A Few Thoughts on Protest

Our nation is founded on the principle of free speech, our founding fathers thought it so important to a healthy Republic it was the first of the Ten Amendments included in the Constitution after ratification.  The exercise of free speech seems to be a rallying cry for our citizens, unless someone is saying something you don’t like.  Then we seem to be all for suppressing it, either in the classroom, in politics, or even in routine life.

When I read about books being forbidden from the classroom I am emotionally torn about what is right.  On one hand I understand a parents right to influence what their children read, but on the other, I know in my heart that nothing good comes from forbidding a teenager to explore literature, even if it is something you find distasteful.  A book, once written and published cannot be undone.  The best that can be accomplished by its censorship is to encourage its sale to people who want to find out what all the controversy is.   That being said there must be reasonable bounds; for example, the average eleven year old is not emotionally equipped to read “Silence of the Lambs,” or the “Story of O.”

Today, cloaked in the guise of political correctness and racial sensitivity, free speech is routinely censored or condemned.  For example, ESPN just terminated its agreement with Hank Williams Jr. when he expressed his opinion about our President.  As a commercial entity ESPN was well within its rights to fire an employee, but it does speak to the whole issue of how our political parties and social media attempt to control speech in pursuit of their agendas.

So now we come to the protest going on in Wall Street, and spreading across our country to other business centers.  On one hand people like Nancy Pelosi and the President are encouraging this activity, while the municipalities are struggling to contain them.  The conservatives see this as a progressive led conspiracy to draw attention away from the failed politics of the President.  Certainly he has laid the basis for these protests with his whole Us versus Them approach to governing.  The fans of this protest are encouraged by the likes of Michael Moore and the other liberal elites’ who think they know what is best for the nation.

It strikes me as pure hypocrisy on the part of the liberal side to say this is a spontaneous uprising, when it has been shown paid progressive organizers are involved.  It is also funny that just two years earlier they were condemning the Tea Party movement.  But then in politics what you said yesterday shouldn’t really be held against you.  To be fair one of the interesting observations on conventional Republican politicians they condemned the Tea Party movement too, until they realized it would probably lead t0 being replaced if they didn’t climb on board.

So for me, I believe the protestors have a right to be where they are, doing what they are doing, as long as they don’t endanger public safety.  The thing to keep in mind is most of them don’t really know what they are asking for, for if we do what they want, they will inherit an anarchy because our government will collapse in on itself.