than the protesters themselves could ever have hoped to make. Can free speech really be free if it is relegated to a cage? In New York City, permits for groups planning to hold a rally in Central Park's Great Lawn during the Republican National Convention were refused, the safety of the park's grass being cited as a primary concern. Grass can be easily replanted. Reinstating democracy and civil rights after they have been trampled on would prove to be a much more difficult task. To restrict protest is not only dangerously putting absolute, unchecked power into the hands of a select few in charge, it also effectively negates over 200 years of American history and destroys the foundations that this country was built upon in the first place.
Free speech isn't free. Its cost has been paid again and again, by the first American revolutionaries, by Martin Luther King, by the students at Berkeley in 1964, and by all those who have spoken out for change and helped to make America a better country. To disallow the continuation of this American tradition, or to attempt to discredit those who exercise their right to dissent by calling them un-American or unpatriotic, is a great disservice to all those who have fought for change since this country's beginning and to all those who continue to do so today. When we lose the right to protest, we will have truly lost America.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American public."
~ Theodore Roosevelt
