Posted on 04/08/2003 8:33:44 AM PDT by dirtboy
PEOPLE HAVE a right to say or write that anti-war protesters should be silent or leave the country.
But people who write or say such things are cowards - indeed, the only cowardly Americans to be found these days.
There are three ways of thinking about protest: legal, political and social.
The legal considerations weigh the risk of speech against the right to speech. The famous rule is that of Justice Holmes: free speech protections do not extend to those who shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
The cowards try to draw an analogy between this consideration and our national security: the protesters are undermining our ability to prosecute the war.
The cowards are so effete and self-centered that they equate the battle of ideas with the battle of Baghdad. But unlike real soldiers, the cowards want to win by fiat rather than combat.
But there is simply no reason to believe, or evidence to show, that protest is a form of sabotage. And until the cowards repeal the First Amendment, the burden of proof is on them. The right to speech is more important than the risk of speech.
The political considerations weigh the strength of a system with dissent against a system without it. Our liberal democracy is built on the foundation of consent: government of, by and for the people. But the consent of the governed simply does not exist without the possibility of dissent. And we're only sure about that possibility when someone is actually dissenting.
I have a narrowly defined position in support of the coalition invasion of Iraq. But I'm relieved to see the large and sustained protests against the war: It assures me that America is still occupied by Americans.
The cowards, on the other hand, continue to call for a deferential silence that is the chorus of tyranny not liberty. Their politics of lock-step silence, of talk-radio ditto-heading is a system that can't withstand dissent because they're afraid to argue.
The social considerations are less grandiose than the legal or political. But they also go further to explain why any American would ever call for silence or exile.
Back in 1970, a guy named Richard Sennett wrote a book called "The Uses of Disorder." He argues that excessively ordered communities (think suburbs) stunt the growth of adults, leaving them in a permanent adolescence. Because they never confront a disorderly environment (think cities), they never learn to deal with confrontation.
They go from nice to wigged out because they never learn the range of appropriate responses that disorder demands.
The cowards are these people. They cannot deal with the honest confrontation of different opinions (and how about race, class and religion?) Because of their condition, which I'm calling cowardice but is really a disability, the only solution they can imagine is for the protesters to shut up.
Some of the cowards say they want nothing more than the protesters to get out of the intersection at five o'clock so that the commute back to their excessively ordered communities doesn't go from 33 to 39 minutes.
Do people have a right to immunize themselves from protest? Yes, just like they have a right to engage in a variety of other unhealthy lifestyles. But there are limits. We only have so much public space, and every now and then it must be shared between protesters and commuters.
Exercising your First Amendment right has just as much claim on the intersection as turning right on red.
The real problem is we don't speak enough. For or against the war, speak up and disagree with each other. The only cowards are the ones who call for silence.
Mark Alan Hughes teaches at Penn's Robert A. Fox Leadership Program. Flame him at mahughes@sas.upenn.edu. Enjoy past columns at www.mahughes.org.
Do people have a right to immunize themselves from protest? Yes, just like they have a right to engage in a variety of other unhealthy lifestyles. But there are limits. We only have so much public space, and every now and then it must be shared between protesters and commuters.
Exercising your First Amendment right has just as much claim on the intersection as turning right on red.
There is a First Amendment right to block traffic? I've got an idea, let's go into a very left-wing area, and block traffic for a gun rights protest. That will make their heads explode, if the limosine liberals can't get back to their mansions...
Uh-huh, sure, Buckwheat. Just like overturning cars, breaking windows and throwing acid in the faces of non-dissenters is any form of sabotage either, I suppose.
Guys like this better watch out or non-dissenters may just "dissent" all over his scroungy bod!
This is such an obvious non sequitur that this "professor" should be ashamed.
Roads are made for transportation, not as podiums, of which there are plenty.
NOT! The commuters have their space, that is the roads and streets, the protesters have theirs, namely parks and other public places. The protesters, irregardless of what or who they are protesting, do not have the right to disrupt the lives of others. The right to free speech does not include the "right" to be heard, only to speak. Similary the right of assembly only extends to "peaceable" assembly. Throwing bolts, disrupting traffic, and generally gettting in peoples' faces do not fall under the umbrella of "peaceable".
Both sides have the right to speak, and that includes the right to critize what the other side is saying and how they are saying it. The right of free speech and assembly are really only restraints upon government restrictions of those activities, not upon other individuals. You don't have a right to use my microphone for instance, nor to burn or destroy property not your own. You want to burn the flag? Fine, go buy or make your own and have at it. if you set yourself on fire in the process, I'll be ROTFLMAO. If you burn or otherwise destroy a flag not your own, you need to go to jail. If its my flag, expect, at minimum, a lawsuit and perhaps some buckshot up where the sun don't shine.
NO a$$hole, they are not adolescents in the suburbs, they all have jobs pay taxes and expect law and order, you, on the other hand rewarded every dispicable form of lawlessness with code words: (think racism) (think diversity) (think despair). Before you write anymore BullshRITTER why don't YOU think?
My local paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, ran a Knight Ridder article March 23 entitled "Demanding to be heard: To disagree is an American right, but dissenters often drowned out."
Drowned out? Ideas, like products, have a market or they don't have a market. Are cabbage-patch dolls "drowned out" of the market these days? How about Tickle-me Elmos?
That Knight Ridder article included this quote: "Critics of this war on Iraq have discovered the truth of what Alexis de Tocqueville, the French commentator, observed about America 160 years ago, that 'the tyranny of the majority' often 'represses not only all contest, but all controversy.' "
Oh, shut up! Oops...I didn't mean to be tyrannical or oppressive! There you have it: The liberal media observing that when we boycott Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks or label the Columbia university prof as a marxist that America is engaging in outright tyranny.
Traditional lefty double standard: The left can dissent from support of the war; but dare anybody dissent from the dissenters, look out! 'Tyranny' is running amok!
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