"Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?"
About this Quote
The bite in Douglas's question is that it pretends to be puzzled by something he thinks is already a civic emergency: the quiet slide from citizen to subject. Framed as a throwaway challenge - "Since when?" - it’s really an accusation. If you can’t name the moment Americans started "bow[ing] submissively", then the problem is structural, not episodic: deference has been normalized so thoroughly that it no longer feels like a choice.
Douglas, a Supreme Court justice who made a career out of muscular First Amendment and civil-liberties dissents, knows exactly where reverence for officials tends to lead. His phrasing piles on the indignities. "Bow" evokes monarchy. "Submissively" adds the moral stain. "Awe and reverence" aren’t merely politeness; they’re a demand for sacred distance, turning public servants into quasi-priests. Then comes the twist of the knife: "those who represent us". Representation is supposed to invert hierarchy - they answer to you - yet the sentence exposes how easily democratic language can mask authoritarian posture.
Context matters. Douglas wrote and spoke in an America repeatedly tempted by security panics and loyalty culture: the Red Scare, wartime crackdowns, later the surveillance-state logic that treats dissent as a risk factor. His intent is less to flatter American exceptionalism than to weaponize it. If the national myth says power is accountable, then citizens have a duty to act like it: skeptical, noisy, even disrespectful when necessary. The subtext is blunt: democracy doesn’t die only through coups; it dies through etiquette.
Douglas, a Supreme Court justice who made a career out of muscular First Amendment and civil-liberties dissents, knows exactly where reverence for officials tends to lead. His phrasing piles on the indignities. "Bow" evokes monarchy. "Submissively" adds the moral stain. "Awe and reverence" aren’t merely politeness; they’re a demand for sacred distance, turning public servants into quasi-priests. Then comes the twist of the knife: "those who represent us". Representation is supposed to invert hierarchy - they answer to you - yet the sentence exposes how easily democratic language can mask authoritarian posture.
Context matters. Douglas wrote and spoke in an America repeatedly tempted by security panics and loyalty culture: the Red Scare, wartime crackdowns, later the surveillance-state logic that treats dissent as a risk factor. His intent is less to flatter American exceptionalism than to weaponize it. If the national myth says power is accountable, then citizens have a duty to act like it: skeptical, noisy, even disrespectful when necessary. The subtext is blunt: democracy doesn’t die only through coups; it dies through etiquette.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|
More Quotes by William
Add to List
