Majoring in Political Silence

When a tree falls in a forest, does anyone get annoyed at the sound?
Probably not. Nobody really whines too much about the ocean roar or the clatter of splashing rain on windows let alone tin roofs.
When the natural world reminds us that it's there, we usually take a deep breath and sigh or smile, feeling lucky to be able to see and hear the seagulls screeching or even sea lions or seals barking away reminds us why we are glad to be alive in whatever part of this world we live in.
But when our neighbors,(co-workers, family members, anonymous strangers on the street), let us know that they're also here, living in our part of the world, we start to get very "twitchy". The noises that really bug people tend to be the ones created, or facilitated, by other people.
We get annoyed at people who intrude on our environment by playing loud, obnoxious music, using leaf blowers or gunning the engines of their cars. They're just sounds, but we call them noise. And sounds only become noise when it makes people upset.
When people get very annoyed, they want something to happen in response to their anger. They want results. They want studies, they want hearings, and not the kind having to do with sound. That is why most cities are currently , again, studying noise and trying to figure out how to control it with more rules; or even with rules that make sense.
On the other hand, such rules could only apply to human-created noises. What seal or seagull would follow noise pollution laws even if they were in place? We cannot legislate the natural world.
We can, however, make legislation by which other humans must abide by. And we do. Laws, agreements, union contracts, they're all ways this so called democratic society has developed to ensure that every one's protected and no one gets hurt. When legislation is imposed, however, it's hard to feel as though it respects and protects anything, especially our so called "democratic rights".
This is especially true in cases of "back to work" legislation directed at any and all teacher's unions.
Of course students have a right to an education, but don't they also have a right to receive that education in classrooms that aren't overcrowded, from teachers who aren't perpetually overworked and underpaid? When dedicated teachers take a day off from their classrooms to go and make noises in the name of this democracy, you know they're just as serious about upholding that ideal as they are about their working conditions; same for students, parents, teachers and anyone else who are against sending anyone in their military forces to any country in the Middle East.
I don't know about the Liberals or Conservatives and their children, but I want mine to learn that making noises--through talk, protest, action is an essential element of free speech.
And that having legislators not just listen to, but to actually hear, that speech is essential to us as a basic free human right.
But right now, I'm not hopeful. It seems, these days, that if protest chants counted as a noise pollution, our governments would find ways to legislate absolute silence.
Makes one wonder if your exhortations about living in a so called democracy are nothing more than so much noise....we may actually be living in a democrazy...