Sunday, April 24, 2016

The First Amendment

Okay, let's spend some time on the amendments. Most of them aren't lengthy, so some might be combined, and we'll just see how it goes, starting with the first.

"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."

Most of the amendments, especially in the Bill of Rights, are pretty specific in their focus. This one treats three pretty broad topics.

I think there are a couple of ways of looking at that. One might be that if you separated them into separate amendments, the order in which they were listed could be interpreted as a ranking and prioritization, when the intention was to give them equal weight.

Another possibility is that the three were considered necessary for matters of conscience.

Religion was something that had been restricted by the colonies before. Quakers could be fined for not attending Puritan meetings, religious dissidents had been expelled from some communities, and yet coming to one's own religious beliefs and then practicing them is a very personal matter.

It might not appear that press and assembly would face similar threats, but a religious meeting is an assembly, the printing of religious material requires a press. If those freedoms are impinged, then religious freedom is.

Of course, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press do not need to be religious in their application, but they are also important for information, and for collaboration. The revolutionaries had not been happy with their options for petitioning the government. Their needed to be better options in place. With mass media and internet, we can accomplish a lot without being in the same space, but it is still a form of assembly. For the options that were available at the time, these safeguards make perfect sense.



No comments: