Keep Our First Amendment Freedoms Free
Imagine this: You have an opinion. Since we live in a land guaranteed freedom of speech, you express your opinion. Now a government agency comes along and says, “Wait, you may only express that opinion only if you arrange to have someone available to express the opposing point of view.” “Ridiculous,” you say, and you are certainly correct. We don't have our free speech rights threatened but not by that absurd arrangement, at least not yet! That only applies to radio, at least if some get their way.
"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."
If you don’t recognize them, those are the actual words of the First Amendment, the top of the original “top ten list” of the rights of citizens. In the intervening 217 years since they were ratified, in 1791, a lot of silliness has altered the common perception of their meaning. Like the Bible, the Bill of Rights has suffered from the interpretations of experts, when a plain reading will understand it. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws to restrict religion institutions and religious liberty, freedom to speak, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably gather; it also protects the citizen’s right to tell the government to back off, when it intrudes where it doesn’t belong and isn’t needed (That’s what redress of grievances means).
Nothing has changed to warrant any other interpretation, except that the courts have taken on legislative powers that were plainly denied the Courts. Our founders would undoubtedly express shock and horror at the expansion of judicial power, as well as at the size and power of the federal government, all strictly and plainly prohibited by the 10th Amendment.
Perhaps one area is different. Freedom of the press is wholly inadequate to offer the protection that the media need today. Radio, television, and Internet were not even imagined in 1791, but there is no doubt that the founders would have included them, had they known. One undeniable need is to extend First Amendment protections to those areas. The Broadcaster Freedom Act is one way, and we should support it. I personally would favor a Constitutional Amendment that adds the phrase “freedom of any form of information transmission (speech, press, broadcast media, electronic communication, satellite delivery, or any future forms of communication), without government interference or regulation” (Fairness Doctrine indeed!).
The inconsistencies of judicial “interpretation” make it abundantly clear that we need to elect Presidents and representatives who respect the original meaning of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and render judgments that hold to that meaning. We ought to begin to voice our opinions in phrases like “If it protects raunchiness, then it also protects Rush” and “Freedom of speech covers the words of political ideas more than the work of pornographic images.” Censorship is a bad thing, most critically when it censors the people attempting to rein in the ever-growing power of the government. The Fairness Doctrine, hate speech laws, political correctness, and campaign finance reform all tread on our First Amendment freedom, as do court decisions to silence the prayers of students at their own school graduations.
As with so many things, clever people have figured out how to turn common sense on its ear, so that limits on the government's power have become restrictions on the people's liberty. If it’s not clear enough anywhere else, it’s plenty clear in the 10th Amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Constitution gave no branch of the federal government the powers that they exercise today. With the Bill of Rights, it plainly prohibits the President, Congress, and Supreme Court, as well as their respective surrogates, from doing most of what they’re doing today. Career politicians have largely become snake oil salesmen, who are selling a cure when, in fact, they are the disease! Education, energy, transportation, business, housing, urban development, health care, the environment, poverty, aging, drugs, disability—none of these are the government’s job or the responsibility of politicians, and the people without the government’s interference can do a better job dealing with each of these areas. Furthermore, the government's monkeying in these areas has caused many of the problems, especially the inflationary costs of most of them, by requiring all sort of extraneous provisions and regulations that ordinary folks would eliminate for the sake of accomplishing the primary purposes in each area. A case in point is public education, which neglects the effective teaching of the basics, encumbers teachers and classrooms with ideological indoctrination, and often teaches what it teaches so poorly that it has become unimaginably (and unimaginatively) boring! Then end product of government management is poor management.
The Constitution delegates to the federal government only security, foreign relations, defense, a national currency, controlled but limited immigration, and a few other areas that require a “united” and coordinated approach Those duties are clearly spelled out in the Constitution; you will be hard pressed to justify most of what the government over-taxes us to provide and restricts us from doing as we choose. The dominant issues of the current election campaign are national security, energy, the economy, education, and health care. Except for national security, virtually none of that is the President’s responsibility. Furthermore, by meddling in them, rendering them less effective and more expensive, Washington elites, at the same time, neglect critical duties that are to keep us safe, constructively engaged with the rest of the world, but sovereign over our own future.
Those who covet the power of a bloated, ever-expanding federal government would prefer to silence any of us who not only object but also do so with clear Constitutional justification. That is undoubtedly why the First Amendment is first! The new media have kept the elites from doing what they seek to do, things they have often done in the past, without much notice, since their friends largely controlled the old media, the only sources of information. The original “Fairness Doctrine,” which ended under Reagan’s FCC, prevented radio and then TV from airing contrary views by requiring “equal time.” Indeed, the original federal management of broadcast frequencies was largely a ploy to prevent unrestricted free speech. The proof is how little they care, today, about crude speech while they are intensely concerned about critical speech.
