Dissent Is Not Disloyalty: The Right And Duty To Criticize The Government

No matter which party holds power, the people must be free to criticize the government.

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President Trump has no problem criticizing, condemning, insulting, demonizing and threatening those who refuse to fall in line.

He has branded political opponents “communists,” denounced critics as anti-American, lashed out at NATO allies, threatened to cut off trade with Spain, and referred to Iran’s leaders as “scum” amid the ongoing war.

In Trump’s America, the president is free to call other nations bad actors, label his opponents dangerous, and treat disagreement as betrayal.

But dare to criticize Trump, his administration, ICE, the police state, the war machine, the surveillance state, or the government’s steady assault on the Constitution, and you may find yourself treated as the threat.

This is the hypocrisy of the moment: those in power claim an unlimited right to criticize everyone else, while increasingly denying the people the right to criticize them.

Criticize the government, question the police state, object to ICE raids, oppose war, challenge corruption, reject propaganda, refuse to salute the party line, or insist that public officials obey the Constitution, and you may find yourself accused of being anti-American, extremist, subversive, ungrateful, communist, terrorist-adjacent or worse.

This is how free speech dies: not all at once, but by redefining dissent as disloyalty.

Yet the First Amendment was not written to mandate flattery and applause for those in power. It was written to safeguard the right of the people to criticize, condemn, expose, challenge and resist government abuses without fear of being investigated, surveilled, threatened, prosecuted or treated like enemies of the state.

The American Revolution itself began as an act of criticism.

The Declaration of Independence was a bill of complaints against a government that had abused its power, violated the rights of the people, used the military to intimidate civilians, obstructed justice, imposed unjust burdens, and treated resistance as rebellion.

By today’s standards, the Founders would likely be labeled extremists, agitators, radicals, anti-government dissidents and threats to national security.

What was once rebellion against tyranny is now being recast as a warning sign of extremism.

That is the police state’s playbook for discrediting dissent: start with finger-pointing and name-calling, then turn criticism into subversion, dissent into danger, and those who demand accountability into enemies of the state.

On cue, President Trump and his allies have increasingly wrapped political opposition in the language of extremism, communism, terrorism and anti-Americanism.

The government’s increasing tendency to equate dissent with danger should alarm every American, regardless of party.

We have already seen what this looks like.

Americans who criticize ICE online, write angry emails to government officials, document raids, protest enforcement actions, or speak out against official misconduct increasingly risk visits, warnings, subpoenas, surveillance or investigations by the government’s secret police.

The government does not need to jail everyone in order to silence a population. It only needs to make examples of a few.

A knock on the door. A warning from agents. A subpoena. A phone call from law enforcement. A file opened. A name entered into a database. A social media post flagged. A protest monitored. A journalist questioned. A nonprofit investigated. A student visa threatened. A donor list scrutinized. A museum audited. A professor disciplined. A mayor denounced as anti-American. A citizen taught to think twice before speaking again.

This is how a free people are trained to censor themselves.

Let us be clear: violence and true threats can and should be investigated. No one has a constitutional right to assault, threaten, stalk, bomb, kill or terrorize.

But criticism is not violence. Anger is not terrorism. Dissent is not extremism. Opposition is not treason. Petitioning the government for redress of grievances is not a crime. It is the essence of citizenship.

Yet every administration, sooner or later, discovers the convenience of labeling its critics as threats.

Richard Nixon kept enemy lists. George W. Bush gave us the Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance, watchlists and the language of “with us or against us.” Barack Obama targeted whistleblowers. Joe Biden’s administration leaned on agencies and platforms in the name of combatting misinformation and domestic extremism.

Donald Trump has taken all of that machinery and openly aimed it at political enemies, protesters, immigrants, journalists, universities, museums, law firms and anyone else who refuses to bow.

The right to criticize government cannot be treated as a partisan indulgence.

No matter which party holds power, the people must be free to criticize the government.

This is the great danger of the moment.

We are being told that patriotism requires amnesia.

That is a lie.

Real patriotism is not worship of government. Real patriotism is not loyalty to a president. Real patriotism is not blind obedience to police. Real patriotism is not a flag big enough to cover up injustice.

Real patriotism is the willingness to tell the truth about your country because you believe it can and must be better.

Those who criticize America are often the only ones still taking America seriously.

When the government claims the power to decide what history may be taught, what speech may be tolerated, what criticism may be investigated, what protest may be monitored, what viewpoint may be flagged, and what truths may be spoken, the people have a duty to push back.

We must insist that the First Amendment protects the speech government hates most. We must insist that criticizing ICE is not a crime. We must insist that criticizing the president is not treason. We must insist that criticizing police is not extremism. We must insist that criticizing America’s failures is not anti-American. We must insist that history belongs to the people, not to politicians. We must insist that no president, no agency, no party and no bureaucrat gets to decide what patriotism requires.

We must insist that the Constitution means what it says.

After all, the government works for us—not the other way around. The moment Americans forget that, the experiment in self-government is over.

So criticize the government.

Criticize it loudly. Criticize it relentlessly.

Criticize it when it spies, lies, censors, raids, detains, prosecutes, propagandizes, militarizes, profiteers and abuses.

Criticize it when it rewrites history, calls truth anti-American, mistakes obedience for patriotism, and forgets that “We the People” are the masters and the government is the servant.

That is the duty of a free people.

The police state does not need everyone to agree with it. It only needs enough people to fear disagreeing with it.

We do not owe the government our silence.

We owe the Constitution our vigilance.

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A phenomenal essay by John W. Whitehead, founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.