Introduction
During a time of crisis, discord, or terror, should we speak out and stand up for what is right and put ourselves and our family in danger, or should we keep quiet, cooperate, and ignore our principles so that we can protect ourselves and our family?
This is the question of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, and this is the question my students will answer, not with a quick "yes" or "no" answer, but with an answer resulting from deliberative reflection, thoughtful debate, and soul searching.
This is not just a hypothetical question. Our students face this conflict in their personal lives. They may have a friend who is beating his girlfriend, and if they stop him or report him, the friend will become their enemy. Their friends are about to do something awful, like rape a girl, and if he tries to stop them, they will turn on him. A girl may have a friend who neglects her baby, and if she reports it, her friend will become her enemy. Someone may one day realize that selling drugs for a hoodlum is destroying people's lives, but if he stops, the hoodlum may have him beaten up. A classmate may act belligerent with the teacher and disrupt class, but if someone tries to stop him, the classmate will assail this person, and he or she will be ostracized and stigmatized by other students.
This question pertains to U.S. politics as well. Following Reconstruction, the majority of citizens in the United States played it safe and essentially ignored the racist behavior of their government and fellow citizens. People were afraid to speak out, and those that did were threatened, attacked, and/or killed. When African-Americans spoke out, they faced death.
Dissent has been especially dangerous during wartime. In the opinion of historian Michael Linfield, during World War I, "the U.S. government trampled on virtually every democratic principle guaranteed by the Constitution" (1990, p.33) in an effort to make the world safe for democracy. In Freedom under Fire, Linfield supports his conclusion with analyses of legislation and statistics and a large number of anecdotes. In 1917, when a group of women protested in front of the White House and unfurled a banner that quoted a statement from the Declaration of Independence, they were arrested (Linfield, 1990, p. 41). When a Harvard Law professor published criticism of the Espionage and Sedition Acts, the Justice Department coerced Harvard to bring the professor before Harvard's Board of Overseers which narrowly acquitted him (Linfield, 1990, p. 45). When a man declared "We are going over to Europe to make the world safe for democracy, but I tell you we had better make America safe for democracy first," he was convicted, and his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court (Linfield, 1990, p.53). In the fall of 1927, when the Saturday Press published articles accusing the local governmental and community leaders of graft and corruption, the paper was convicted of printing "malicious, scandalous, and defamatory" statements, and the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the conviction, stating in its opinion that the freedom of the press only meant "the right to publish the truth . . . with good motives, and justifiable ends. . ." (Linfield, 1990, p.53).
Leading up to World War II and during the war, Congress passed sedition acts which made speaking out against the government and standing up for one's beliefs dangerous. Lawyers who defended people accused under the Smith Act were harassed by the government. The Attorney General warned the lawyers who defended accused Communists that they would be taken to the "legal woodshed for a definite and well-deserved admonition" (Rehnquist, 1998, p. 78). In one case, the lawyers of convicted defendants were charged with contempt of court and served sentences ranging from thirty days to six months (Rehnquist, 1998, p. 78).
The Cold War created its cases of suppressing free speech too. In 1946, the columnist Drew Pearson received a letter from the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) asking him what he meant when he said, "Make democracy work," and they implicitly threatened to bring him before the HUAC. When witnesses refused to cooperate with the HUAC, the committee published their names, addresses, and places of employment so that employers would fire them and vigilantes would attack them. Uncooperative entertainers were "blacklisted," meaning they were excluded from employment (Rehnquist, 1998, p. 89-91).
Blacklisting and intimidation continued during the Vietnam War. The national television networks blacklisted folk singer Pete Seeger because he opposed the war. One week before the end of the television season, CBS threw the Smothers Brothers off the air. The network president claimed they had not submitted a review tape of the upcoming show to the network in a timely manner. The Smother Brothers claimed it was because they did sketches that opposed the war and poked fun at aspects of traditional American life (Bodroghkozy, accessed 29 July 2005). When Daniel Ellsberg, an employee of the Pentagon, published the "Pentagon Papers" which detailed how elected and appointed leaders had systematically misled the American people during the Vietnam War, the Nixon White House put Ellsberg under unlawful surveillance, and they ordered a break-in of his psychiatrist's office for the purpose of obtaining information that could be used to defame him. Charles Colson, a White House official, told Howard Hunt, a former FBI agent, that the goal is to "put this bastard into one hell of a situation" (Stone, 2004, p. 515).
Opponents of the Iraq War have not been blacklisted, but they have been personally attacked. Leading up to the war, those who opposed it were labeled "un-American" and "supporters of Sadaam Hussein." Those who criticized the war during its operation have been accused of putting American soldiers at risk and giving comfort to the enemy. When a senator read the contents of an FBI agent's report that detailed abusive treatment at the Guantanamo Bay prison and compared the treatment to Nazi and other tyrannical regimes, he was lambasted as slandering our country and debasing our soldiers and putting them at risk. Eventually, under pressure from his party, he gave in and apologized for his remarks. Although he was not arrested, the incident shows that when someone speaks out against an injustice, he suffers an awful backlash
The question of standing up for what is right and the oppression it brings is brought home in this unit. The literature, discussion, and composition will spur my students to think ethically and politically. The students will weigh self-interest against the good of the community and examine the effects of dissenting and the courage to dissent. As they grapple with this dilemma, they will grapple with questions such as: Does our life have meaning? Is doing right more important than surviving? Can we live with ourselves without standing up for our principles? They will learn about the tendency of people to rally behind a position, misuse authority, and squash those who oppose them. As they reflect on these issues, students will mature and develop into thoughtful people.
This unit will show students that literature is more than just stories that entertain. They are works of art that deal with complex issues. The meaning is not understood until one reflects and unpacks the passage, and when one does this, he perceives the world in a new light.
As the students progress through this unit, they will hone their language skills, analyze diction, evaluate characters, synthesize themes, write coherently, narrate flowingly, construct strong arguments, and learn about writing a literary analysis paper.
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