***Note: This is not related to Baltimore or Ferguson.
Logically, if something is right, then it is right regardless of whether there are massive demonstrations in favor of or against it.
If something is wrong, then it is wrong regardless of whether there are massive demonstrations in favor of or against it.
Say you are President. There are tens of millions of Americans protesting peacefully and civilly against something you strongly believe to be good (or demonstrating in favor of something you strongly believe to be unjust or unfair.) No violence, no rioting, no breaking of laws.
The media reports on the protests 24/7. You get millions of letters every year. There are petitions with millions of signatures. The protests have dragged on for many months, are growing in size and strength and you know they will go on forever if the demands are not met. Washington, DC is at a standstill, clogged by protesters. Your approval rating falls to an all-time low. The economy is sputtering.
You still have several years left in office. At what point do you give the protesters what they want? Now? Later? Never?
I think elected officials should represent their constituents, even when those constituents were wrong. In a case like this if this unfair and unjust desire was truly held by most of the people and not just a vocal few I’d have to try to do something for them. I’m sure there’s some line I wouldn’t cross though.
Politics is the art of the possible. Policies do not exist in isolation, and people do not stage protests without reason. If they’re doing so in a massive and sustained way, then they must really be hurting.
You might still believe that a policy is the best option even after taking into account the pain that the protesters must be feeling. But it’s not as simple as thinking that a decision is correct or incorrect regardless of the response. The response isn’t the only consideration, but it matters.
I think this is a simplistic view of most political issues. While a few issues have a clear moral or ethical right/wrong division, an awful lot of protests are about policy issues that aren’t so clear. For example, the Occupy Wall Street movement was an issue about income equality and taxes. People mostly agree with the broad strokes of the moral issues. (If I say “People should earn fair income and pay fair taxes” I don’t think anyone disagrees. It’s what’s meant by “fair” that we disagree about, and how to implement it.)
If I’m President, I really just have to weigh the pros and cons. Protests alone will not spur me to action against something I truly think is necessary, but they certainly would get factored into my decision making. If there’s a reasonable compromise, I’d probably try that.
And it’s really not the protests per se that would get me to look at the compromise. An elected official is meant to represent the interest of the electorate. There are times when I might feel justified in saying “Trust me, I know what’s best for you” but on many issues, what the people want, the people should get. That’s why I can’t look only at protestors. What do the non-protestors think?
So… I’m not answering the poll because I really can’t say yes or no. All I can say is that the protests are part of the decision-making process.
If there are tens of millions of people protesting the country is at a substantial risk of breaking apart in secession or riots. Tens of millions of people is orders of magnitude greater than the number of law enforcement personnel and reserve and active soldiers combined. Furthermore, you’d expect protestors to not be drawn uniformly from the population at large but from some specific groups, even if only random chance. This means that a critical strike or work stoppage in some sector could have paralyzing effects on the economy. The free market works because most people want money. If there are tens of millions of protestors, they could inflict a crippling blow on the fragile networks that comprise our economy.
I know the OP specifies that the protests are peaceful and presumably remain so forever, but that’s just implausible. There are enough bad elements among the population at large that there’d be thousands of people disposed to crime among millions of rioters. And it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the lot, as we’ve seen with protests both recent and past.
Practically speaking, you’d probably either have to brutally crush the protests, accede to demands, or watch as the country descends into decay and violence. There’s no good option.
I think elected officials should serve their constituents, which places a different duty on them. An elected official should do what he thinks is right for his constituents even if they think it’s wrong.
That said, a little humility is always a good idea. If several million people disagree with you, you really need to stop and examine your beliefs carefully. You should always be willing to consider the possibility that you’re the one who’s wrong.
I strongly disagree. If protests turn into riots or battles then the government is justified in using force. But the government is not justified in breaking up peaceful protests just because of their size. Certainly not based on the flimsy excuse that one tenth of one percent of the protesters might be potential criminals.
I wasn’t making a moral argument, but rather a pragmatic one–laying out the government’s options rather than taking an opinion on what was best or morally acceptable. I tend to agree that using violence against the non-violent is generally bad.
