Commuters Sound Off on Traffic-Blocking Rallies [Free Repu

FoxNews.com ^ | April 6, 2003 | Liza Porteus

[Joe Bonforte]

Many chose to let the White House know it had an exponentially growing populace who really didn't agree and why via letters to Congress, Senate, President, Vice President etc. ...{snip}... I held to my lifelong faith that the government I knew would of course address our concerns in time - we just needed to step up the numbers a bit. Why on earth would US elected officials not want to acknowledge a huge surge of public opinion banging on their door?

Here's where I began to lose you. Yes, the strength of our society is the ability to dissent. But you seem to think it's just a matter of "If we protest in large enough numbers, then the government is required to do something about it." This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works.

Our leaders are required to follow their own best judgement. Yes, they factor in popular sentiment (about which I have more to say below). But they know things we don't know, and have a responsibility to take worst case scenarios into account. Being on the hot seat and knowing that there exists a real possibility that a terrorist could use a dirty bomb or even a suitcase nuke is an awesome responsibility. They may very well ignore a million person march based on their responsibility and judgement. That's what it means to be a leader.

If such leaders are wrong, and have severely misjudged the will of the people, or if events prove them wrong, then they pay at the ballot box. Their policies are repudiated by voters.

But Bush made his course and intentions quite clear well before the last election cycle. And in general, candidates he backed did well, and candidates he opposed did poorly. His party regained control of the Senate and strengthened control of the House.

And that's the most tangible, conclusive evidence that the paragraph I quoted from you above is fundamentally wrong. There were no "exponentially increasing dissenters"(or at least there were not many generations of exponential increase!). If there had been, the last election would have gone differently. And there was no "huge surge of public opinion banging on their door". If there had been, many of those Senate and House elections would have been lost, and Bush would have been forced to compromise with an opposed Congress.

But that didn't happen. And the fact that it did not happen doesn't give anyone the right to step up their protests by violating laws and effectively stealing thousands of hours from their fellow citizens. Claiming that one's position is somehow so "moral" or "right" that it gives one the right to break laws can be quite sanctimonious. Only an oppressive government that allows no other choice would make such a course reasonable, and we clearly don't have that here. Bush put his policies to the test in the election and won. He'll have to do it again in 18 months, and I suspect he'll win again.

I know you see a lot of anti-war sentiment, and that you agree and approve of it. Fine. But I believe you have confused what you see around you for a global phenomenon. Opinion surveys show the anti-war position to be a small and dropping minority.

In my own experience I see very little anti-war sentiment. At my Methodist church, the borderline-pacifist clergy started embedding the anti-war line into their sermons and were told in no uncertain terms by the vast majority of the congregation that they didn't know what they were talking about. (The congregation was polled, and about 80% supported the Bush position.) In the workplace of my main client, anti-war sentiment was very light before the war and non-existent now.

Yes there are pockets where anti-war sentiment is the majority. But do you believe Bush really cares what San Franciscans think? The didn't elect him and he's never going to win their vote.

In mainstream America, the protests were not that huge, and in many cases were challenged by pro-war protests that became of similar size. In my hometown of Nashville, for example, the largest anti-war protest I heard anything about was about less than 1,000, and the pro-war people got a protest of about 2,000 together.

So protest all you want. Vote against those whose policies you don't like. (Hey, I don't care much for Bush's domestic policies myself, didn't vote for him last time, and probably won't next time.) But if it proves out (in elections and surveys) that your position is a smaller minority than you would like, then realize that no matter how fervently you feel about your positions, it doesn't confer the right to anyone to violate laws to promote them. And if someone feels that they do have that right, they will be condemned, marginalized and hopefully punished.