--Conformity rocks across America these days while dissent keeps losing its voice.--

My kid dissents, doesn't mean she has a logical argument to defend her position.

Well, running in circles while screaming and shouting usually doesn't lead to electoral majorities.

There is a tremendous difference between noise and silence, between harmony and cacophony. This writer is just another clanging cymbal.

Dissent simply for the sake of dissenting is so 60's.

Let me understand this. This moron is able to write and publish a piece complaining about the government and he believes that dissent has gone out of style?

His real complaint, it seems to me, is that there is a chief executive who stays on message, insists his subordinates stay on the message that he has chosen, and looks with disfavor on those who disagree with him. In other words, no juicy disagreements at the highest levels of government that would serve only to paralyze the executive.

Well, I for one am willing to give up paralyzing dissent within the executive branch for an executive that actually accomplishes something.

Part of the problem with the dissenters is the ones the most committed ones who were admired back in the late 60s and early 70s were those bloking up ROTC buildings or putting bombs into a U.S. Capitol restroom. Those on the left could excuse stuff like that then, and get away with it, because the public couldn't see a conection between those acts and the war in Vietnam.

Try blowing up something now and proclaiming yourself at the vanguard of the dissent movement against Chimpy McHitler and his gang, and the public isn't going to want to see or have law enforcement treat you like a group of cute but wild trust-fund kids anymore.

"cute but wild trust-fund kinds"

You mean "feral", don't you?

Who won't tolerate dissent???? Where are all the tell-all books about the Clinton reign of terror? In fact, where are all the tell-all books going back to the communist conspiracies post WWII that McCarthy exposed and which have been corroborated by the KGB files? Nary a leftist has come forward to tell how we almost fell into the precipice and only the arrival of Ronald Reagon saved us from a real "1984."

We know how much trouble the left is in by the amount of McCarthyism whingeing they emit. The interesting thing about McCarthyism is that as persecution it was very small beer. Some guys lost their cushy jobs as screen writers or civil servants. A couple went to jail for contempt because they would not respond to questions. No bodies, no blood.

Compare that to Stalin or Mao, its a joke.

Gentlemen gentlemen ... it's the Kansas City Star.