Still, have there been any protests of the size described in the OP that have been resolved peacefully without the complainants getting what they want? I ask because its possible that some exist, though I don’t know of any. And if none exist, there isn’t much of a difference between using violence on a violent protest and using violence on a soon-to-be violent protest.
THe Iraq war protests were pretty huge, pretty peaceful, and failed. Not tens of millions huge, but about the biggest we’ve seen in most of our lifetimes. I think it’s probably easier for small protests to turn violent, actually. If you’ve got a mass of 100,000 people and there’s some crime going on in a few spots, the police generally aren’t going to start firing the rubber bullets at the crowd in general, they’ll go to the spots where the crime is. But if you’ve got a smaller group of say, 5000, and bottles start getting thrown, then the crowd’s getting roughed up.
Plus you can yell something and 5000 people can hear it. Given the right timing and the right thing to say, one person can make the other 4999 do something really dumb. Can’t do that with a huge demonstration. That’s why those things are usually meticulously planned. You have to get tens of thousands of people to march along a certain route.
I voted that it wouldn’t affect me but that isn’t really true. I really hate protesters in general no matter what they are protesting and that style of childish social display is most commonly used by groups that I dislike the most like hippies and spoiled, naive college students.
I would most likely start doubling down on whatever it was that they claimed pissed them off that week. Don’t like those drone strikes? Ok, here are 10 more in honor of our good friends in Berkeley. Who wants to protest something else this week?
I would probably be a one-termer but there might be enough people around that appreciate raw gumption to make the approach somewhat popular. In any event, it would be fun to rule through spite and contrariness.
Boy, it’s lucky for you that the OP made it clear this thread isn’t specifically about Fergueson or Baltimore…
Not to mention the fact that you say you’d go off what the protestors CLAIM, so if they CLAIM that drone strikes are killing innocent women and children overseas, doubling down on that would mean…
Your poll is pretty badly flawed. I can’t mark any of the choices.
I agree with Procrustus: I’d definitely take it into consideration, and would re-consider the matter as open-mindedly as possible. And I’d enter into a dialogue, explaining why I disagree, but making it clear that I’m willing to listen.
If your poll had a “sometimes” button, that’s the one I’d have picked.
I have to agree, I couldn’t make a choice on the poll either. You simply don’t get a grass roots movement up, going and remaining at a sustained level without there being a deeply held grievance at the heart of it. We are indeed a representative government, and even if officials don’t cave to public pressure, they should at least give these people a hearing. Perhaps they don’t understand something that is going on and a simple explanation will help them understand and live with it. Perhaps they actually have a valid concern that SHOULD be addressed. Maybe they just need to vent. Any and all of these possibilities could be correct.
Ignoring mass protests that continue for any length of time can be dangerous to a government. Just look at Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Ignoring the protests of their people lost them their heads. Granted, that’s an extreme case, and most protests will be akin to Occupy Wall Street, or the various Viet Nam war protests. Lots of noise and publicity, but very little change resulting. But just on the chance that there is something valid to the complaints, or the unrest is greater than you know, you simply can’t ignore the protests.
Add me to this segment. In that position I do not have the luxury of ignoring a grassroots movement in the tens-of-millions scale, but I may have a damn good reason to not just give in. At the very least they need to be assured they are not just being flat-out dismissed out of hand, and we should be able to seek a compromise if one is viable and just.
Unless those protests revealed factual information that had not been previously known, there should not be any reason to change your policy.
For instance, suppose the next President determines that the only way to reduce the debt AND the deficit (it amazes me that people talk about one President lowering the deficit and another President lowering the national debt, as if they were the same thing!) is to raise taxes until the debt is retired and the deficit no longer exists. Nobody wants their taxes to go up, so people march in the streets and demonstrate, showing themselves as short-sighted folks who would rather their children and grandchildren be saddled with this burden than to do ANYTHING to reduce this onus once and for all.
Would you, as President, be willing to sacrifice the greater good (in the future) for a little peace (now)?
On the other hand, if the demonstrations uncover a factor previously unknown that shows that reducing the deficit and the debt are somehow “bad” for the economy, you would be an idiot not to change your mind about the taxes. That said, however, I would be very clear that it was new evidence that changed your mind, not the demonstrations or protests.
