The First Amendment
September 30th, 2007I talk a lot about the Second Amendment on this blog, but not enough about the First. It’s because I feel the Second is in more danger than the First. And trust me, if the Second goes, there’s nothing to keep the First from going too.
First off, this is utterly important. You must understand the difference between a Right and a Privilege. If you do not understand this, then this is all for naught.
A Right is something you are born with. Government does not give you Rights. They are something that cannot be taken away from you. A privilege is just that, a privilege. When Government starts taking away Rights, it needs to be overthrown. It’s that simple.
The first Amendment is simply this:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So let’s break this down piece by piece.
Freedom of Religion. This is a Right, and this one gets the most controversy. Keep in mind, people fled their countries to come here so they could worship as they want to worship. People died for this Right, so you can worship as you want to worship. Don’t ever take that for granted.
Freedom of Speech. This Right is almost an absolute. You can say things that will offend, despite what politically correct people think. You can say “I hate all Narnians and Narnians are stupid, they’re ugly, and the world would be better off if they were all dead.” You cannot say, “Aslan, you are a Narnian and I’m going to your house and I’m going to shoot you.” If you say that, Aslan has the Right to shoot you the moment you step foot on his property.
You cannot slander. If Aslan is not an alcoholic, you cannot go around telling everyone that Aslan is an alcoholic. That is slander. If he is one, then it’s all good.
You cannot give out copyrighted materials freely. I don’t think I need to go into details here.
You cannot give out private info. If you get a hold of Aslan’s credit card, you can’t go around giving that info to your friends and neighbors.
Despite what you’ve heard, you can yell “fire!” in a crowded theatre. Keep in mind though that no judge or jury is going to be sympathetic to you when some father busts your knees with a baseball bat after the resulting panic crippled his kid.
You can say “President Bush (my President) or Dianne Feinstein/Barbara Boxer (my Senators), or Ellen Tauscher (my Congresswoman) are !@#$%^& idiots and I hate them and wish they’d get an STD.” Other people may not like it, but that’s just tough.
There are no “free speech zones.” Anyone who tries to enforce a free speech zone needs to be tar and feathered. The whole country is a free speech zone.
Freedom of the Press. As annoying as reporters are, I’m glad I live in a country where the media can publish anything they want to publish (save for libel, copyright infringement, etc.)
Freedom of Assembly. This gives you the Right to Assembly peacefully. If you don’t like the way something is, by all means, hold up a sign in a public place and tell the world. You may not like what someone’s protesting, but it’s their Right to do it.
This does not mean throw a brick through a Starbucks window. And if there are any Anarchists reading this, do us all a favor, don’t destroy their windows, destroy their stereo system. Geez, Anarchists, at least make yourself useful.
The Right to Petition Your Government. This means you don’t need to be scared to send a letter to your Congressman or woman, your Senator, or your President. They’re supposed to send you a letter back. So far, of the dozens of letters I’ve sent, everyone has, although I wonder if they really read them. I bet what they do is simply tally up a for and against.
So this is your First Amendment. It’s over two hundred years old, and is set in stone. Your Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they wrote it. Don’t take it for granted. Remember, you were born with these Rights. Government does not give these Rights to you.
It is a good thing that I was born with these rights. Too bad all the other people were not! (At least it seems many think that.)
As always very good post. You do these very well.
I think two things that often get forgotten about the first ammendment:
1: Freedom of religion implies also freedom FROM religion. I still don’t understand why atheists are so often forgotten in this clause. It’s not just to practice religion how you choose, but also to choose not to practice any religion.
2: Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from offense. In fact, in a free society it is nearly guaranteed that something someone says will offend someone else. The intelligent thing to do is to openly debate, not to censor.
So true all of it. I dont even know where to pick today to say whats best. You hit all the good points of view.
Too many abuse the first amendment.
After 200 years, how did we get to this nonesense?
http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2007/10/01/Opinion/Fire-This.Fuck.Censorship-3002445.shtml
Not a four letter word! Published!?
Good post.
good to see we actually agree on something.
JJ - We agree on more than you’d care to admit. It’s just that a lot of you you-know-whats like to argue over details instead of agreeing on the big picture.
Andrew - Ridiculous. Laura’s 2nd point summons up my reply.
Leslie - More reason to need it.
Tweety - Thanks.
Laura - Excellent points. I especially love part 2.
Granny - If people only knew that we were all born Free, the world would be a better place.
Freedom of Speech also encompasses silent expressions such as clothing. I’m thinking in particular of the anti-Vietnam black armbands that sent to HS kids to the Supreme Court, where they promptly won.
Zombieslayer, I think you should say more about copyright protections and in particular the fair use clause. The MPAA and record companies are doing their best to eliminate it.
Andrew: That’s nothin compared to what happened when I was at DePaul 12 yrs ago. The student paper was shut down amidst protests of insensitivity. That pretty much sealed the deal on my cynicism my freshman year.
well said, zs. another blog buddy of mine did a first amenedment post for banned books week, mostly fromthe free speech standpoint. i love that you covered each component of the amendment. very nicely done and i could not agree more.
http://www.tommysdarkside.com if you are interested.
Nicely done. And just in time for Banned Books Week as pointed out by Lime.
Excellent post and I’m looking forward to reading the others.
Beach Bum - Thanks.
Kathleen - I’ll definitely head over to Lime’s tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going to be busy. Just have enough time to answer my own blog posts.
Lime - I am interested. I’ll definitely hit that site tomorrow as well.
Laura - Insensitive people need to grow thicker skin.
Jessica - I’m weak on that issue. I know only the basics unfortunately.
Agree with you on the clothing thing.
I agree totally with this ZS, and as a sidenote I’m taking a constitutional law class and we have determined that it is actually illegal to yell “fire” in a theater or “bomb” on a airplane. But aside from that I agree with you 100%
Ben - Great to see you here. I’m curious about the fire in the theater or bomb on a plane. That’s something I didn’t know. I may have to update this post.
Also, let’s not forget Rights are Inalienable.
Which brings up all kinds of questions related to whether voting is a right or not.
JACC - I think voting should be inalienable. If you wanted to ban an opinion, make it illegal, put them in jail, and say anyone in jail can’t vote.
Voting is not a right. It is a privilege granted to citizens. Earned by the blood and toil of our ancestors and protected by constant vigilance and struggle.
It’s a good blog post ZS. The more the days pass though the more I’m inclined to agree with Hamilton that bills of rights actually lessen the amount of rights we have, rather than preserving them. As much as I hate that guy, he may have had a point there. Though who knows, maybe without the Bill of Rights we would have lost everything sooner. The World may never know.
Exmi - Never knew whether it was a Right or Privilege.
Scott - Actually, I like things written in stone because then you have something clear to fight for.
Zombie-I am just starting Part 11 of my series, and it will be covering the first amendment. I will forward it to you when it is done. This thing is turning into a book for crying out loud. I am already over 21,000 words.
Leslie- Too many do abuse the first amendment in regards to freedom of speech, but a lot of that is due to a decay of morals. When hateful and vile speech is accepted as ‘freedom of speech’ it says more for a lack of morals and character of the people than it does about the abuse of a right or freedom.
Laura- I agree that the first amendment was also designed to protect the rights of those who choose NOT to worship as well. However when the freedom to worship is infringed upon by those who feel that any display of religion is an offense, I would hope that they would remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”