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So the Constitution
it is the supreme law of the land. Its what established the United States
American
It's what determined how our government would be structured with the separation
of powers would be
it explain what the president would do with the supreme court we do what our
legislature would do
it was adopted in 1787 by the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia and then it was
ratified the convention by 11 states
finally it went to affect March 4th 1789.
Now when the Constitution was done
they almost immediately decided they were going to amend it. They were going to provide 10
amendments to the Constitution restructure
basically the more specific
rights that who that the new people have american were allowed.
We call them the Bill of Rights and the one that this class will focus on
the most
course is the first amendment and we're going to focus very specifically on one
aspect to the first amendment.
Let's take a look at the First Amendment in general and see what
kind of freedoms it provides us. So
the idea behind it times Jefferson said the this quote: "A democracy cannot be
both
ignorant and free," and so what are the key components in this new country that
the
the founding fathers believed was that U.S. citizens had to have enough information
to make
valuable decisions about their own well-being and their governance
That was something that they didn't have in England it didn't have when they
were part of the British monarchy so the road into the Constitution's First
Amendment which
on basically was to outline these individual liberties
that the new citizens were going to have.
This is what the First Amendment says
it was drafted by James Madison: "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or prohibiting the freedom of speech or of
the press
with the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to Petition the
government for a redress of grievances."
It's a pretty powerful statement and when we break it apart we're going to see what
these words afford us.
We have to to recognize that the founding fathers did not believe that
this was a negotiation
this in the in order for us to have a democratic government
true democracy we needed to have freedom of expression we didn't have the ability
to criticize their government
and that's really how with this this country has developed, because
of this idea of public debate. So again these are the ones and we look at the
freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of the press
freedom to petition.
Freedom of religion we actually see we have freedom of religion and freedom from
religion
The country is not going to establish an official religion which
was very important people who
came from England and of course to the church in England. We are free to exercise any relition
that we wish. You can attend
attend any temple at all or no temple at all
It's completely up to you whether or not religion is part of your life what that
religion is
and whether or not you practices that.
We have in his part in this we call the Establishment Clause
and that means that the government has to be neutral about
religion so there's no endorsement. We can't disapproved of it
The the government can't get the impression that endorses
it
which is one of those reasons why no longer see the Ten Commandments
we no longer see celebration
of Christmas in the way we mighr expect of a
religious holiday so this is all part of our desire to
respect people's religion their desire to not be involved
There's also as part of this the exercise clause and
this basically means the government can stop you from practicing religion any
can tell you how you should practice religion
that doesn't mean however the all facets of religion are acceptable
under the laws that have been set up for our country. So polygamy
one example a religious-based the
concept the is not supported by the law. Of course
different sacrifices that religions might incorporate into them
may not be
accessible
under the law that we have so you have to still follow the law
Another
key aspect to the first amendment is the freedom of assembly. That means if you
would like to get a group of people together
and picket on the oval because you feel the football tickets are too high
you have the right to do that. If you would like to you go march in Washington
in favor and same-sex marriage or against same-sex marriage, in favor of abortion
or against abortion, in favor of immigration or against abortion
you have the right to do that. Now we do have some restriction on and we're going
to talk about that this semester in terms of
we call time place and manner restrictions, which means you can
be marching down the street at 4 o'clock in the morning
the making a lot of noise. There are certain guidelines that we file
as a society but you have the right to assemble as per
You also the right to petition so that means that we can ask
our government for changes and that's why you see signatures being gathered to
put on
legislation together to put
information on the ballot you can call or write your representative this is all
factored in
because it was not for the government was here before this country was founded.
Freedom of speech is a big one it prevents the government basically from censoring
your opinion,
censoring the ideas that you have. It makes sure that we're not
in theory going to be prevented from speaking because the content that we have
and that means primarily that we can criticize our government.
You may see the story recently with it was really a clown who were
a mask of President Obama
and he was rather inflammatory to the crowd in anti-Obama statements that he made.
He was fired and some people would say this goes against
freedom of speech. But note that he was fired but he was wasn't arrested.
You were absolutely able to criticize the government, you can criticize the
president you can go on Twitter and say what you want
with some exceptions though. So you can threaten the president on
Twitter
We will talk about someone who did that.
Your employer doesn't have to keep you hired if they disagree with what you
doing representing them
but the government's not gonna come in and tell you that you can say things
against
it because that's why we have freedom of speech
Remember, is not absolute. Actually in public schools
there are restrictions and we're gonna look at some of the court cases that
determined that.
You can interfere with school activities for example
were impact the welfare of the school. We're going to talk about
line you can say fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire.
There are some guidelines for freedom of speech but we have almost
unequal access compared to other countries to be able to say what we
think
to saw what our opinions on and to not be punished by our government for them.
The one we're going to talk about the most as we go through this semester is freedom
of the press
and this means the government doesn't control the media. We are not
licensed by the government as is many other countries do license the media
we're not control did you not administering
or providing printing presses in the days of the printing press.
They're not restricting the Internet to those who they believe
we're allowed to get information from any source who won we certainly see that
with the rise of social media
The government doesn't control newspapers print. We can have
Fox News, we can have MSNBC. Whatever whatever side you're on there
can be
media to present it. Now we certainly have seen some
not quite challengers but some impact on
freedom of the press recently. We are going to talk a lot about that this semster
and I'm really going to want to know what you all are thinking in terms of
whistleblowers or whatever you think Edward Snowden is. What happen with Bradley Manning and
WikiLeaks. The AP scandal in terms of the Department of Justice
seizing their information.
There's a lot of stuff going on that we are going to talk about.
Remember, these freedoms are not absolute so
other people have rights too, and we have to follow their rates in addition to
weighing
the rights we get here. public versus private
is something we will talk about a lot. At-risk speech is something we are going to talk about.
We have a lot to talk about this semester but now you have some base
concepts from which we can build.