Flutterby™! : Dissent

In my link to the travelogue of a North Korea visit I commented that as I read it, I kept wondering why the traveler didn't just keep his mouth shut. Here's why: Transcript of Tim Robbin's speech to the National Press Club. He says:

...And the most frightening thing about the weekend was the amount of times we were thanked for speaking out against the war because that individual speaking thought it unsafe to do so in their own community, in their own life. Keep talking, they said; I haven't been able to open my mouth.

Now it happens that although I was lied to by the Bush administration that I'm not strongly against the war. I'm not sure that we'll make Iraq a better place, the U.S. has a bad track record on that and it'll be a decade or two before we know, but I'm fairly sure it isn't a worse place. There are times when the cacaphony gets a little loud, but we're stronger for our diversity of opinion. Every voice silenced makes us that much weaker.