When did all the dissenters vanish?

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/053004/opi_kanelis.shtml ^ | 5/30/04 | JOHN KANELIS

[Maria S]

For the life of me I cannot remember when it happened.

I cannot recall when the United States of America ceased being a land of dissenters; of arguers, of contrary thinking; of people blessed with the right, in the words of the very First Amendment to their Constitution, "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

When did protest become unpatriotic? When did the Founding Fathers' vision of a land that honored and embraced contentiousness disappear?

It must have vanished without millions of Americans ever noticing. How else does one explain the view of so many Americans that to question our policy in Iraq is unpatriotic? How else does one justify the stated opinions that protesting government policy gives "aid and comfort" to our enemies?

Such opinions are stated regularly in letters to this newspaper, by senior government officials, by political supporters of President Bush and by many millions of others, who, for reasons that escape me, hold this notion that wartime somehow requires us to keep our political feelings to ourselves.

The great Republican U.S. senator from California, Arthur Vandenberg, once said, "Politics stops at the water's edge." He made that quip to discourage partisan sniping during wartime.

But that doesn't mean Americans should cease questioning government policy, or even challenging a wartime president as many Americans are doing today. Most Americans know their boundaries. Sitting in an anti-aircraft gun, joking with enemy gunners who had killed American pilots - as Jane Fonda did in 1972 during the Vietnam War - crosses that line.

That act still sticks in the craw of many Vietnam veterans, including mine. Protesting government policy through civil disobedience, which millions of Americans did during that time, remains an appropriate form of political expression.

But it seems today that such expressions of disagreement hit a nerve at every turn. To speak out against some aspects of the war against terror, in the minds of many, constitutes an unpatriotic act.

Protesters hate our country, many people contend.

Here's my favorite: Those protesters hate what this country stands for.

So, what does this country stand for?

It stands for liberty. It stands for freedom, but certainly within the bounds of good taste and community standards. The country stands for people's right to speak their minds freely.

At least it used to stand for all that.

Something must have happened to change many Americans' minds about freedom of political expression.

Maybe it was the goons who introduced the United States to their monstrous brand of terrorism on Sept. 11, 2001. They hit us on our own turf, not in some nightclub or military barracks far away. That could bring about a fundamental change in many Americans' outlook about freedom.

Are we now free to express ourselves only if we support our president and his policies?

The Founders didn't put any provisions into the Constitution that suspended our rights to protest when the shooting starts and Americans start dying in combat. By omitting those restrictions, the Founders said quite the opposite. They said protest is a fundamental American right, which I would hasten to add is a totally foreign concept to our enemies.

Another great Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt, said this: "Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. ...(I)t is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."

Old Roughrider knew a few things about combat, which he fought in the political arena and on the battlefield. The Founders had it correct when they set aside our rights to seek "redress of grievances." If a policy is strong, it will stand up to any protest. If it is weak, it will change according to the people's will.

Our current crop of leaders, though, needs to stop the overheated responses to those who question them and their policies. Don't they give aid and comfort to those who seek to undermine our very way of life? Last time I checked, that way of life included a healthy dose of dissent.

Unless, of course, that all changed when I wasn't paying attention.

John Kanelis is editorial page editor for the Amarillo Globe-News. He can be contacted at the Globe News, P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo, TX 79166, or via e-mail at john.kanelis@amarillo.com. His column appears each Sunday.

[lonevoice]

How else does one explain the view of so many Americans that to question our policy in Iraq is unpatriotic? our countrymen deserve to be tortured, beheaded, burned and dragged through the streets behind cars for the "warcrime" of putting panties on terrorists' heads? How else does one justify the stated opinions that protesting government policy gives "aid and comfort" to our enemies of senior Democratic leadership that US troops in Iraq are no different or better than Hussein's torture chambers and hundreds of thousands of people executed and buried in mass graves?

[okie01]

They didn't editorialize as Soviet apologists.

Psssssssssssst!

Many did exactly that.

And, for the most part, they're the same ones who are "dissenting" now...

[Darlin']

"When did all the dissenters vanish?"

They did ? Oh, dear, Pelosi, Kennedy, Biden, Molly Ivins, McCain, Sean Penn, McAuliffe, Helen Thomas, Chuckie Schummer, Terry Moran, Michael Moore, David Gregory, Martin Sheen, Kerry, AP, Reuters, Rather, Jennings, Koppel, Matthews, Susan Sarandon, Katie Al-Couric, Soros, Gore, Franken, Garafolo (sp) and her hideousness the Beast are gonna be surprised to hear this.

[Texasforever]

They aare alive and well here. I wish I could meet them face to face

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1693593

[ladyinred]

Is this something from the Onion? Is this guy stupid, or just a liar, or both? I have NEVER seen so many dissenters in my life, and I lived through Viet Nam. This is more deceit from the worst media in the history of the US.

[Darlin']

Oooooh, no, not gonna look. I can't bear to look at hateful, ugly things this late at night. LOL

[The Red Zone]

How else does one explain the view of so many Americans that to question our policy in Iraq is unpatriotic?

The issue isn't "questioning" it's "lying and distorting." Without the lies and distortions to prop them up, the so-called "questions" would pretty much fall flat on their faces.

[Lancey Howard]

When did protest become unpatriotic?

Oh, about the same time that protesting the out-of-control growth of taxes and big government became selfish, and it meant that you wanted to feed dog food to old people before throwing them out into the street, let "deteriorating" schools crash down on the heads of the children, and kill millions by polluting the air and water with toxic chemicals. That's when.

Is the Amarillo Globe-News like a second chance for Aggie nerds who couldn't get published with their high school newspapers? Where do liberal handwringers like John Kanelis come from?

[SandRat]

Why rant or flame, you just said what we all feel.

[dfwgator]

I'm ashamed that John Kanelis is from Texas.

[Condor51]

Ditto.

Crack Pipes & Keyboards DON'T mix.

[Condor51]

They didn't editorialize as Soviet apologists

Well actually they did.
See NY Times Archives 1917 to Yesterday.

[okie01]

Would you not lay odds that Kanelis was responsible for more than a few Soviet apologia during the Cold War?

Anti-Americanism: it's all the international left has left...

[YaYa123]

Pithy must be the key! Author John Kanelis read my email and responded with a request for address and phone number so he can consider using it as a published comment.

[dirtboy]

I cannot recall when the United States of America ceased being a land of dissenters; of arguers, of contrary thinking

Oh, puh-leeze. We have anti-Bush commentary everywhere, but dissent has vanished? Talk about starting a commentary with an absurd claim.

How else does one explain the view of so many Americans that to question our policy in Iraq is unpatriotic? How else does one justify the stated opinions that protesting government policy gives "aid and comfort" to our enemies?

It's one thing to question government policy - we all should do that every day. It's another to pursue an anti-American agenda and to give aid to those who are trying to kill our soldiers.

[walford]

Dissent is questioning policies. This is not what we're dealing with here.

• Characterizing the president as a modern-day Hitler,
• Ignoring the vastly improved situation for most Iraqis, 
• Failing to criticize using women and children as human shields,
• Failing to criticize using mosques, hospitals and schools as ammo dumps/firing positions,
• Giving the terrorists the idea that the American people are increasingly demoralized and that if they kill enough of us [and do so in a savage enough manner] we will quit,
• Advocating a precipitous withdrawal that will result in a bloody civil war followed by another dictatorship

-- is beyond unpatriotic.

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