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Shut up, he explained
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Aug 30, 2005 07:29pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Newspaper - Arkansas Democrat Gazette |
| News Date | Wednesday, August 31, 2005 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | George Arnold
In my previous life as the editor of a daily newspaper in South Arkansas, I was taken to task many times for printing something the taskmaster thought should not have been put on public display. Only once, however, can I recall being told (by a veteran) that he had once fought for my right to freedom of speech, distasteful as he obviously found my exercise of it.
I politely kept quiet. I’m a war veteran myself, though hardly of the heroic variety. In those bad old days, I don’t recall ever thinking that I was doing anything more complicated than trying to get home in one piece. And hoping that, if things went bad, I’d do my best to help my buddies survive, too. Happily, things never reached that extremity, and I am eternally grateful.
But even as the years smoothed over the memories, it never occurred to me to translate my veteran’s experience into a defense of somebody else’s right to say as he pleased. I thought that right was so solidly established in our country as to need no defense.
Boy, was I wrong.
This country has a rich tradition of dissent and protest, the stuff that freedom of speech supposedly allows. But you wouldn’t know it from comments by the national commander of the American Legion. In a speech to the Legion’s national convention in Honolulu, veteran Thomas Cadmus said it’s time to end all public protests and "media events" against the war in Iraq. He thinks it’s time for everybody to quit exercising that durned right to speak freely. Instead, let’s project a more dignified silence on the subject.
Protesting the war and staging events to gain the attention of reporters do nothing more than encourage the enemy, according to Commander Cadmus. And we all know where that will end: demoralization, national division and defeat. It happened before. Think Vietnam. Blame a war that’s going bad on those who protest it. |
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