Political Freedom

“I want to leave the country.  I don’t like the direction our country is taking.”

“The trade towers collapsed 11 years ago.  We need to get over it, already.”

“Our President is ruining our country.”

These are all heard (or posted on Facebook) all around us.  I have heard these and similar sentences many times, from the most surprising people.  People love to complain about the country, and disparage patriotism, and criticize the government.

That is their right.  That is our right. We have the right to hate everything about our country.  We have the right to complain about everything, loudly if we wish, to great throngs of people if we can get them to listen.  We can argue bitterly and angrily about every policy, procedure, or law.  We can campaign to change any one law, or all of them. 

That is the beauty of the United States.  The right, guaranteed by the early founders of the government, to hate the government.  Do we ever consider how great our freedom is, in the midst of all our groaning?  By law, our government must defend our right to call them all idiots, and worse. 

We are not the only people in the world who have this right.  Other countries allow their citizens to openly criticize government.  We are probably not unique in the extent to which we exercise this right. 

But this right is not granted to all people.  There are people who risk imprisonment, banishment, even death for suggesting their governments are less than perfect.  There are people who go along with corrupt government out of fear for family, for friends, for life and limb.  There are people who must escape under cover when the situation becomes unbearable, unable to leave openly.

There are, or course, people who risk all to fight injustice.  These brave men and women choose carefully the things they protest.  They will not take the risk for things that do not matter a great deal.  Pick your battles, is the way we say it here.  These people, Nelson Mandela and others, deserve our respect and admiration.  They saw injustice, and took risks to change their corners of the world. 

Perhaps here we have an obligation to protest things that bother us.  We don’t make huge sacrifices just to voice an opinion, so perhaps we should make our voices heard amid all the clamor of other voices out there. 

But while we protest and complain, we should never forget how great our privilege is to do so.  Although you have the right to forget that, too.