The government says: Democracy is the right to dissent.

They mean that dissent gave birth to the United States and that freedom of speech is a critical mechanism of democracy and therefore guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Dissent is a theme of American history. It is written in the constitution that people can go out and assemble and protest . It's the mechanism for change in America. If there's something you don't agree with, you can be apart of a group and implement that change. Almost every group has an organization and protests, and this gives us and the government an awareness that there is a problem. People have the ability to speak their own mind and voice out the contempt that they have for the government. You shame the authorities into redressing something that they see is wrong. Jefferson wrote; all men are created equal, so after the constitution was written it was clear to a lot of people that not everybody was having these rights. The constitution is like a contract between the government and the people, and if people aren't being covered by that they're demanding the right to be covered. If you can't fight for those rights, then you're under a controlled society, and that is not what democracy is.

There were dissenters  like Susan b. Anthony who voted and got arrested because she was a women, and she said in a speech; is it a crime for US citizens to vote? And today we think: how can that have been considered a crime?

The positives of a democracy is that it's actually controlled by the people. Government changed America when people spoke up against the government. The phrase; all men are created equally means something different now then when Jefferson wrote it. There are always people who feel that they are not being treated fairly, and sometimes they are quite right!