Dissent is as American as apple pie: "American citizens are torn by an ill-advised war and occupation led by leaders who, in seeking to stifle the sort of healthy debate democracy requires, do not seem to understand, indeed, who seem to shun, our nation's history."

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2004 by Ralph F. Young

THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE in this country--and this Administration--who claim that anyone opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as America's continued presence there, are unpatriotic (at best) and treasonous (at worst). Indeed, the Patriot Act stipulates penalties for criticism of the government.

Patriotism--at least according to current popular belief--means supporting the decisions of our political leaden. Dissent is considered un-American. Protestors at presidential appearances routinely have been herded into "free speech zones" where their signs and slogans are seen only by the encircling cordon of police. (The Constitution makes no mention of free speech being confined to a zone.) The next thing you know, cars will be sporting the "America: Love It or Leave It!" bumper slickers that were all the rage some 30 years ago.

This attitude, however, only calls attention to one of the nation's most conspicuous failings--pervasive historical illiteracy. We need to recognize that dissent is the American way; that protest is patriotic. It is, in fact, one of the fundamental traits that defines this country. Cold War scholar Vladislav Zubok has pointed out that it was only when the Soviet Union saw American protestors take to the streets demonstrating against the Vietnam War that they finally overcame their distrust of the U.S. and began to believe in democracy.

The English colonies in North America were founded on dissent, and almost immediately after religious secessionists arrived in Massachusetts Bay, voices of protest rose up against the Puritan authorities. Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were banished for their views during the first decade of settlement. Remember, too, that patriots fought the American Revolution to establish independence from a government that was not responsive to the needs of its subjects--thus, resulting in the Declaration of Independence and, ultimately, the Constitution. None of this could have been accomplished without a great deal of debate, protest, resistance, and argument. Somehow, though, America did evolve into a country that respected all titans of freedom, especially freedom of speech. Or did it?

Lynch mobs

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison once was rescued from being lynched by a pro-slavery mob when the mayor of Boston had him thrown into jail. While incarcerated, Garrison wrote on the wall: "Wm. Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell Wednesday afternoon, October 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a 'respectable and influential' mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that 'all men are created equal.' ..."

Neither persecution nor time diminished Garrison's radicalism. On July 4, 1854, he publicly burned a copy of the Constitution, proclaiming that, because it acquiesced in the institution of slavery, it was "an agreement with death and a covenant with bell."

In 1846, when Mexican forces had fired on U.S. troops thai had been sent across the disputed southern border to provoke such an incident, Pres. James Polk asked Congress for a Declaration of War. "American blood," he proclaimed, "had been shed on American soil." A freshman congressman from Illinois sarcastically criticized the President's policy by introducing the so-called "Spot Resolution," which would have required Polk to travel to Mexico to point out the exact spot on "American soil" where this had taken place. The resolution was defeated. Moreover, it seems likely that Polk questioned Rep. Abraham Lincoln's patriotism.

Writer Henry David Thoreau, also in protest over the war with Mexico, refused to pay a poll tax because he could not in good conscience support an imperialistic government that sought to expand the institution of slavery into new territory. After his arrest and subsequent release, he penned On Resistance to Civil Government.

When there is an unjust law, Thoreau wrote, such as those legalizing the institution of slavery, then it is the duty of every just man to break that law. No true patriot allows injustice to go unchallenged.

Thoreau's friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, visited him the night he spent in jail. "Henry," he asked, somewhat scandalized by such outrageous behavior, "what are you doing in there?" To which Thoreau purportedly replied, "Ralph, what are you doing out there?"

Former Civil War officer and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz denounced U.S. Imperialism in 1899 after America had taken over the Philippines and Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. "Certainly," he said, addressing an audience at the University of Chicago, "every patriotic citizen will always be ready, if need be, to fight and to die under his flag wherever it may wave in justice and for the best interests of the country. But ... woe to the republic if it should ever be without citizens patriotic and brave enough to defy the demagogues' cry and to haul down the flag wherever it may be raised not in justice and not for the best interests of the country. Such a republic would not last long."