Beware the ‘tyrannous word of command’

Fife and drum group in the American Civil War

“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.”

— Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), New England-based author, social critic and Harvard professor of art.