The Northwestern Chronicle is no stranger to being in the minority. The Right-wing weekly has earned plenty of scorn — and disinterest — from NU students for its scathing editorials and its willingness to be unabashedly conservative on a mostly progressive campus.
I rarely agree with The Chronicle, but I appreciate the fact that it brings an extra voice to campus debates. So I was more than a little surprised last week when Editor in Chief David Weigel devoted a column to arguing against dissent.
“Are we always better off because someone is standing up to have his nonsense heard?” Weigel wrote. “No. Dissent is morally neutral. It is only right when the entrenched opinion is wrong.”
Weigel missed the point of dissent completely, which is ironic considering how good his paper is at providing it. Disagreeing with authority is not about landing on the “right side of history,” as he put it later in his piece.
It’s about making sure all sides of an issue are heard.
If you need to see an example of this, look no further than last week’s Senate debates on a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq.
On one side there was majority leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who said he voted for the resolution because of the need “to speak with one voice at this critical moment.”
Since when did having “one voice” become the mark of America? We have always been the nation of different voices and different choices. No one suggests McDonald’s and Burger King should use the same business strategies. No one believes Eminem and Snoop Dogg should release the same album.
Yet for some reason it is desirable for everyone to believe the same things, according to Daschle. This may be convenient and efficient. But it is most certainly the most un-American of values.
So while Daschle pats himself on the back for his smooth political maneuvering, he should remember that he is nothing more than a spineless coward who caved to authority.
On the other side was the aged wonder Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., who courageously stood against the avalanche of war support.
“Let us not give this president or any president unchecked power,” Byrd said. “Remember the Constitution.”
It’s fitting that Byrd referenced the Constitution, because that document was created almost entirely by dissent. It was dissent that forced the framers to add a Bill of Rights. It was dissent that led to almost every other Constitutional amendment. And it was dissent that prompted the writers of the Federalist Papers to defend the Constitution and our system of government in a brilliant series of essays we still study today.
So dissent was important not just in what it gave us but also because it made us find and explain the good in what we already had.
Dissent is noble and it is brave. It strengthens our democracy because it empowers even the smallest of minorities, like NU conservatives, with the tools to stand up to authority. It strengthens us as people because it forces us to reevaluate our previously held beliefs.
And it strengthens our institutions, highlighting our mistakes and helping to build a greater, more just society.
Jesse Abrams-Morley is a Medill sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected].
