When a 3-year-old plops himself down on the floor, starts to howl and scream, and refuses to move until he gets what he wants, we call it a temper tantrum.

When a bunch of 20-somethings plop themselves down in a public space, start to drum and chant, and refuse to move until they get what they want, it’s still just a temper tantrum, whether it is called “Occupy Wall Street” or “Occupy Maine.”

To believe otherwise is to misunderstand the role of political speech and assembly in the governing of our democracy.

The “right of the people peacefully to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” is as old as the republic, and we would not long endure as a free, self-governing republic if these rights were not frequently exercised.

Visiting democratic America in 1832 from France, which was then ruled by a king, Alexis de Tocqueville was amazed by the freedoms Americans enjoyed to speak out against their governments, to organize political associations to challenge governmental policies, and to assemble in order to formulate and articulate their ideas.

In Tocqueville’s France, the freedoms of speech and assembly were restricted, as they are in every state ruled by some power other than the people. Where there is a king, dictator or any other unaccountable ruler, to speak freely about politics is subversive; to assemble in protest, revolutionary.

Where the people rule, however, the freedoms of speech and assembly are not only not dangerous, they keep alive a diversity of ideas and political parties, so that, at election time, the people always have a range of options.

Elections don’t mean much unless more than one candidate is running, and if new political groups could not form and make their ideas known, our politics would grow stagnant, and our options would dwindle.

Unlike the political associations he knew from old Europe, which resembled revolutionary conspiracies, Tocqueville remarked that political associations in America were “peaceful in their objects and legal in their means.” They were peaceful and respected the rights of others because their aim was to bring about changes in the law by persuasion, not to bring about a change of regime through revolution.

The defining feature of the Occupy protests, however, is that they intentionally violate the rights of others. To seize a public space and claim it indefinitely as one’s private campground is to abridge the rights of all those others who have a legitimate claim to use the space for recreation.

Other Occupy tactics, including vexing the neighbors with chants and drums, and obstructing public thoroughfares, likewise deliberately violate the rights of others who have the right to share those spaces.

In their defense, the Occupiers have said they are non-violent, and they liken their quest for social justice to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Although political violence is never an appropriate part of democratic politics, the absence of violence is not the same as respecting the legitimate claims of other people.

It is true that many of the great civil rights protests involved violating laws. But the civil rights protesters violated laws mandating the segregation of the races because they believed those laws to be unjust and unconstitutional. Which, in fact, they were.

No one maintains that laws against camping out in urban public spaces, or making noise at all hours, or obstructing traffic are themselves unjust. Whatever the nefarious deeds of the “1 percent” may be, laws promoting public safety and hygiene do not abet them.

Though there are plenty of legal venues for protesting economic inequality and for publishing their ideas, and for associating to form a new political movement, the Occupy protests have chosen to break undeniably just laws simply in order to get maximum attention.

The toddler, who in frustration throws a tantrum, deserves our sympathy, because 3-year-olds can’t control their emotions or their need for attention.

But adults, who carefully choreograph their tantrums, demonstrate only their own narcissistic need to be noticed. Some people, particularly in the liberal media and in academia, find such displays of intense self-righteousness attractive, perhaps because they too despair of persuading the majority of Americans to think as they do.

What they fail to recognize is that activists whose moral vanity blinds them to the rights of others when they are only private citizens seeking political power are the last people on earth we should entrust with it.

Joseph R. Reisert is associate professor of American constitutional law and chairman of the department of government at Colby College in Waterville.

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