I was thinking about the First Amendment while I made breakfast. It wasn’t a big breakfast: blueberries, bananas and Jimmy Dean frozen egg and sausage biscuits. I usually do more for breakfast and make things fresh – especially on Sundays, but I need a shower this morning so I just wanted to fuel up and get on with it.
I’m not in the shower as you maybe have noticed.
The reason I mentioned breakfast was to explain that it wasn’t a lot of thinking. It was like ninety-seconds-until-the-microwave-dinged (x2 I’m cooking for two). I’ll do some more thinking in the shower, maybe pretending I’m Perry Ferrell.
Fans will understand.
It didn’t take a lot of thinking to realize something I should have realized years ago.
Why do we have the first Amendment? Was it because the Founding Fathers wanted the people to be able to shout obscenities in the town square? Is that what it was all about?
I can answer that in a single word:
Nope!
I could have gone with a shorter word, but I already skimped on breakfast and didn’t want to skimp on the word. I didn’t go all in with the word either. It’s only 9:22 in the morning.
I’ve got to save some for later.
We have freedom of speech because robust discussion is absolutely essential to continuing to ensure that freedom survives. The Founding Fathers had been under a king’s rule, and kings aren’t always the most tolerant of people saying things they didn’t like.
And they didn’t like that the king didn’t like it.
It wouldn’t do to allow people to be arrested for criticizing the government or suggesting an idea the powers that be didn’t like.
Elements in the government wanted slavery to continue and even expand. What it those people had been in power and someone suggested, like they had been since the beginning, that we needed to do away with slavery. Those in power wouldn’t like that. Not one bit. Without the First Amendment they might had him dragged away and thrown into a cell.
A deep dark cell. Bread and water his only sustenance. For the crime of saying something the powers that be didn’t like. The spiders. The horror. The spiders. Again. I don’t much like spiders. Thank God the First Amendment saves me from that fate.
It saves you from it too.
And what’s more, you’re still, in theory, allowed to yell obscenities in the town square.
If that’s your thing.
P.S.
I really wish I could stop there because the “if that’s your thing line” would have been the ideal exit. It brought things full-circle, it was semi-pithy. Not perfect, but pretty good. Wrap it up and head to the showers.
Boom.
But alas, it is not meant to bes, mes amis.
Because now I’m saddened. Not exactly morose. More of a “I wanted a cheeseburger but all they had were these cucumber sandwiches”. It’s a melancholy sort of disappointment really.
I told you I was saving some for later. That was little of it right there. It’s still early though and I still can’t spend it all.
The First Amendment was intended as a tool to preserve our freedoms, yet the bulk of the time, people exercise their First Amendment rights by going the shouting obscenities in the town square route. An action which would have gotten a person arrested at the time the First Amendment was passed. Saying whatever thing a person cares to say wasn’t the purpose, it was a bi-product.
What is permissible under the First Amendment is in flux and always has been.
The thing is, we have to exercise 1A using the robust discussion insured by 1A to continue to be free to shout obscenities in the town square, now included in the interpretation of 1A. People always want to skip the first part and get right to the second part.
They’re all coitus, no forep – okay. Hitting the brakes. Not going down that road. Though I could if I wanted to.
Thanks to 1A.
No wonder things are a mess. And no, it’s not Donald Trump’s fault.
I’m going to borrow from Ben Shapiro right now because the thing he says about this is darn good.
Trump isn’t the murderer of the Body Politic. He’s the coroner.
It was already dead when he got there. Let’s hope his team is Doctor Frankenstein, but hopefully what they make won’t have the stitched head and the unbending knees.
What started me down this road was a video of Alex Stein, making an ass of himself, trying to talk to liberals protesting in front of a DoE building, also making asses of themselves. It’s like a big, bi-partisan ass pie.
It’s possible there’s less pleasant imagery on this post-breakfast, pre-shower Sunday morning, but I can’t imagine what it might be. If you can imagine it, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.
I feel grimy. I can delay my shower no longer. I feel like I smell like that big, bi-partisan ass pie, or will soon.
I’ll probably share the Alex Stein video later. Complete with commentary.
Happy Sunday, beautiful people.
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