If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you've no doubt heard a lot of discussions about the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Out of all the Amendments in the Bill of Rights, in my humble opinion the First Amendment is almost tied with the Second as the most often and widely misinterpreted Amendment of them all. Not only is it widely misinterpreted, it also bears the separate distinction of being used the most often as "blanket coverage" for people saying, doing, or displaying things that mainstream society finds wrong, insulting or disgusting.
We have to start off with a look at just what the wording of the First Amendment is, so here it is:
"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."
Before you start interpreting the Amendment, I think you first have to look at why it was written in the first place - what were the events our Founding Fathers experienced that drove them to write this Amendment and make it first. The answer is simple.
The colonists fled England because of religious persecution. Seems that the king of England at the time issued a decree making one religion the official and only recognized religion of England, and he also made it illegal to practice any other religion under penalty of death. Once in America, the colonists found out the hard way that the quickest way to get locked up and have the key thrown away was to speak aloud or write something critical of the Crown; do that and the redcoats would show up at your door, haul you away, and throw you in prison until the Crown decided you had learned your lesson and released you. (There are several other Amendments that were spawned out of this as well, but that's for another post at another time.) Once the unrest in the Colonies grew to the point where people were gathering in large enough groups as to make the local Crown representatives nervous, the Crown promptly made it illegal to assemble. They then refused to hear any complaints on anything that the colonists wanted to complain about, claiming that they just didn't have to - either that, or they just ignored the colonists altogether. (For example, in Colonial Williamsburg when the House of Burgesses would meet, discuss an issue, and then pass their findings and recommendations on to the British government, if the British governor didn't like what he was told he would simply disband the Burgesses. Problem solved.)
So there's the First Amendment in all its glory and the reasons why it was drafted by our Founding Fathers. Now let's talk about how people have misused it through intentional misinterpretation.
First and foremost, you have to take note of and keep in mind the first five words of the Amendment for two reasons: first, these five words spell out specifically who the Amendment is aimed at, and second, what specifically that body of people can't do. And those first five words are, "Congress shall make no law." That phrase is very clear and precise, and for the life of me I don't understand how anyone with a lick of common sense can miss that - unless they choose to do so.
So let's talk about the first part that addresses religion and the practice thereof. You will note, please, that nowhere in the wording of the Amendment is found the phrase "separation of church and state." In addition to NOT being found in the Amendment, that phrase is also not found anywhere in the Bill of Rights or in the Constitution itself. That phrase was used in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. To quote Wikipedia:
In English, the exact term is an offshoot of the phrase, "wall of separation between church and state", as written in Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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."
What the Amendment actually says in regards to religion is that it is unconstitutional for the Congress of the United States to pass a law making one religion the "official" and "only" religion recognized and able to be practiced in the United States. It does NOT say that you can't display the Ten Commandments at the entrance to a county courthouse, nor does it say that you can't display a Christmas tree in the town square on town land. This is where the intentional misinterpretation and misuse comes in.
The next part concerning freedom of speech and of the press is equally simple. Plainly put, if you want to criticize the American government in either speech or printed text you can do so without having to worry about getting locked up because "Congress shall make no law" making it illegal to do so. And no one in the Federal government - NO ONE - has the authority to order you to be locked up because they don't like what you said. Lincoln did this during the War for Southern Independence and got posthumously censured by Congress for it. (Making false accusations and libelous claims is another matter entirely, one I won't go into here.)
If you choose to hold a demonstration to voice your displeasure with the Federal government, "Congress shall make no law" to prevent it. As the Tea Party can tell you, it's perfectly legal to demonstrate outside of the White House without getting locked up. And lastly if you are treated unfairly by the Federal government, you have a right to voice your complaint to the Federal government and have that complaint heard, then acted upon. Nothing says you're gonna like the reply, but they at least have to give you one. "Congress shall make no law," remember.
In plain language, the First Amendment was drafted to prevent the government - any government - from subjugating the people by controlling, limiting, or outlawing their rights as given by God to practice the religion which they believe in, to complain about the government, to assemble in groups to voice those complaints, and to have their complaints heard and addressed. It's as simple as that.
What the First Amendment doesn't do, in my humble opinion, is prevent anyone from erecting and displaying any kind of religious symbol of the religion they practice, nor does it prevent a town or city or other form of organized community from using that communitie's funds to do so. It also doesn't make the display of a manger scene on a military installation illegal.
It doesn't give you the right to wear a t-shirt emlazoned with the Nazi swastika or the Confederate battle flag on it out in public. There's no law in this nation anywhere I know of that says you can't, but the First Amendment doesn't give you the right to do so. That, in my opinion, is NOT "freedom of speech" as intended and stated in the Amendment itself. Any other interpretation or extrapolation of the Amendment to support that claim is, in my opinion, total and pure BS.
It doesn't give you and your friends the right to take over the grounds of the State House and camp there for as long as you think you need to in order to make a point. If the city has a law - a law, mind you - that camping on the State House grounds is illegal, then the moment you throw out a sleeping bag or pitch a tent when the sun goes down, your ass is fair game for the cops to come arrest you for criminal trespassing and throw your butt in jail.
It also doesn't give a journalist the right to conceal the identity of his/her source for a story. There's no such thing as "journalistic priviledge," and the First Amendment doesn't say anything about protecting sources. Read it again if you have to, but I dare you to find where it says anything remotely resembling that.
Yeah, I know, a whole lot of so-called "experts" and learned men have given far different and conflicting opinions and interpretations - there's that word again - of the Amendment and the Bill of Rights than what I've stated here. On the other hand, I've never claimed to be a legal expert on the Constitution or anything else having to do with the workings of our government, either. But you have to realize and recognize that our Founding Fathers didn't write the Bill of Rights and the Constitution for the benefit of the "legal beagles" out there, those who have studied law and claim to be "experts" on it. No, they wrote it for us, you and I, the common folk, the people who stood the most to gain by having the Amendments written - and who had the most to lose by not writing them down. They wrote them in the language of the times which is, unfortunately, the main trait of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution that allows for the massive misinterpretation of those documents in this day and age. Personally, I think to fully understand and correctly interpret the Constitution and the Bill of Rights you need to first understand the language of the times and the meanings of that language. If not, then any interpretation runs the risk of being incorrect by either accident or design. Unfortunately, in too many instances these days the misinterpretation is by deliberate design.
And that's the problem.
IHC
No comments:
Post a Comment