We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past ... while we silence the rebels of the present.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and supporting current dissenters as much as we celebrate historical ones.
Henry Steele Commager's quote highlights a critical viewpoint about the nature of tradition in relation to rebellion and protest. It suggests that while society often honors the rebels of the past for their courageous actions, it simultaneously tends to silence or overlook the voices of contemporary rebels who strive for change. The essence of the quote calls for a continuous acknowledgment of modern dissent and the necessity of supporting those who challenge the status quo, thereby ensuring that the spirit of protest remains alive and relevant.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of supporting current movements for change.
The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error and discover truth. There may be other ways of detecting error and discovering truth than that of free discussion, but so far we have not found them.
It is sobering to recall that though the Japanese relocation program, carried through at such incalculable cost in misery and tragedy, was justified on the ground that the Japanese were potentially disloyal, the record does not disclose a single case of Japanese disloyalty or sabotage during the whole war.
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.
The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.
America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.
Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.
Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.
To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.
Any car which holds together for a whole race is too heavy.
I have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and manifesting Himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when I meet different people I say to myself, “God in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous.
What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.
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