The First Amendment
1 comments"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."
This is one of the most important amendments on the Bill of Rights (...they're all actually kind-of important and stuff...). It enables all citizens of the country to freely speak their mind without penalty or punishment from the government or any other citizen so as it does not infringe on anyone's rights (which is the great thing about the constitution: it sets its own boundaries). Furthermore, this amendment provides the freedom for you to practice any religion that you so desire. The nation has no national religion, and even though the founding fathers drew on some of their religious background while drafting the Constitution, they obviously didn't want anyone, including themselves, to be forced to practice and abide by the laws of any religion, especially with the extreme flexibility of religious orders. The founding fathers wanted the laws to be black and white and they didn't want a national religion to get in the way of concrete law. This amendment also gives us the right to the press, to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government. The right to the press is simple: we get to ask questions of people so long as it doesn't infringe on their rights, and with the freedom of speech, both the questioner and the questioned have the right to say, and not say, whatever they wish. We have the right to assemble for whatever cause as long as it is peaceful. And we also have the right to draft up a petition to our government in attempt to correct something worth being brought up and thought to need correcting.
This amendment, like I said before, is an extremely important amendment. The freedom of religion probably found its roots in the initial voyage of the Pilgrims to America to escape religious persecution in England. The freedom to say what you wanted to say when you wanted to say it, the freedom to peacefully assemble, the freedom to the press and to petition the government were all freedoms denied to citizens in England at this time. It was the King's way or die, pretty much. So the founding fathers sought to grant those freedoms, believing they were inalienable in the first place.
The book arises from an abuse of the power of eminent domain by the city of Freeport, Tex., but the story really begins in Connecticut. There, in 2000, New London's city government condemned the property of middle-class homeowners in an unblighted neighborhood for the purpose of getting the property into the hands of commercial interests that would pay more taxes.
In 2005, in Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld, 5 to 4, New London's rapaciousness as a constitutional taking of property for what the Fifth Amendment calls a "public use." Rapacious people around the country salivated. When Kelo was decided, H. Walker Royall, a Dallas developer, already had designs on some property that for more than a decade has belonged to the Gore family shrimping business in coastal Freeport. In 2003, Royall signed an agreement with that city's government to build a yacht marina, hotel and condominiums using property the city would seize by eminent domain.
The day after the Supreme Court made its Kelo mistake, Freeport intensified its pressure against the Gores, whose stout resistance caught the gimlet eye of Carla Main. An experienced journalist (former associate editor of the National Law Journal, she has written for the Wall Street Journal, National Review and numerous other publications), Main has recounted the case in her book "Bulldozed: 'Kelo,' Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land." Her thesis is that many "takings" of property for economic development are taking a terrible toll on the rights of everyday Americans.
In October 2008, Royall sued Main and her publisher (Encounter Books), seeking monetary damages and a ban on further production and distribution of the book. He also sued the Galveston newspaper that reviewed the book and the reviewer. A judge dismissed, on jurisdictional grounds, Royall's suit against Richard Epstein, professor of law at the University of Chicago and New York University, whose offense was a dust-jacket endorsement of the book as a report on an "unholy alliance" between government and a private interest.
Royall's lawsuit charging Main with defamation is, her lawyers document, riddled with mischaracterizations of what Main writes and about whom she writes it, and ignores long-established criteria of defamation law, which holds that a statement is not actionable as defamatory if the speaker obviously is expressing a subjective view or an interpretation, theory, conjecture or surmise.
Indeed, so slapdash are Royall's accusations against Main that his suit seems to reflect nothing more substantial than his dislike of her opinions and those of people she accurately quotes. It seems intended to chill commentary on eminent domain abuse by exposing commentators to the steep costs of deflecting even frivolous litigation.
The Institute for Justice -- an Arlington-based public-interest group that represented the victims of eminent domain in New London; it also is assisting the Gores -- identifies a national trend of attempted intimidation by litigation. For example, in Clarksville, Tenn., the institute successfully defended a group of property owners sued for $500,000 by a city councilman and a business interest claiming injury by a newspaper advertisement objecting to their eminent domain plans. In Renton, Wash., two developers sued a woman for statements she made while resisting a blight designation of her property, including, for example, that one of the developers is "a haughty and proud Pharisee." The Supreme Court is blameworthy for two entangled abuses. It diluted property rights in the Kelo case and it weakened freedom of speech by not overturning McCain-Feingold. Fortunately, in an unusual Sept. 9 session, the court will hear, for a second time, oral arguments in a case arising from that law's speech restrictions.
The court should be cognizant of the attacks on property rights that its Kelo decision incited. And on Sept. 9 it should remember the increasing resort to restrictions of speech. McCain-Feingold is both a symptom and an encouragement of such restrictions.
The writer is a member of the board of the MacArthur Foundation, which provides some funding for the Institute for Justice. His e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com.
I chose this video because George Carlin is hilarious, and because it is George Carlin talking about the freedom of choice, which, in my opinion, is largely covered in the First Amendment.
October 22, 2009 1:50 AM
Really interesting video, and I couldn't agree more with what Carlin is saying. I'm not sure if he's a pacifist or what, but his stance in the video definitely makes it seem like it.