@LefeversJay @JeSuisDawn @John_Sevigny @mattgaetz Protesting injustice is literally what founded this country.
— j0rdinho (@j0rdinho) September 25, 2016
Sometimes, we miss the obvious. This country was founded on protests that spread into a Revolution. You cannot celebrate the messy destruction of the Boston Tea Party and then be horrified because someone later engages in peaceful demonstrations. Even when the demonstrations go outside of peaceful, we need to be careful to not immediately condemn with words that imply that the people have nothing to demonstrate over. In many ways, the reactions of all too many to demonstrations is the same reaction that the Tories would have had during the American Revolutionary War. We need to remember that. While this does not make every demonstration a sound demonstration, it should remind us that beginning new directions by way of demonstration is every bit as American as the right to have weapons in your home. And both the peaceful demonstration and the right to arm are enshrined in the Constitution, per both Federal law and Supreme Court rulings.
The alternate defense that many people try to put forth is that somehow the Founding Fathers had it so right that no one that followed ever met the standards that they set. That type of argument has more to do with civil religion than it has to do with sound historical analysis. It is a quasi-religious belief of the same type as is preached against in many a pulpit in America. It is civil religion at its worst. The Founding Fathers did set a high standard, but there are various that have met that standard in the years since the founding of this nation, from Abraham Lincoln through Martin Luther King, both elected officials and common folk who brought needed change to America. [Note: not all change had to do with Civil Rights, think of people like Teddy Roosevelt in the area of conservation, and Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression going into WWII.] More than once, the change came through either demonstration, or even the violence of a Civil War that finally put to rest the slaver faction.
Not all demonstrations in America have equal value. Some are even rather silly, while others border on the despicable. But, when we see a demonstration, we need to remind ourselves that our country, as part of its beginning, glorifies a demonstration in which violence was used to destroy the property of others. The Boston Tea Party was no nice banner-waving crew. It was a demonstration by people who came ready for violence and carried it out. I do not believe in violent protest. But, neither can I pretend to be horrified and say that it is utterly non-American.
One group of people today try to reserve the term patriot or revolution strictly and only to their political beliefs. They busily set up groups that implied violent revolution when President Obama was first elected. They chose mission statements that made it clear that only they were keeping “oaths” to defend the Constitution. They threatened open rebellion should their political agenda ever totally lose. But, here is the odd part, if you look at the beginnings of America. In some sense, anyone who organizes a protest is, in some way, a Son/Daughter of the Revolution in that they intend to bring what they perceive as needed change. In that sense, they are indeed following the American way to do things.
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