The Word

Amendment I (1791)
"Congress shall make law no 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 the petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The constitution is as much about what it does not say as what it does say. The 1st amendment is the sacred cow, bandied about in the service of various and variegated causes, but how many of us have actually read it?

Here is the source of the river that is the Bill of Rights: the denial of rights. The denial of rights, not the granting of them. Take a minute with that; let it marinate. The most liberal document of all time was never about legally granting rights to the individual; it was about legally denying rights to the government.

The constitution, as timeless as it is cast, is, by definition, a product of its time, just as surely as the New Testament or Hotel California are. Hotel California had a better ending, by the way. The constitution is a window into a time when the biggest perceived threats were the federal government and the British Empire. Things have changed.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”

Read the first amendment; has Congress made a “law respecting the establishment of religion”? Of course it hasn’t. Definitions have changed, however. It is now asserted that the very existence of religious motifs or practices in any public place is legally equal to a “law respecting the establishment of religion”. This is the desecration of logic.

Secularism itself is a religion, and if the law allows religion to be utterly eradicated from all public venues, it will have served as a collaborator in the surrender of the very nation to a religiously nihilistic cult called secularism that shields its attacks on other religions and its "right" to undermine all concepts of objective morality with the mantle of “tolerance”.

“or abridging the freedom of speech”

Like everything else, “speech” has changed. When the constitution was written, speech, even in its most powerful incarnation, could only reach whoever could physically hear it, and let’s face it: people can only yell so loud. Now, “speech” can reach literally billions of people, many of whom would not have understood said “speech” if they had heard it delivered in the native tongue of the speaker.

Despite the quantitative, if not qualitative, explosion of speech that is the inevitable result of technology, the Congress has still refrained from passing a law that has abridged the freedom of speech. There are people who have more opportunity to speak, of course, but this cannot be allowed to be conflated into federal intervention. If a millionaire hands out a million pamphlets, that’s not a violation of my rights.

To plunge into the mirror, there also must be limits on free speech. Most of these limits are left to discretion in a responsible and sober republic. I do not perceive this to be happening in my nation. There is no discretion; there is only profit. The state of speech in our land is embarrassing, but it must be acknowledged that the government has not significantly restricted speech; the corporations have simply decided to propagate and export a nihilistic and materialistic ethos to the rest of the Earth, who they assume won't be offended by the casual sex and even more casual violence of American pop "culture". Great diplomacy, idiots.

“or of the press”

Thank God for the press. The current problem with the press is, much like the problem with freedom of speech, an issue of discretion. The press has to be able to leak government secrets; that is a contradiction that any republic must maintain. It must show discretion, however, when it comes to publishing national secrets. Not all secrets are designated as such to protect our leadership from scandal; many of them are designated as such to protect you and me from getting blown up.

In 1998, for example, some intrepid government official decided to leak to a major American newspaper that American intelligence had been listening in on Osama bin Laden's phone calls. Mr. bin Laden, after reading this tidbit in the newspaper, proceeded to tighten up his communications a bit and has never since used a cellular phone. It is not hyperbole to say that freedom of the press, exercised sans discretion, can get people killed. Thousands of people.

"or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Again, the government has not abridged this right. It has proven far too willing to totally ignore the grievances of peaceably assembled people, in my view, but that is a far cry from violating the spirit of the amendment.

When we soberly assess the first ammendment, we see that the government has not abridged the rights of citizens, but rather that the citizens have taken an absurd set of expectations to a nearly nihilistic level. The ACLU types insist that "freedom of speech" must mean freedom to insult religion and publish child pornography. Defending the vilest and most extreme interpretations of "freedom" does not protect freedom; it cheapens it, undermines it, and makes the rest of the world wonder why we're in such a rush to export it.