By Claire Parsons
Last week The Cardinal opinion page featured an article by my fellow columnist Nicole Demouth. In her article Ms. Demouth asked a question to which I would like to respond. She asked when it was that Americans had gone soft. No, she wasn’t referring to the loss of our ability to survive in the wilderness. Rather, she was attacking the American tendency to join groups and protest.
Ms. Demouth posed the conundrum that if people who joined groups were really individuals, then why did they have to join groups in the first place? Her conclusion was that people who join groups are not individuals, but I have a different one. Joining a group does not necessarily nullify individuality. Some people belong to groups because they know that a number of people have more power than only one. If one has goals to fulfill, it is only logical to get help in completing them.
Ms. Demouth’s article also attacked protestors. She claimed that 9 of 10 protestors “just like to hear themselves speak”. In many cases I am inclined to agree with her. However, the author forgets that while many protests are mere attempts of getting attention, many are legitimate. Even if it were true that 9 out of 10 protests were pointless, I still think the valid tenth would outweigh the annoyance caused by the others. The Civil Rights Movement was a protest against segregation and disenfranchisement. Does Ms. Demouth really think that Martin Luther King gave his life because he wanted to hear himself speak?
Perhaps the worst affront to the ACLU in history was also found in Ms. Demouth’s article. Besides claiming that the ACLU supports “the copouts of society”, she also put the ACLU in the same sentence as the KKK. The ACLU seeks to protect the U.S. Constitution; the KKK wants only to pervert and weaken it until it fits their distorted view of the world. Perhaps Ms. Demouth doesn’t realize that she, herself, has benefited from the ACLU’s work. She doesn’t see that had it not been for the ACLU, she probably could not have published her article attacking it. She forgets that the government is not “pushing us around” because organizations like the ACLU will not let it. Next time you complain about an organization, Nicole, why don’t you think about how it’s helped you first?
Finally, I would like to say a word to defend a fellow columnist to whom Ms. Demouth alluded in her article last week. Ms. Demouth mentioned her because she wrote an article about President Bush’s State of the Union Address. The mentioned columnist wrote nothing attacking the President’s delivery of his speech, although she did attack the speech’s content. Ms. Demouth criticized the mentioned columnist for something she didn’t do. Either she missed the point of the other article or she chose to ignore it because she was unable to defend what President Bush said.
Ms. Demouth had every right to write and publish her article last week. She was exercising one of America’s most sacred rights, and I respect her for that. In no way did I intend this article as a personal attack. My only intent was to offer another point of view on the issues Ms. Demouth presented in her article. Thanks to the ACLU and a few other protestors we were both able to express our opinions.
Claire Parsons is a Freshman Philosophy major and a columnist for the Cardinal. Contact: claire_parsons@louisvillecardinal.com.
