It’s risky to draw long-distance conclusions about people darting in and out of the spotlight now shining on far-away Crawford, Texas. It isn’t much of a stretch, however, to surmise that the most demonstrative criticism of Cindy Sheehan and her anti-war protest is coming from people who fancy themselves solid Americans.

And that’s odd, because what Sheehan is doing is as American as dressing up like Indians and tossing British tea into Boston Harbor.

Remember that in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, many, many American colonists — Ben Franklin among them — were loyalists to the British crown and disapproved of rebellious antics. But when the cause of liberty had prevailed, a nation was born that guaranteed its citizens the right to speak out fearlessly against their government and its policies.

President Bush himself, vacationing at his ranch down the road from Sheehan’s encampment, acknowledged as much last week in a statement endorsing Sheehan’s right to express her opinion.

He may not agree with her. He may not be inclined to grant her another audience. But he conceded the legitimacy of her public outspokenness.

It wasn’t Bush, though, who fired a shotgun into the air near the protest site or who drove his pickup over a row of memorial crosses that Sheehan’s supporters had placed along the road in tribute to U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. Personnel such as Sheehan’s son Casey, an Army specialist who was killed last year.

Those were merely the hostile gestures of a couple of Crawford extremists. However, the intolerance they represent has been echoed over and over in interviews and talk-show formats where Sheehan and her allies are pilloried as traitors. Americans, goes the rhetoric, have a duty in times of conflict to unite behind the war. Dissent is unacceptable.

It’s one thing to say Sheehan’s attitudes are wrong, but quite another to say she is wrong — un-American even — to voice them.

Having lost a child to war doesn’t qualify Sheehan to speak for all parents suffering similar loss. Her own estranged husband, Casey’s father, disagrees sharply with her. For that matter, one needn’t be an aggrieved parent at all to have standing in this debate. It’s a birthright of all Americans.

Does her personal pain mean Cindy Sheehan is necessarily right in her assessment of the war? Does her loss suddenly make her an authority on Middle East policy? Is Bush obliged to pull over for a chat every time he passes her cardboard sign? No, no and no.

Is the anti-war movement capitalizing on the media focus she and her grief have attracted? Yes, just as the president and his backers capitalize on the grief of parents who send him letters or appear at his side to say they don’t want their sons’ and daughters’ sacrifices to have been in vain.

Cindy Sheehan has done a quintessentially American thing. She has aired her grievances, loudly and boldly, and she has stuck to issues. Those who disagree with her should respond with their own opinions, or, if they want to deprive her of a national stage, they should ignore her.

But those who want to silence her should be aware of how un-American that is.