After I wrote about the dancing arrests this week, I got some e-mail from folks upset that protesters are making a frivolous point.
“Dancing in the Jefferson Memorial may be harmless, but it is not appropriate . . . the Park Police were quite right to turf them out,” one reader said.
“They’re wasting tax dollars and officers’ time by getting themselves arrested,” another wrote.
I’ll admit I was skeptical, too, given that there are greater things at risk in America these days.
Wait. Wasn’t that the stuff that got said about the kite-ins in 1970? And yet, we’d all probably agree that those arrests look preposterous in hindsight.
But the “long-hairs” — as even their attorneys called them — fought back against the government’s broad enforcement of laws that absurdly restricted something as harmless as flying a kite. It was a principle that extended beyond the kites and into the area of free speech.
“It seemed absurd that they would arrest people for disorderly conduct even though there was no disorder, just disagreement with the government,” said Ray Twohig, a lawyer in New Mexico who, along with Charles Daniels, now chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, represented some of the kite fliers back then.
Yes, some of those kite fliers were also the folks staging sit-ins at the Supreme Court and massive anti-war protests on the Mall. But others weren’t. They were just out there for the joy of sending paper and wood aloft on a windy day.
Sending them all to jail showed just how ridiculous the whole exercise of arresting folks to the letter of the law can sometimes be.
And that’s a delicate distinction that the professional protesters were making when they did their awkward two-steps at the bronze feet of Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson, who was a dancer and avid fiddler, may have been cool with a little shimmy, a quiet boogie. Who knows?
But more important, he probably would be more interested in sticking to the principle in a letter he wrote in 1791: “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
Go ahead, dancers — annoy some of us, dance badly, whatever. But keep on dancing.
Me? I’m going to fly a kite.
E-mail me at dvorakp@washpost.com .
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