To have a voice — to be able to speak out openly for what you believe — is one of the core privileges of our democracy. Ultimately, these words are only a privilege granted at the whim of our government. To quote the timeless George Carlin, “Rights aren’t rights if you can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country is a bill of temporary privileges.” Our voice is not guaranteed — we learn that more and more every single day as further rights are withheld and the executive branch becomes ever empowered and emboldened with each victory they score.

Our country is changing at a fundamental level, with breakneck redistribution of power and rubberbanding policies creating chaos on every level of society. Recent litigation has it such that our judiciary system may lose its power for national injunctions beyond the Supreme Court. The right of citizenship by birth may soon come to an end. The right — pardon me, privilege — of due process for all may be overturned in law, and not just in practice. 

While I do not know who will read this, I can guess that some among you may indeed be celebrating this turn of events. Hurrah, victory for the good guys. Finally, the bureaucracy can be cut through and the issues of this country dealt with by a strong leader. After all, after these long years of liberal rule, everyone must admit that our country “owes herself a political housecleaning, and that it would be well to suspend judgement.”

Those who would see us rid of our current president “should not permit their fears and affections to be played upon by propaganda.” It would do us well to simply hear out the whims of our good president, and have faith that he will make America a great place again. America has been a “disturbed country — disturbed first by economic conditions virtually forced upon it from the outside, and even more by internal political controversy.” 

If you’re curious where those quotations come from, they were published in the March 28, 1933 print of the Seattle Times, then the Seattle Daily Times. The article is titled “No Persecution.” I’m sure that I need not inform you of which events they were referring to initially. 

“In our own country, at any rate, the official agencies of government are strong and impartial; their assurance that there has been no racial persecution in Germany and will be none may be relied upon.”

Ibid. 

My fellow Americans, I confess to patriotism. As it stands currently, the country that I was shown as a young boy is being wiped before my eyes. In the attempt to prevent a change from so many others’ similar visions, the ideals which have carried us from revolution to modernity are being squandered. Populism has taken a root hold in our nation’s heart, and we now move according to the whims of a man and his rampant emotions. I look out the window at the bright spring sun turning to summer, at the thousands of my fellow students who are trying their darndest to live life to the fullest and I look then towards the administration of this university. 

While Bucknell has not yet been targeted by the Trump administration, I am aware of numerous preparations already in place to allow us to be passed over by the administration, from the scrubbing of our diversity messaging in numerous contexts to the metaphorical (or perhaps not) clenched anus of new program approvals. Our administration is living in fear of The Administration, and allowing its actions to be dictated by the possibility of a negative whim leading to the decimation of our federal funding. 

I speak for those who cannot speak out of fear because I know that my deportation is unlikely. I am a white male, proficient in English, attracted to women and have two parents with citizenship. If the administration finds reason to deport me, then the country has become more akin to a late-20th century fictional dystopia than most novels of the same sort. It is because of this privilege that I have a voice to speak. I do not speak without fear, but I speak with the knowledge that my voice being censored is an indication of far worse national health than my worst anxieties would have me believe.

And frankly, as a relatively non-diverse institution, we should be speaking out. We should be joining the likes of Harvard in standing for the continued freedom of academia to think and explore perspectives. That is the point of academia and thought — to eliminate bias and innovate truths. Biases are exposed through the application of various lenses and perspectives. If these lenses are censored even for those who are required to make use of them, then this country will truly stagnate. 

Then again, perhaps it hardly matters — the humanities will soon be a hollow shadow of what they once were, again thanks to this administration. While I am biased as a humanities student in this regard, I would ask those engineering majors of ours if they’ve enjoyed any humanities classes they’ve taken. Those finance majors. Every single person on this campus who has found betterment because of a course which this administration seeks to rid us of is another reason for our school administration to speak up. So please, do speak up. Say something. “Democracy dies in darkness” has been the motto of the Washington Post for a number of years now. Let each breath we take for our democracy be a spark of light.