Sunday, March 24, 2013

That pesky First Amendment



The Pledge of Allegiance and Prayer in School

They sound wonderful and patriotic and Facebook is filled with those stupid meta things with ‘Remember this’ all over.  On the face of it, it’s harmless. 

BUT it’s not. 

Not at all. 

WHY?  Read this:
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.

Know what that is? 

Yep.  It’s the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  First, I believe, because when they realized that they needed to do something for the individual, they also realized that this whole revolution business had been about what this amendment says. 

I read every day about how we need God back in our classrooms.  But which one?  Mine?  Yours?  How are we going to do that without infringing on someone else’s right to worship in his own way or not to worship at all?  Can’t be done.  Maybe we should let families teach their children about faith and religion, not the state.  NOT ever the state.   

I also read about how the press is biased to the left or to the right (mostly left) and how they need to be shut up.  Is that what you really want?  You want your news from the official US news source written by whoever is in power this week?  You want to live in an insulated world of state truth?  North Korea might welcome you.  I don’t.

The hardest one is this one though:  Freedom of Speech.  How many times have you or I said, ‘He(she) shouldn’t be allowed to say that,’ referring to Neo-nazis, gun nuts, televangelists or whoever is the latest most offensive person out there?  Guess what?  We gotta let that person talk too… freedom of speech is a lot of things, a double edged sword being one of them.  His right is also mine… and that’s how it’s supposed to be. 





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