I’m quoting the late Senator J. William Fullbright on dissent as a palate cleanser from the all-Trump, all the time news cycle. I’ll have more to say about our lunatic president tomorrow in a post about Nixon’s madman theory and how it applies to the Kaiser of Chaos.
In 2026, Fullbright is best known for the scholarship program bearing his name. In his prime, he was perhaps the best known member of the United States Senate. The Arkansas Democrat served as chairman of the foreign relations committee from 1959-1974 making him the longest serving chair of that crucial committee.
Fullbright was a complicated man with great virtues and flaws. As a white Southerner, he was a man of his time whose biggest flaw was that he was a clothespin segregationist. Fullbright was never a hater but he held his nose and went with the flow to get reelected. It cost him the chance to be JFK’s secretary of state.
On the plus side was Fullbright’s opposition to the Vietnam War. Turning against the war wasn’t easy for Fullbright: He was close to LBJ and even sponsored the Gulf of Tonkin resolution before turning against the war and the sprawl of presidential power. His 1966 book The Arrogance Of Power seems particularly pertinent 60 years later. Who’s more arrogant than Donald Trump? Not even Lyndon Johnson.
That brings me to the QOTD, which I saw on Bob Mann’s Facebook feed. It comes from a chapter of The Arrogance Of Power called The Citizen and the University:
“To criticize one’s country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing.
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Criticism may embarrass the country’s leaders in the short run but strengthen their hand in the long run; it may destroy a consensus on policy while expressing a consensus of values. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism, a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals of national adulation.”
Shorter Fullbright: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Unfortunately, the people around the Insult Comedian are selfish and shallow sycophants. Their loyalty is to their dear leader, not the country. Instead of invoking the 25th Amendment and removing this dangerous man from office, they cower and act as if everything is okay when it’s clearly not. Tom Paine had a term for people like this: Sunshine Patriots.
J. William Fullbright was a flawed giant. He put aside party loyalty and personal affection for Lyndon Johnson to do the right thing and oppose the Vietnam War. He lost a friend but retained his integrity. It was an act of dissent that overshadows the less salubrious aspects of his public life. We need more Fullbrights and fewer Lyndsey Grahams in 2026.
Repeat after me: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
The last word goes to Jackson Browne:
