Last week I strolled around the U.S. Capitol in the early evening, stopping for a while to watch an orderly protest rally against the Republican plan to obliterate Obamacare, at that hour being debated inside the building. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if we didn’t have to be always protesting something? I probably was thinking the same thing 44 years ago when I was at the same place, as an intern reporter covering Richard Nixon’s second inauguration. The Vietnam war was winding down and many of us, weary from protest, wanted to believe Nixon’s call for peace: “Let us pledge together to make these next four years the best four years in America’s history.” Six months later his Watergate coverup unraveled, making for big trouble once again. There never is a time when there isn’t something to protest, which may be what Adlai Stevenson II was thinking when he described patriotism as the “tranquil steady dedication of a lifetime.” –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Aug 3-9, 2017.
