I’ve been a little disturbed lately by the kind of things I’ve been reading in the Opinion section of the local paper. A good number of the opinion pieces in the paper from local residents seem to follow a certain formula:
“These anti-war protesters make me sick. They’re encouraging the enemy and taking away from what our troops are doing. They should be arrested.”
…and so forth.
Here’s the problem I have with this: one of the founding principles of the United States was that the citizenry was to have the right to free speech, and censure and prohibition of speech was only allowed under very specific wartime conditions, and then only particularly seditious types of speech. Sedition, of course, being defined as “an illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority and tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government”. Of course, since we have free speech, anti-war demonstrations cannot be defined as illegal.
And of course, we’re not even at war. Congress has to declare a war. That pesky Constitution thing again.
If we’re waging this “war” as a means to protect American interests and our way of life, why are we saying that the rights of Americans are not worth protecting? Who cares if you don’t like what they’re saying? They’ve still got the right to say it. Because I have to say for myself, I really don’t care for what people are saying about arresting protesters for not supporting the troops. They don’t have to support the troops. There’s no law, there’s no central moral imperative, there’s no real reason. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, and there’s no reason to force the issue.
I suppose for myself it all comes down to the issue of the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States of America is a worthless shell, no better than any other nation on the planet. We might as well pack it in and go back to Britain, except that Britain today is better than it was back when we split away from the United Kingdom. Forget the flag, forget the yellow ribbons, forget nationalist jingoistic bullshit. Let’s all start pledging to support the Constitution, because without it, America isn’t America.
After all, is it America the Free, or America the Free to Sit Down and Shut Up?
