Silence is consent.
This is a popular term used in the speech and debate world when a person on the opposing team does not argue against one of your points (also known as arguments). The specific point usually has an impact that makes your case stronger than your opponents. When so many points are not argued against you have succeeded that point to the opposition. This pretty much means, you let them dictate to the judge that there point is correct and because you were “silent you gave your opposition your consent. This means you were just owned, pawned, humiliated, defeated, vanquished, thrown out like ten day old thanksgiving turkey.
Now leaving the debate world as well as the over dramatized feeling of defeat, public speaking activism is judged pretty much on the same merits of silence or battling a point. When you see an injustice done and you are silent, you are giving consent for it to continue to occur. Yet people are prone to NOT speak out for many reasons even if silence has a direct negative impact upon their lives. There are many valid reasons for this silence such as lack of knowledge to defend/make a point, your personal health may suffer (you get physically harmed by someone who disagrees with you), or you are arrested. One of the reasons for silence though, should never be because of lack of passion or pacifism. To allow dissonance to exist because of pacifism, is a completely disregard for your welfare and all others affected. Situations in the past, via the civil rights movement and movements in today’s world such as Occupy Wallstreet and the Tea Party movement, have been times Americans have actually used their voices; well some at least.
Voices of Civil Rights
Without the voices of people in the past and some even in the present, change in the world may not have occurred at the rate in which it did.
