A
true democratic government absolutely has to tolerate dissent at all times.
Democracy is a system where the people are in power and govern directly or
through the election of representatives. The people are the voice of the
government; thus, dissension or expressions of the people that differ from
either the majority or minority must be allowed for the system of government to
progress as structured. Any attempts to destroy the people’s voice to any
degree then would destroy the democratic system of government.
The
Bill of Rights protects this right of expressing opposing opinions or dissension
in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”[1]
It is a fact that not all people in the United States will agree with all of
the laws of the federal, state, and local governments; but suppression of their
viewpoints or dissension would be unconstitutional. Dissidents of the law, who
share their views, must not be persecuted or silenced by the law. However,
violence perpetrated by dissidents is also at odds with the democratic system
of government.
In
the United States, Congress has the power to “suppress insurrections” or
violent uprising against the government.[2]
Dissension by itself is not a violent action, nor is it treason. A dissident
believed of committing a crime against the country would still have their
rights to be protected from illegal searches and seizures, a right to a speedy
trial, and to be judged by their peers. However, it has been the case with the
federal government to infringe upon these constitutional rights in times of war
and crisis.
John
Adam’s administration passed the Alien and Sedition Act (1798), which was meant
to silence, arrest, and fine their opposing party’s dissension towards their
policies. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus—an action only allowed by
Congress, not the Executive Branch—during the Civil War to incarcerate Northern
dissidents, who opposed his administration’s actions. Woodrow Wilson’s
administration resurrected the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act during the
First World War, which allowed for further suppression of civil liberties once
again. The bills passed during Wilson’s presidency witnessed similar outcomes
and infringements against civil liberties that Adams and Lincoln allowed during
their terms prior.
The Espionage Act of 1917
imposed $10,000 fines and as much as 20 years in prison for anyone saying or
doing anything the state construed as “discouraging enlistments” in the
military. The Sedition Act of 1916 imposed similar criminal penalties for any
type of criticism of the government. All printed materials were censored;
thousands were deported without due process of law; and state-sponsored vigilante
groups conducted warrantless searches and seizures. The author Upton Sinclair
was arrested for reading the Bill of Rights in public; the poet E. E. Cummings
was imprisoned for three-and-a-half months for writing a letter to his mother
saying that he did not necessarily hate Germans; and in New Jersey one Roger
Baldwin was arrested for reading the Constitution in public.[3]
Violent
acts against the government are criminal actions that must be brought before
the legal system; however, simply dissension is protected by the Constitution
and should not be infringed. In the Virginia Resolution, which opposed the
Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 stated that "the Liberty of Conscience and
of the Press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any
authority of the United States."[4]
Any action to the contrary by the government to suppress free speech, even
dissention, goes against the intended purpose of a democratic government. Government
actions to suppress freedom of speech and other
constitutional rights during the Wilson administration is what led to Eugene
Debs’ response after his conviction in
1918, “They tell us that we live in a great free republic: that our
institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This
is too much even for a joke.”[5]
[1]
U.S. Constitution, amend I.
[2]
U.S. Constitution, art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 15.
[3]
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, “The Virus of Imperialism (Part II),” Mises Institute, September 9, 2013, https://mises.org/library/virus-imperialism-part-ii.
[4]
“Virginia Resolution – Alien and Sedition Acts,” The Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/virres.asp.
[5]
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Pivotal Decades:
The United States, 1900-1920, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990),
299.
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