I’d like to start a dialog on bugman’s sig. I hope to do so without rancor, but the fact is it rankles me. No doubt this rankling is a good thing on all accounts.
I’ll preface this by saying that a sig is an expression of opinion and one’s own feelings and as such it is not my hope that it will be removed nor, of course, do I have any right to request that it be. I just want to discuss it.
I find it to be a romanticized, sentimental untruth that attempts to overly glorify the role of the soldier in American history. Or world history for that matter.
This is not to say that there haven’t been conflicts where the use of force wasn’t justified. The War of 1812, the Civil War, and WWII come to mind. However, the vast majority of US use of force has been largely unjustified. The soldiers deployed in these wars, while they may have in many instances acted nobley and bravely did so despite the purpose of the conflicts. They certainly did nothing to defend the rights of those here at home in the United States.
I also believe that the quote is part of a terrible anti-intellectual strain in American thought. One that tries to minimize and trivialize the role of thought and speech over might. One that attempts, sometimes quite successfully, to present men and women of ideas as ineffectual cowards.
On to the specifics. It was Peter Zenger who in 1733 criticized the governor of New York and was censored and tried for it in 1735 who got the ball rolling for freedom of the press. It was all the subsequent journalists who refused to be cowed and who wrote disapprovingly of the fraud, abuse of power, and misdeeds of the powers that be and who held their sources private who continued his work. And their lawyers, some of them brilliant and noble, who worked to defend these rights.
It was the likes of Allen Ginsberg who defended his right to publish his poem “Howl” against charges of obscenity and the poets and writers who came before him and followed him who forge and maintain the right of free speech. And their lawyers, some of the brilliant and noble, who worked to defend these rights.
It was all the protesters from the suffragists to the abolitionists to the trade unionists to the civil rights marchers to the anit-war protesters who demanded and create the right to demonstrate. In many cases, such as the labor disputes of the 1930s to the Vietnam war protests, the soldiers were the ones putting the protesters down. Let us not forget Kent State. Where are the soldiers defending our right to demonstrate as the current administration pens protestors in “free-speech zones” often blocks or miles away from the events and people they seek to be heard by? Where were the soldiers when at the 2000 Republican National Convention protesters were arrested on flimsy charges, given excessively high bail and held for unprecendented lengths of time as a tactic of intimidation?
On occasion the soldier does serve to protect these rights from external forces. But never forget that the biggest threat to these rights is always from internal forces and against them the soldier is at best neutral and at worst the enemy of these rights.
Respectfully,
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
I am going to do a little searching later and find the story I got it from. It will give a little context to the qoute that may bring you a little more understanding as to why it was said. Maybe not.
