Blog 8- The Hindrance of Anti War Voices

Young people today do not know much about dissent. If I am being completely honest, I did not really know what the word meant until I got here to High Point. Dissent is defined as disagreeing with the majority opinion. Our whole lives we have been told what to think mainly by our parents, but really by any authority figures like teachers, law enforcement, and the government.The First Amendment is supposed to protect dissent, but in some cases, voices of dissent (especially pertaining to war) are hindered or shut down. In the time of World War I, those who voiced their antiwar opinions were actually put in jail just for disagreeing with the government. 

While the government cannot easily or legally put people in jail just for disagreeing with them in today's age, they can make the opinions hard to find. Antiwar voices are rarely (if ever) featured in mainstream news and hardly acknowledged. After exploring a couple different sources like antiwar.com and The American Conservative, I realized I had never read any articles with such strong antiwar voices or ever even heard of these websites. Antiwar.com is a bit visually and mentally overwhelming with many different stories crammed into a small space. It almost feels wrong to be reading these opinions because that is what the government run media has influenced us to think. The American Conservative is structured more like a mainstream news source. The site is less aggressive than antiwar.com, while still getting their dissenting opinions conveyed. 

The public should be able to see a different opinion other than the government's on everyday news platforms. The government does not have to agree with the opinions, but they have to respect them as long as they are not threatening or violent. While the First Amendment protects a citizen's right to disagree with the government, the government tries its best to shut down or hide those voices from the public, which seems like an easy gateway to censorship. The fact that the government believes they need to hide dissenting opinions to keep their authority and power is strange due to the fact that the United States' government is a democracy and it gets its power from the people. The government only functions correctly with the consent of the governed, so the people should be able to voice their opinions even if they go against the majority.