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Whither Free Speech? I've been totally buried the last week splitting my time between my real job, and some pro bono programming I've been doing to help a get out the vote campaign. This has me short on sleep and time, but I really want to say something about the pathetic state of free speech in this country. With the political conventions approaching, and the campaigns in full swing, it is time to refocus on the question of dissent in America. The Bush administration has a horrible record of using goon tactics to suppress dissent whenever the president appears in public. The Bloomberg administration in New York is trying to marginalize anti-Bush protests during the Republican National Convention, and who knows what Boston will look like next week. While the most frequently cited defense of the illegal quashing of free expression has been security, I'm not buying it. If a president needs to be kept away from outspoken citizens as a security measure, then it is a sure sign that it is time for that president to go. After all, which is more important: the individual who happens to be in office at any given time, or the US Constitution? What is it that the president is really afraid of? Clearly it is the prospect of being confronted by people who disagree with him, and showing up on television being shouted down. Or worse, looking like an idiot trying to actually engage the citizenry in debate. But is this something that he should be protected from? Clearly not. If there are large numbers of people who disagree with the president, he should be listening to what they have to say. Not isolating himself in a bubble and imagining that he is loved by all. But what about civility, you might ask. Surely a question oft-raised by conservative forces. My response: democracy is messy, politeness doesn't always work. When a president refuses to listen to dissenting opinions from anyone outside of his hand-picked inner circle; when that president hides from protestors (for how else can one construe his actions?); that is a president who needs to be confronted and made to listen. He's had his chance at civility. There have been questions in congress. Press conferences by mayors and governors. Op-ed pieces in major newspapers. Peaceful rallies. And he has ignored all of it. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not advocating any sort of violence or illegal activity. I'm advocating that the president be restrained from using his security detail as a mechanism for marginalizing protestors. The so-called 'free speech zones' are an abomination. The entire country is supposed to be a free speech zone. There have even been reports of secret service agents removing people with anti-Bush shirts from crowds assembled to hear our so-called leader. This is not democracy in action. This is fascism. If the law acts to interfere with the constitutional right to free speech, and remember that the founding fathers were far more concerned with the right to political dissent than the right to hawk sugar water, then the law is in the wrong. As a final thought, it should be noted that in the history of political dissent in America, virtually all of the violence associated with groups of protestors has been instigated by the official thugs with guns: soldiers, National Guardsman, or the police. The real threat to safety and security is not 'we the people,' it's the organs of the state acting to maintain control which they have no constitutional basis for defending with force. The constitution grants us the right to assemble. It does not grant our police the right to use clubs, rubber bullet, tear gas, horses, or water hoses to disperse us. And it certainly does not provide for the president shutting himself away from the very people he is sworn to represent.