General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)Breath of Dissent [View all]
No American, young or old, must ever be denied the right to dissent. No minority must be muzzled. Opinion and protest are the life breath of democracy -- even when it blows heavy.
But I urge you never to dissent merely because someone asks you to, or because someone else does. Please know why you protest. Know what it is you dissent from. And always try, when you do disagree, to offer a choice to the course that you disapprove. For dissent and protest must be the recourse of men who, in challenging the existing order, reason their way to a better order.
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson; June 7, 1966.
This is my favorite LBJ quote. What a curious specimen of humanity he was! A capable legislator. A passionate advocate for Civil Rights. Yet his policies on Vietnam continue to eclipse the many positives of his presidency. History correctly identifies him as the nations leader in 1968, the most revolutionary year of the century.
In my mind, I tend to associate this quote with an event that took place ten days later, late at night in a Paterson, NJ, bar. My good friend Rubin Hurricane Carter would be wrongly convicted of that vicious triple-murder, and spend the next twenty years behind bars.
I remember Rubin telling me that minds that have very little to compare, have very little understanding. And, for whatever reason, I think of that quote -- along with the LBJ quote -- when I read some of the on-going arguments about President Obama on DU:GD. But thats just me.
Peace,
H2O Man