"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable
on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It
will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be
exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is
like a storm in the atmosphere."
When Thomas Jefferson wrote these words, he had amply practiced what
he preached. He and the majority of his fellow Americans had suffered
for years under abusive government and had petitioned and protested
to no avail. Only when it became obvious that the British rulers would
remain unresponsive to the will of the people did he and his supporters
conclude that they had to assert their God-given right to resist tyranny
with all means at their disposal.
One has to wonder what Jefferson and all the other courageous Americans
of 1776 would have done in the face of a president who is approved
by less than a third of the people but defies their demands on the
issues most vital to their welfare: international peace, sound national
finances, sustained environmental quality, and unencumbered personal
freedoms.
Should the people ignore the fact that their president ordered the
invasion of a country on the other side of the globe under false pretenses
and without a plan to end the bloodshed expeditiously? After over four
years of unsuccessful sacrifices, both human and financial, should
the people allow the president to prolong the national agony of an
unwinnable war indefinitely?
When Jefferson invoked "the spirit of resistance to government," he
did not necessarily ask for a violent uprising but for the most suitable
action to right what an overwhelming majority deems wrong. Such action
could be legislation and the overriding of presidential vetoes, judicial
rulings, impeachment, or constitutional amendments.
So far, President Bush encountered no more than angry protest demonstrations.
Although his party is in the minority and in some disarray, it has
been sufficiently held together to keep the opposition from forcing
upon the president any change of his controversial policies.
Polls are showing that about a third of the American people believe
the President is right in staying his course: keeping Iraq occupied
and the whole Middle East dominated by U.S. forces. Even among the
two thirds who claim to oppose the administration's policies, one finds
little outrage and hardly a sense of urgency.
The White House has skillfully contained the impact of the war on the
public by keeping the images of America's war dead, wounded, and maimed
to a minimum, and by refusing to mention Iraq's massive losses. By
repeatedly deploying the same units to Iraq, a relatively small segment
of the American people directly feel the painful impact of the war's
brutality.
The lack of antiwar protests among young men seems strongly caused
by the absence of a military draft. In the 1960s, the possibility of
getting drafted at age 18 compelled many men and their parents to decide
if service in Vietnam was worth the potential sacrifices it entailed.
Ironically, at that time two future commanders-in-chief--Clinton and
Bush junior--chose to serve their own interests rather than America's.
Today some of the most outspoken voices against the President's policies
appear to be academics that remember the Vietnam era. "We must
listen to our conscience and speak out," demanded neurology professor
Dan Lowenstein at the University of California in San Francisco. In
campus teach-ins, for example, Columbia's Nobel Prize-winning economist
Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard political scientist Linda Bilmes have been
impressing upon their audiences the enormous cost of the Iraq war that
they estimate at over $ 1 trillion.
Judging from his views on resistance to unresponsive government, Jefferson
could hardly be happy in his beloved United States today. The FBI might
even consider him a security risk if he continued to say: "God
forbid we should ever be 20 years without ... a rebellion."