Agitators and Our Country

Something to keep in mind as our country celebrates its birth once again: We've been through a period of time where speaking out against authority/establishment has been heavily frowned upon, with hints of treason sprinkled in. I've come across a piece by Jim Hightower, national radio commentator and author of Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow that suggested quite the opposite.

According to Hightower, "the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ... 'agitator!' They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order. . . . [T]he message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another. Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing 'God Save the Queen,' and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs. Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday."

Individual liberty is celebrated on the 4th of July, but we should regard it as a work in progress. Our history shows it to be so. Hightower stated that while the Founding Fathers were most definitely agitators, "they didn't actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless. So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents."

Hightower and I seem to share a mistrust of Establishment expectations. He said, "The Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) -- give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along." That sounds a lot like Ari Fleischer's "watch what you say" admonition during the W years. Actually, the confluence of corporate and political demand for passivity (joined by demands of the religious right, it should be noted) was a mark of W's time in office, weighing on the chest of individual liberty like a gorilla.

The powerful in our society may make it uncomfortable (or worse) to dissent. So it is vital to realize that it was agitators that created our country, and agitators continue to form a more perfect Union and better allow for the pursuit of happiness. Hightower's closing remark was "when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out."