Equal time is not a provision of the First Amendment. If more people hold a particular view, then they will naturally express it more than perhaps a small number who think differently. We allow those with minority opinions to express them, but nothing guarantees them “equal time.” Indeed, the idea is ludicrous. A few people may still believe in a flat earth, but they don’t get equal time with the prevailing scientific opinion. The real intent of “fairness” and “equal time” provisions are to silence opinions that those in power might prefer to remain unheard. This is precisely what the First Amendment intended to protect. If left-leaning, pro big government activists did not dominate some courts, this would not even need discussion. All judges should protect the plain sense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights; we should impeach judges who do otherwise, for they are plainly violating their primary Constitutional duties.
Freedom of religion has also been turned upside down. The Bill of Rights has no “wall of separation.” Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Church using this phrase, but that is not in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution, but no one had any business using it to “interpret” the First Amendment. The amendment's words were the ones debated, chosen, and approved as an amendment, not some letter, regardless of who wrote it. Such “interpretations” opened the door to further departures from the words and plain sense of these documents; today it may be the laws of other countries or the feelings of the judge himself or herself, making the Constitution a “living document,” paramount nonsense but a powerful tool in the hands of a judicial activist.
As a preacher and interpreter of the Bible, I have long advocated that ordinary people read and seek to understand Scripture for themselves and not depend on any teacher, no matter how good or wise. I urge the same regarding our national documents. We may learn for well-educated experts, but not all experts agree. Our religious and political orientations may swayed any of us to “find” our biases in the words we interpret. The framers intended the First Amendment to enable a free and informed citizenry to decide for themselves, speak the minds, and vote their consciences, free of oppressive government interference or domination. Christian people, who were intimately involved in creating them saw a limited government as a protection for religious people from having one religion exercise coercion through the government, the very coercion the non-religious are using today.
The only way we can preserve these critically important protections or hope to restore them to their original state is the use them now, while we still can. We can no longer afford just to vote; we must speak to our families, neighbors, co-workers, and anyone else we can reach to persuade them to demand, in every way possible, that our leaders protect these freedoms. The United States of American has nothing without them, and the prosperity we have enjoyed, a direct result of free enterprise, will wither into the same economic blight much of the rest of the world lives in. We must especially work to educate our younger citizens who, thanks to the contrary biases of the elitist-run public schools, understand far too little of this. Of course, you may yourself be poorly taught. The resources to discover the facts are right at your fingertips. I urge you to use them. Then use your voice, your right to assemble, and your right to demand that our leaders to what they swear to do, “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
"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."
If you don’t recognize them, those are the actual words of the First Amendment, the top of the original “top ten list” of the rights of citizens. In the intervening 217 years since they were ratified, in 1791, a lot of silliness has altered the common perception of their meaning. Like the Bible, the Bill of Rights has suffered from the interpretations of experts, when a plain reading will understand it. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws to restrict religion institutions and religious liberty, freedom to speak, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably gather; it also protects the citizen’s right to tell the government to back off, when it intrudes where it doesn’t belong and isn’t needed (That’s what redress of grievances means).
Nothing has changed to warrant any other interpretation, except that the courts have taken on legislative powers that were plainly denied the Courts. Our founders would undoubtedly express shock and horror at the expansion of judicial power, as well as at the size and power of the federal government, all strictly and plainly prohibited by the 10th Amendment.
Perhaps one area is different. Freedom of the press is wholly inadequate to offer the protection that the media need today. Radio, television, and Internet were not even imagined in 1791, but there is no doubt that the founders would have included them, had they known. One undeniable need is to extend First Amendment protections to those areas. The Broadcaster Freedom Act is one way, and we should support it. I personally would favor a Constitutional Amendment that adds the phrase “freedom of any form of information transmission (speech, press, broadcast media, electronic communication, satellite delivery, or any future forms of communication), without government interference or regulation” (Fairness Doctrine indeed!).
The inconsistencies of judicial “interpretation” make it abundantly clear that we need to elect Presidents and representatives who respect the original meaning of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and render judgments that hold to that meaning. We ought to begin to voice our opinions in phrases like “If it protects raunchiness, then it also protects Rush” and “Freedom of speech covers the words of political ideas more than the work of pornographic images.” Censorship is a bad thing, most critically when it censors the people attempting to rein in the ever-growing power of the government. The Fairness Doctrine, hate speech laws, political correctness, and campaign finance reform all tread on our First Amendment freedom, as do court decisions to silence the prayers of students at their own school graduations.
