Progressive standard bearers such as DailyKos and Keith Olbermann have been showing signs lately of a nasty tendency towards stifling dissenting opinions and promoting the sort of crazy rumors usually associated with the right then the reality based community.
Warren Nord, in Does God Make a Difference?, characterized the general tendency of the dissents as a weaker reading of the First Amendment; the dissents tend to be "less concerned about the dangers of establishment and less concerned to protect free exercise rights, particularly of religious minorities".
And if there is an English tradition worth celebrating on this St George's Day it is not our past triumphs in commerce or empire, but our tendency towards rebellion, dissent and resistance - a glorious tradition that, if we are not very careful, could soon be defunct, just as we need it most.
The vicious attacks of Sept. 11 could only strengthen the tendency to see militant dissent as a species of pathology.
The second reason the heretics were ignored is because there is a fundamental tendency for companies to suppress dissent.
I will adopt China's model: Centralize political control by cracking down on dissent and crushing democratic tendencies.
Behind the surface absurdity, however, lie perfectly serious questions about the nature of commitment and society's tendency to view any form of radical dissent as a sign of madness.
Mr. Chen, 35, is now a symbol of something else: the tendency of Communist Party officials to use legal pretexts to crush dissent.
In the Gulf, the overwhelming tendency has been toward preserving the collective societal fabric, one that does not tolerate unfettered dissent.
Indeed, months before the election, American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting cable to Washington, complaining that the U.S., with its combination of support and indifference, was encouraging Maliki's authoritarian tendencies.
