Today is March 24th, 2018. A notable day for me, and a day of protest for many. But I wonder how many of the actual participants really know what they are protesting against, or protesting for?
With the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, the 13 colonies embarked on their second attempt at self-governing. It became the basis for our government on June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the 9th state to ratify it[1]. The government began to function the following March, and the first order of business for the new Congress was to create a set of amendments to limit government and address concerns about federal power. The first ten amendments, also known as the bill of rights was ratified by the several states in 1791.
I’ve written in the past ( here, and
here) about the amendments but would like to think about the First Amendment again, since it is in the news these days.
There seems to be a misunderstanding among the various groups within our society about what the First Amendment is intended to do, who it is intended to protect, and how “We the People” have developed under previous assumptions.
To begin, we refer to the First Amendment as our guarantee we have a right to have something called “free speech”, but speech is only one component the founders hoped to establish. The first thing the Congress established was there would be no official state religion as had been the case in Europe and what had led so many of the original settlers to migrate in the first place. In the second they set out the right of the people and the press to exchange information (ideas, opinions, and news) without the fear of government creating laws to prevent that. Finally, it clearly lays out the right to protest government actions that the people find disagreeable.
While the idea of “free” speech was groundbreaking when it was adopted, over the past 40 or so years the left has moved to impose social restrictions on individuals for the political strength that comes with control. With the advent of online social media offering a two-way exchange of dialogue, it is also obvious that many believe their vitriolic speech is possible without direct consequence. In both extremes, the individuals who advocate and do these things seem to have lost their way in the role of building a free republic as established by our founders.
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