Maybe you’re making it too hard as an essay question. Let’s try multiple guess:

“1. Why are the so-called peace-protesters so quiet at the Russian invasion of Georgia?”

a. The peace-protesters are not truly in favor of peace. Rather, they are actually supporters of anti-freedom powers who are only masquerading as supporters of unilateral “peace”.

b. The peace-protesters ARE honestly interested in unilateral peace. Unfortunately, they are also cowards, so will only stand-up for peace only when they know that doing-so results in zero risk to themselves.

c. They slept-in this morning and have not yet heard the news of Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

d. Both a and b. Some of them are communists/socialists/anti-freedom. Some of them are peace-loving cowards.

e. None of the above.

If this format of the question still seems too hard for folks to answer, we may have to further dumb-down the exam into T/F format.

Two things come to mind. First of all, I don’t recall anyone here advocating denying someone the constitutional right to dissent.

Secondly; yes, we know they’re dormant. The real question is why are they dormant now? Why aren’t they protesting Russia’s war of imperialism? Why do they only seem interested in criticising US efforts at promoting democracy? I mean, if they truly are against “wars of agression” and “war for oil” — and make no mistake, that’s what Russia’s efforts are all about — then why aren’t they protesting Russia, and burning Putin in effigy?

Jim C

Yes my kind and accommodating friend, I now recall that was indeed the point. But I perhaps wrongly assumed the question to be rhetorical.

An answer, I suppose is they are now mostly dormant. But I’m sure they will return again in our future national discourses, as they always do…. But only as long as we remain a free society.
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#23 David Curp-

Dear DC,

Thank you for your informative and instructive response. Indeed I find we are very much in agreement, especially with respect to civility and the rule of law.

Unfortunately my earlier choice of wording was extremely poor. Please note what I found intolerable was to ‘denigrate’ (or more appropriately, wish to deny) the “right” of the dissenter to dissent, not the dissenter himself.

While maybe at times uncivil, one may be allowed debase and denigrate an obnoxious protester I suppose. What one may not do is attempt to deny him his constitutional right to dissent.

Regards,
fliterman

You state

For those who would debase or denigrate the right of any individual their constitutional right for peaceful protest – regardless of how personally obnoxious that particular protest may be – is an affront to every man and woman who in the past few centuries, died to make and keep us free.

So no matter what is being protested (be it Jews living peacefully in Skokie, the “right” of China to wipe out the Tibetan people through colonization and cultural genocide, or the right to commit sacrilege in Churches and during religious gatherings by various lifestyle innovators), if I debase or denigrate the protestors I am somehow affronting every man and woman who died to help keep us free? The simple answer is no, I am not. You confuse tolerance and respect for the rule of law (I will not stop such protestors as long as they break no laws) with acceptance. The fact that someone has the right to protest and advocate publically for even the most obnoxious and objectively evil things does not mean that I have to give them a respectful hearing or regard them as somehow representing all for which my country stands. Those who use the rights of this country to advocate positions antithetical to other values and tasks of our country (even to the point that their politics, if embraced, could prove fatal to us as a people) may do so, but I can and will regard them as dangerous enemies (and during national emergencies over the past couple of centuries our country has shut such people up and has seen an expansion of civil and political freedoms). A KKK or Nation of Islam protest is a legal but ugly perversion of democracy. I will make way for them as much as I have to in order to be in accord with the law, but I not only will never honor their protest but I will denigrate it. Lesser degrees of denigration and hostility are prudent and appropriate for more controversial issues, but I simply will not pretend that the men and women who gave their lives for our country and our freedom were indifferent to those who despise our country and trample on its values and fought only for an abstraction of “free protest” regardless of the content of that protest. Many of the more sophisticated might have realized that such freedoms even for the most noxious were the price we paid not to have censors and political police – but I doubt that the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry would regard it as disrespect if during a KKK rally I look on the protestors with a certain contempt. So could you please measure your words, just a little? Voltaire was not a founding father, and I don’t have to defend to the death the right of any fool to utter all his/her hatreds and pathologies in order to cherish either freedom or your sacrifices for our country (for which I remain abidingly grateful). Believing in the Republic need not mean being an ideological masochist.

And as for the issue at hand – I happen to believe many of the peace protestors over the last several years to be misguided utopians or even simply anti-American activists (I overheard one conversation even before the Iraq war went sour where one man complained to another “I suppose we will have to support the fucking troops” – pardon me if I don’t get all misty eyed for how every protestor is the salt of the earth). I also know that there are those who object to our errand in the Mesopotamian wilderness out of more prudential calculations of the way to achieve a more stable world/employ American military power. I will use scorn, satire and invective in carefully calibrated ways when confronted by those who out of lack realism would do damage to what I perceive to be my country’s (and the world’s) vital interest and as much reason and empathy as possible when dealing with those who simply have a different way of weighing the costs and benefits of intervention and the use of military power. The whole point of the right to protest (and free speech) is to advance a not always pretty but effective democratic process in which different views clash within the bounds of the rule of law (minimally) and civility (ideally). I do wish there was more civility in our politics, and undue debasement and denigration of even the most wrong-headed protest is one way to undercut it. Another way to undermine civility is to assume that those who disrespect misguided or obnoxious protestors must somehow be anti-democratic zealots and to try to shut down outrage over any protest, no matter how politically pornograpic, by summoning up the shades of fallen soldiers and their sacrifice to delegitimize any objection to any protest ever.

Sincerely,

David