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Essay On First Amendment Freedom

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The United States didn’t invent freedom. The Greeks and Romans had their democratic principles and the British had their Magna Carta before we were a nation. We are not even considered the “most free” nation in the world. In fact, we were ranked 20th in the world earlier this year by the Cato Institute in the “human freedom index.”

We have our Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution); so why aren’t we that free? Let’s look at some of these amendments and why the interpretation of them today may be holding us back from true freedom.

First Amendment Freedom of Speech – While we like to point to freedom of speech as the guard dog of our freedom, total freedom of speech has brought with it some unintended consequences. First, all speech is protected, even ugly, hate-filled speech. What’s wrong with letting this speech exist out there? Well, it can cause people to feel and actually be less safe, diminishing the personal freedoms of people who are the targets of this speech.

First Amendment Freedom of Religion – We have seen lately that this part of the first amendment has been relied upon to deny goods and services to women (birth control) and the LGBT community. Those people in the U.S. suffering from the reliance …show more content…

Why should we protect this right if the police are finding drugs or murder weapons or child pornography? The answer lies not in the case of the criminal with drugs in his car, but of the school children who are subject to warrantless locker searches or the NSA reading our emails without any probable cause. The “War on Drugs” eroded this right substantially, and now we have less protection because of

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