Reply #10: Hmmmm, this is one of the central issues of the day [View All]

[TayTay]

What is protest, what are it's aims and is it an effective means of changing governmental policies and actions. The answer of the founders of the United States, as codified in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution is that protest is relevant, important and serves a societal purpose and therefore must be protected as free speech. The United States of America got it's start because a bunch of pissed off people decided that they weren't going to take it anymore and that they were going to make their voices and positions on the issues known. We are a nation that was born of dissent; we would not exist without this sacred right.

I suffer the extremists because sometimes they are right. It is not fun to learn that the US government has done things in an immoral and amoral way in the past. But it is relevant. Because some of those actions have invited reactions, such as 9/11, that could have been prevented. (Blow-back is a bitch.)

Again, I understand that these folks provoke strong reactions. Free speech is funny that way. But real live humans with brains and free will and points of view different from my own think and feel this way. By raising these points, a different set of arguments seep into the national consciousness. The more radical and silly parts of their arguments get discarded. But some of the meat of the argument remains and get taken seriously and just might change enough minds to affect actual change in policy. That is the theory anyway.

Hey, sometimes you run up against nut-balls who claim that immoral wars that are poorly thought out and that seem to waste young lives for no reason at all should not be fought or should be ended. And sometimes you run up against crazies who claim that the US Government is in the drug trade and is shipping out arms illegally for the express purpose of overthrowing democratically elected governments in other parts of the world. And sometimes you even find oddballs who claim that well-known international banking institutions are actually fronts for money laundering and are laundering money for terrorist organizations. (Geez, they even claim that this same international banking institution was home to one, Usama Bin Laden and allowed him to send money all over the world.) Be careful, some of those nut-balls and their oddball, out-of-the-mainstream opinions just might be worth listening to.