The First Amendment
Why it is so important and is it being violated?
Before beginning a discussion about the First Amendment, we need to re-establish some truths. First, you are created in the image and likeness of God. Of course, not in a physical sense. Why is this a fact? Because of your consciousness, your spirit, which is the real you that does not reside in your brain. You are a spiritual being having a human experience.
While having this human experience, we have the power to think and reason. The power of free will to discern right from wrong and make decisions based on our experiences and beliefs. We also have the power of imagination and creation, though not in the same sense as God. As a free creation of God, you have a right to experience these things!
The Founders were well read and familiar with the great philosophers that espoused the ideas I just mentioned.
The Declaration of Independence was largely inspired by 17th century philosopher John Locke, from his most famous writings, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Second Treatise of Government. Thomas Jefferson skillfully condensed both of these writings to create the Declaration, this being the most famous part:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --
I still cringe remembering Chelsea Clinton reciting the Declaration while stumping for her mother claiming you have a right to happiness which of course is absurd.
The Bill of Rights was added to the original Constitution because some of the soon to become states wanted more assurance as to the limit of the government they created.
The First Amendment is first because it reiterates your rights as a free creation of God to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government to right wrongs.
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.
As the Second reiterates your God-given right to defend yourself and your ability to keep these rights.
Thomas Jefferson authored what became the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the precursor to the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It passed in 1786. This is the beginning:
Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishment or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was his Almighty power to do . . .
The Act itself:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced … in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
What does “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” mean?
That Congress won't establish a national religion. The colonies had state sanctioned religions before the Constitution that were supported by taxes. (Only Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware did not.)
Or prohibit you from practicing your religion freely in public. ANYWHERE actually.
We have this absurd idea that stated somewhere in the Constitution is the phrase “separation of church and state”, when it is only part of a sentence in a private letter in 1802 from Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association assuring them that the First Amendment would guarantee free practice of religion in the public square without any interference from the government:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all of his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
When reading the phrase in context, it is crystal clear what Jefferson was actually saying!
It became famous when Justice Hugo Black in 1947 used it in his opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, a case that states funding transportation of all students to and from their schools, including parochial schools, WAS constitutional. Then also in 1947, it was flipped and used by the Supreme Court in McCollum v. Board of Education to forbid religious instruction in public schools.
The phrase actually means the opposite of how it is being interpreted!
It is the oddest thing that every session of Congress begins with a prayer from a U.S. government paid Chaplain. Supreme Court begins with an invocation. Yet displaying the Ten Commandments in a public setting or having a Christmas tree or a Minora in a City Hall, or voluntarily saying a prayer at a school sporting event is violating “the wall of separation between church and state”!
Playing devil's advocate, those who feel that no religion whatsoever should be in the public square, etc., are actually violating the First Amendment, since by doing so they are advocating atheism, which is a belief system, hence a religion!
Regarding abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, the freedoms of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal action:
The idea of free speech came from ancient Greece. The word “parrhesia” means “free speech,” or “to speak candidly”. Athenians were able to discuss politics and religion and to criticize the government in a limited way.
The First Amendment doesn't specifically say what is free speech. Courts have somewhat defined prohibited speech:
Obscene material such as child pornography
Plagiarism of copyrighted material
Defamation (libel and slander)
True threats
Speech inciting illegal actions or soliciting others to commit crimes aren’t protected under the First Amendment either.
After that, it's all good. However, in modern America, free speech practically doesn't exist! Colleges supposed to be the centers for free speech and free discussion of ideas ACTUALLY have little areas that are the ONLY place on campus free speech is allowed! A student at a college in California was prohibited from distributing copies of the Constitution-on-Constitution Day!
The student, Robert Van Tuinen, eventually won a lawsuit for his First Amendment Rights being violated.
In rural Michigan of all places, students were actually arrested for passing out copies of the Constitution!
One of the administrators told the supporters [i.e., “associates” in the lawsuit] that “engaging [students] in conversation on their way to educational places” is a violation of the Solicitation Policy because it is an “obstruction to their education” to ask them questions like, “Do you like freedom and liberty?,” adding that he was concerned that the students from “rural farm areas…might not feel like they have the choice to ignore the question.”
Translation: They were taking advantage of our dumb redneck students!
