IGM Dissent

Inter-Galactic Memo

To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Dissent


I’m going to steal a subject from Jay Nordlinger who wrote a nice piece in the current National Review. It has to do with the place of dissent in America, both today and throughout history. We should all be able to recall with hardly any drugs at all, the many, many references to dissent in one form or another during the former reign of George W. Bush. People with moderate to liberal leanings were fond of claiming that dissent was “the highest form of patriotism.” They were saying this mostly because they were doing a lot of dissenting, albeit, disguised as whining.
I’m not sure that the spirit of that now-trite phrase is true. Certainly we have a tradition of dissent in this country, from all sides and ideologies. But it could be argued that most of it stems from sour grapes rather than any passionately felt principle. (I would cite Joan Baez as an exception to that rule. While she was very critical of our involvement in the Vietnam war, she turned right around after the North Vietnamese took over and slammed the new regime for human rights abuses, which engendered a good deal of abuse aimed at her from the anti-war movement here at home. I’m sure there are other examples. I’m sure you’re one of them.)
So, do you think “dissent is the highest form of patriotism?” I have my doubts. As always, one has to weigh the validity of a given position both in its context and historically, which takes a little time. At the time of the Colony’s trouble with England, a good forty percent or more of the fledgling country disagreed with the dissenters who signed the Declaration of Independence. Time has shown them ( the signatories) to have been on the right side of the issue and most of us today applaud what they did.
In a more timely example, many people today are protesting (another word for dissent) what they believe to be outdated and punitive copyright laws, especially where “intellectual property” is concerned. In this case, I belong to the status quo, believing that an artist’s right to his or her property and whatever monetary remuneration might be theirs, to be sacrosanct. My son and his generation dissent from this view, believing that the new world of universal access demands new values, laws, and new ways to benefit. It is difficult to predict who might be right, and I do not claim to have any prescient insight into the debate. I just think we should be paid for our work, and that government should protect it. My son’s beliefs, which include open-sourced sharing of everything electronic, might turn out to be valid and workable. I await histories verdict.
But when it comes to politics and ideologies, dissent becomes another matter. One cannot help but notice a trend on Capitol Hill. We see people from both sides of the aisle stridently criticizing this or that policy, bill, decision or haircut, and then refuse to say a word about the same offenses when someone on “their side” is caught with fingers in the same cookie jar. Odd how it was the “height of patriotism” to bash President Bush (of whom I am no particular fan), but now that the shoe is on the other foot, dissent has become the “strident cacophony of rabble-rousing fringe elements from the far right of gun-toting, religious zealots.” (That’s not a quote from anyone, I just made it up, but things often have a heightened sense of importance when we wrap them in quotation marks.) It was “patriotic” to protest our involvement in Iraq, to protest just about every word out of the mouths of Carl Rove and Dick Cheney, but now that Van Jones and Tim Geithner and their ilk are in play, anyone who dares question their motives or qualifications or professional histories, is considered mentally defective and instantly branded a malcontent, a fringer, or, even worse, an “angry white man.” But the dissent going on now is valid. There are serious questions being asked about policy and the wholesale re-direction of America. Questions about how large and intrusive a government should be, about intrusions into the private sector, and decisions that have traditionally been up to individuals or the various states. The gathering surge of middle America is far from organized, (at least in the sense of the professional organizing that has been the hallmark of the Democrat party for decades) but it is gaining. It is a valid reaction of fear and suspicion to a less than forth-coming administration. One hopes that reason and rectitude and civility will be maintained, and so far, for the most part, it has. We recall with fondness the many instances where these laudable traits were thrown to the wind by those of a more “progressive” bent. Political memory is so selective.
Now, I am neither angry nor, technically, white. (As an Entity of Extra-Terrestrial Origin, or EETO, I cannot be considered genetically Caucasian, or any other earthly racial type.) But I do share some of the indignation felt by the more conservative among us. Happily, I do so with a smile and an intact sense of humor. How else does one approach the Janeane Garofalo’s and Howard Dean’s of the world?
When Albert Einstein wrote his famous letter to the president, it was out of a sense that America could be trusted to vouchsafe the new energy source, while other countries could not. It was patriotism. When he protested the development of the H-bomb, and the rapid escalation of nuclear arms, (despite their inevitability, of which he was well aware) I believe he was being patriotic as well. When Sergeant York and Audie Murphy won their medals, I believe their sense of patriotism rose above that of any dissent. When my father won two Distinguished Flying Crosses for mercilessly bombing Japan (despite his personal feelings) and helping to defeat an implacable enemy and shorten a world war, I believe his patriotism rose above those who protested the violence and death, while ignoring the ruthless, inhumane and brutal atrocities perpetrated by our enemies. But that’s just me. There are other positions in that debate. As always, only history will tell.