As an American, you have the right to protest me or another

Host: The evening sky was painted with the last embers of sunset, a bruised orange fading into deep blue over the Oklahoma plains. A long stretch of highway cut through the silence, its asphalt still warm from the day’s heat. The air was heavy with dust and the smell of diesel, and the sound of crickets filled the pauses between passing trucks.

An old gas station stood alone on the edge of nowhere — its sign half-lit, its windows fogged with time. Inside, beneath the humming fluorescent lights, Jack and Jeeny sat across from each other in a corner booth, two coffee mugs between them, steam rising and curling like ghosts from their conversation.

Jack’s hands were stained with the kind of grit that doesn’t wash off easily — the kind earned from years of hard work and disillusionment. Jeeny’s eyes carried light, but not the naïve kind — the kind that burns quietly, like a candle fighting the wind.

The radio on the counter played an old country song, and above it, the quote that had started their argument hung in the air like smoke:

“As an American, you have the right to protest me or another individual or a group, but I believe that protesting the United States for the mistakes it has made — when it gave you the freedom to do so in the first place — is disrespectful.”
— Markwayne Mullin

Jeeny: “You really agree with that, Jack? That protesting the country itself is disrespectful?”

Jack: (leans back, voice gravelly, eyes steady) “I do. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Jeeny. You don’t curse the soil that lets you stand. Freedom isn’t a free pass to spit on the people who built it.”

Jeeny: (softly) “But freedom isn’t loyalty, Jack. It’s conscience. It’s the right to call out wrong when you see it — even if it’s your own home that’s guilty.”

Jack: “Sure, but there’s a line. You can fix the roof without burning down the house. You start screaming that your country’s evil, and soon enough you’re tearing apart the very thing that gave you that voice in the first place.”

Host: A truck roared past outside, its headlights flooding the window for a moment, washing both faces in white light — Jack’s hardened, Jeeny’s earnest. Then darkness returned, and the argument deepened like the night itself.

Jeeny: “Jack, this country’s freedom wasn’t given to us. It was fought for. Protest is how people keep fighting — not with guns now, but with words, with signs, with marches. When the Founders stood against the British, weren’t they protesting their own system?”

Jack: “That’s different. They didn’t have rights then. We do now. And when you have rights, you defend the flag, not disgrace it.”

Jeeny: “Defending it means questioning it. That’s what makes the flag worth raising — that it stands for the people who dare to speak up, not just the ones who stay quiet.”

Host: Jeeny’s voice rose, not in anger, but in conviction. Her hand trembled slightly as she touched her cup. Jack watched her, the muscles in his jaw tightening, his grey eyes like a storm about to break.

Jack: “Tell that to the soldier who buried his brother overseas. Tell him that kneeling during the anthem is ‘patriotism.’ You think he’ll agree?”

Jeeny: (leans forward) “I’d tell him I respect his sacrifice because I protest. Because I want the country he fought for to be better than it is. Isn’t that what he died for — the right to dissent?”

Jack: “He died for unity. For the belief that we’re one nation, not a battlefield of opinions.”

Jeeny: “Unity isn’t silence, Jack. It’s harmony. And harmony needs dissonance to stay real.”

Host: The fluorescent lights flickered, buzzing like restless thoughts. The air inside the diner had grown thick, electric. The radio had gone quiet — even the crickets seemed to be listening.

Jack: “You talk like America’s broken. Like everything needs to be torn down and rebuilt. But it’s not that bad. Every nation’s made mistakes — slavery, wars, corruption — but we learn, we move on. You don’t keep opening old wounds if you want them to heal.”

Jeeny: “And you don’t let them scar over injustice either. Healing takes honesty. You can’t move forward if you never admit where you’ve stumbled.”

Jack: “Honesty, fine. But the kind of protest I see now — it’s chaos. It’s people screaming in the streets, hating everything about their own country. That’s not healing. That’s hatred.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. That’s grief. You can’t love something deeply without being angry at its failures. Look at the civil rights movement — people protested not because they hated America, but because they believed in its promise. They demanded it live up to its own words: liberty and justice for all.”

Host: The word “liberty” seemed to hang, glowing in the stale air. Outside, the wind howled, shaking the old sign until it creaked like a ship mast in stormy seas.

Jack: “So you think every act of protest is noble?”

Jeeny: “No. Some are misguided, some destructive. But protest itself — the act of saying ‘this isn’t good enough’ — that’s sacred. It’s the engine of democracy.”

Jack: “And disrespect?”

Jeeny: “Disrespect is apathy. It’s pretending nothing’s wrong because it’s easier that way.”

Jack: (quietly) “Maybe. But sometimes, Jeeny, I think people have forgotten how to love the place they criticize.”

Jeeny: (softly) “And maybe people like you have forgotten how love sometimes hurts.”

Host: The silence that followed was long, stretching like the horizon outside. The lights above them buzzed, and the smell of coffee had turned bitter. Jack stared at the table, his reflection shimmering faintly in the spilled liquid.

He remembered his father — a veteran, folded flag on the mantle, eyes full of stories he never told. Jeeny watched him, seeing something shift behind his grey eyes — a flicker of pain, then understanding.

Jack: (voice low) “When I was twelve, I asked my old man if he was proud of this country. He said, ‘Son, I’m proud of the people who never stop trying to make it better.’ I didn’t understand him then. Maybe you’re right — maybe that’s what protest is supposed to be.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “It’s not supposed to be comfortable. Freedom rarely is.”

Jack: “So where’s the line? Between loving your country and criticizing it?”

Jeeny: “The line’s different for everyone. But maybe it’s not about crossing it — it’s about walking it with integrity.”

Host: Outside, the rain began to fall, gentle and steady, like an unseen hand washing the world clean. The streetlights turned the droplets into falling gold, and the reflection of the flag from the diner’s corner fluttered on the wet asphalt — red, white, and blue blending into liquid color.

Jack: “You ever think maybe both sides are right? That respect and protest aren’t enemies — they’re partners in something bigger?”

Jeeny: “I think that’s the point. Respect gives protest its dignity. Protest gives respect its truth.”

Jack: “That’s… poetic.”

Jeeny: “No. That’s freedom.”

Host: The rain softened, the lights inside the diner dimmed, and the two of them sat there, not as opponents, but as two voices in the same song — discordant, but necessary.

Outside, the flag on the old pole flapped gently in the wind — not perfect, not pristine, but alive. It had been torn, stained, rebuilt, yet still it stood, like a testament to a nation forever arguing with itself — and in that argument, becoming more honest.

Host: As Jack and Jeeny left, the doorbell jingled, a small sound swallowed by the vast silence of the plains. Behind them, the radio crackled back to life — an old voice singing about freedom, about love, about mistakes.

And in the dark, beneath the endless American sky, two people walked, their shadows merging for a moment before parting again — the eternal dance of faith and doubt, both necessary, both human.

Because freedom, like love, must always allow the right to question it — or it stops being either.