BLM and Antifa burned down cities and didn't get this kind of treatment!
And of course, ANYTHING I don't agree with is now hate speech.
Just as the 2nd Amendment Right to Bear Arms is misunderstood because of ignorance of what the Founders meant, so is the First Amendment Freedom of the Press. There were of course newspapers, with some of the Founders frequently submitting their opinions. Benjamin Franklin pushed for wider acceptance of journalism and newspapers because he felt they would be important to the freedom of the country. But what exactly were the Founders talking about? The PRINTING PRESS itself, and the freedom of ANY CITIZEN to speak his mind and have his ideas freely distributed in the best way at that time, without fear of punishment. Benjamin Franklin also owned a "press" and felt he and other press owners were obligated to allow anyone to put into print their thoughts on any matter, with a warning:
"When truth has fair play, it will always prevail over falsehood. If what is thus published be good, mankind has the benefit. If it be bad...the more tis made public, the more its weakness be exposed, and the greater disgrace falls upon the author, whoever he be.”
In January 1776, Thomas Paine published a 47-page pamphlet titled “Common Sense” which eventually reached 500,000 copies in its first year, phenomenal for the time. It was a major influence in getting the general public behind the American revolution.
Another thought on the free press by Franklin:
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till, they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
(I think we can apply it also to our insane censorship of free speech today.)
When YOU as an individual put any idea in print, on the internet, or in your social media, YOU are exercising your right to the Freedom of the Press. If a social media site censors your writing on orders from the government, that right is being violated!
Over 50 officials in President Joe Biden’s administration across a dozen agencies have been involved with efforts to pressure Big Tech companies to crack down on alleged misinformation, according to documents released on Aug. 31.
In July 2021, for instance, after Biden said that Facebook was “killing people” by not combating misinformation effectively, an executive at Meta reached out to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee, to say that government and Meta teams met after the remarks “to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.”
And you thought it was just the fact checkers at Facebook, Twitter, etc., messing with you.
In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate claimed that just 12 people—described as the “Disinformation Dozen”—were responsible for most of the “anti-vaccine” content on social media.
The White House took the report and used it to pressure Big Tech to suppress alleged misinformation and disinformation.
Center for Countering Digital Hate report on “the Disinformation Dozen”.
Who and what is the Center for Countering Digital Hate?
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the far-left British nonprofit currently waging a campaign of pressure against Facebook to force the social media giant to clamp down further against conservative media, is backed by a shadowy Swiss investment group that is funding communist China’s bid for global dominance.
The foundation funds a wide variety of left-wing causes, including efforts opposing the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, voter registration and mobilization efforts for Democrat-leaning demographic groups, and a broad spread of left-wing environmental groups.
It is also funding communist China’s bid for dominance over global trade networks.
The White House ACTUALLY took marching orders from THIS group!
The FBI manipulated the 2020 Presidential election by calling the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian disinformation” and manipulated social media platforms to censor information about it:
Twitter based on a similar FBI request to restrict election information actually banned the New York Post for breaking the story baselessly charging that “hacked materials” were used.
Alex Berenson proved Twitter banned him on orders from the White House.
Regarding the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances:
When parents attended school board meeting to protest what their children were being taught, the Education Secretary actually solicited a letter from the National School Board Association to take back to the White House to get the Department of Justice to call them domestic terrorists.
Joe Biden's Philadelphia speech was an official Presidential address to the nation, which means the U.S. government OFFICIALLY declared war on almost half the citizens in the country and his probable Presidential opponent, who are a threat to America because their political beliefs differ from his! That despite documentation of Democrats questioning results of at least 150 elections, the questioning of the increasingly suspect 2020 Presidential election somehow makes you a treasonous insurrectionist. The most vile and abominable address of any President in history!
Look familiar?
A Scene from the movie “V for Vendetta”.
CNN, obviously still the Clinton News Network doctoring up the background, so it doesn't look so Big Brother:
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. - Frederick Douglas
Because Benjamin Franklin is a favorite of mine:
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to publick traytors.- Benjamin Franklin, Dogwood Papers, written by Franklin in 1722, at the age of sixteen
The left will use anything to consolidate power... even to the abuse of our nation's most important document!
Top shelf !!