A Quote by Henry Steele Commager
America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.
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We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories... We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust... We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
In America, religious dissent is as vital as it is elusive. Like the secretions of the pituitary, the juices of dissent are essential to ongoing life even if we do not always know precisely how, when or where they perform their tasks, and the not knowing - the flimsy, filmy elusiveness - is supremely characteristic of America's expressions of religious dissent. For in the United States no stalwart orthodoxy stands ever ready to parry the sharp thrust or clever feints of dissent.
To revolt within society in order to make it a little better, to bring about certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all, it is just mutiny. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is like the mutiny of prisoners who want better food, better treatment within the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual breaking away from society, and that is creative revolution.
America became great through immigrants... I hope that this great country will recall what has made it great.
Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach.
It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely "patriotic" about running down America. Anti-Americanism - a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization - became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before. Flag burners became the truest "patriots" because dissent - not just from partisan politics, but the American project itself - became the highest virtue.
Well, dissent is the tradition in America, and I've been on the side of dissent a good bit of my career, particularly in the last many years of the Republican Congress.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
As we thought about how to help portfolio companies grow and scale while simultaneously supporting corporate discovery and experimentation, it became clear that we would need to collaborate with a technology infrastructure provider like AWS to help us build a platform for experimentation.
What began as a revolt in response to the King of Great Britain's repeated injuries against the colonies, soon became a passionate and glorious call to fight for the beginnings of a new country.
Again and again, to be sure, on the way to America, and under many other circumstances, man has passed through the most adverse climates and has survived, but he has flourished and waxed strong only in certain zones.
Revolt, it will be said, implies violence; but this is an outmoded, an incompetent conception of revolt. The most effective form of revolt in this violent world we live in is non-violence.
National discord is, like religion, a standardized form of revolt; and the moment a revolt is standardized, it is no longer a revolt.
Dissent and dissenters have no monopoly on freedom. They must tolerate opposition. They must accept dissent from their dissent.
This is America. Dissenting voices will continue to voice their dissent. Because they've read the operating instructions for the United States of America, and it's their right.
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