As with so many things, clever people have figured out how to turn common sense on its ear, so that limits on the government's power have become restrictions on the people's liberty. If it’s not clear enough anywhere else, it’s plenty clear in the 10th Amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Constitution gave no branch of the federal government the powers that they exercise today. With the Bill of Rights, it plainly prohibits the President, Congress, and Supreme Court, as well as their respective surrogates, from doing most of what they’re doing today. Career politicians have largely become snake oil salesmen, who are selling a cure when, in fact, they are the disease! Education, energy, transportation, business, housing, urban development, health care, the environment, poverty, aging, drugs, disability—none of these are the government’s job or the responsibility of politicians, and the people without the government’s interference can do a better job dealing with each of these areas. Furthermore, the government's monkeying in these areas has caused many of the problems, especially the inflationary costs of most of them, by requiring all sort of extraneous provisions and regulations that ordinary folks would eliminate for the sake of accomplishing the primary purposes in each area. A case in point is public education, which neglects the effective teaching of the basics, encumbers teachers and classrooms with ideological indoctrination, and often teaches what it teaches so poorly that it has become unimaginably (and unimaginatively) boring! Then end product of government management is poor management.
The Constitution delegates to the federal government only security, foreign relations, defense, a national currency, controlled but limited immigration, and a few other areas that require a “united” and coordinated approach Those duties are clearly spelled out in the Constitution; you will be hard pressed to justify most of what the government over-taxes us to provide and restricts us from doing as we choose. The dominant issues of the current election campaign are national security, energy, the economy, education, and health care. Except for national security, virtually none of that is the President’s responsibility. Furthermore, by meddling in them, rendering them less effective and more expensive, Washington elites, at the same time, neglect critical duties that are to keep us safe, constructively engaged with the rest of the world, but sovereign over our own future.
Those who covet the power of a bloated, ever-expanding federal government would prefer to silence any of us who not only object but also do so with clear Constitutional justification. That is undoubtedly why the First Amendment is first! The new media have kept the elites from doing what they seek to do, things they have often done in the past, without much notice, since their friends largely controlled the old media, the only sources of information. The original “Fairness Doctrine,” which ended under Reagan’s FCC, prevented radio and then TV from airing contrary views by requiring “equal time.” Indeed, the original federal management of broadcast frequencies was largely a ploy to prevent unrestricted free speech. The proof is how little they care, today, about crude speech while they are intensely concerned about critical speech.
Equal time is not a provision of the First Amendment. If more people hold a particular view, then they will naturally express it more than perhaps a small number who think differently. We allow those with minority opinions to express them, but nothing guarantees them “equal time.” Indeed, the idea is ludicrous. A few people may still believe in a flat earth, but they don’t get equal time with the prevailing scientific opinion. The real intent of “fairness” and “equal time” provisions are to silence opinions that those in power might prefer to remain unheard. This is precisely what the First Amendment intended to protect. If left-leaning, pro big government activists did not dominate some courts, this would not even need discussion. All judges should protect the plain sense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights; we should impeach judges who do otherwise, for they are plainly violating their primary Constitutional duties.
Freedom of religion has also been turned upside down. The Bill of Rights has no “wall of separation.” Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Church using this phrase, but that is not in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution, but no one had any business using it to “interpret” the First Amendment. The amendment's words were the ones debated, chosen, and approved as an amendment, not some letter, regardless of who wrote it. Such “interpretations” opened the door to further departures from the words and plain sense of these documents; today it may be the laws of other countries or the feelings of the judge himself or herself, making the Constitution a “living document,” paramount nonsense but a powerful tool in the hands of a judicial activist.
As a preacher and interpreter of the Bible, I have long advocated that ordinary people read and seek to understand Scripture for themselves and not depend on any teacher, no matter how good or wise. I urge the same regarding our national documents. We may learn for well-educated experts, but not all experts agree. Our religious and political orientations may swayed any of us to “find” our biases in the words we interpret. The framers intended the First Amendment to enable a free and informed citizenry to decide for themselves, speak the minds, and vote their consciences, free of oppressive government interference or domination. Christian people, who were intimately involved in creating them saw a limited government as a protection for religious people from having one religion exercise coercion through the government, the very coercion the non-religious are using today.
The only way we can preserve these critically important protections or hope to restore them to their original state is the use them now, while we still can. We can no longer afford just to vote; we must speak to our families, neighbors, co-workers, and anyone else we can reach to persuade them to demand, in every way possible, that our leaders protect these freedoms. The United States of American has nothing without them, and the prosperity we have enjoyed, a direct result of free enterprise, will wither into the same economic blight much of the rest of the world lives in. We must especially work to educate our younger citizens who, thanks to the contrary biases of the elitist-run public schools, understand far too little of this. Of course, you may yourself be poorly taught. The resources to discover the facts are right at your fingertips. I urge you to use them. Then use your voice, your right to assemble, and your right to demand that our leaders to what they swear to do, “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
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