Friday, April 25, 2008
Freedom of Speech
Pastor Martin Niemöller
You've probably heard his poem First They Came... in original or modified form at some point or another. I had seen a version of it in reverse order of losing our Bill of Rights, something along the lines of:
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was silent because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was silent because I am innocent.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was silent because I don't own a gun.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment and I can say nothing about it.
While the original obviously has much more impact both in verse and when you take into account the history of the author and reason he wrote it, the amendments version does illustrate a good point.
As we slowly lose our rights (just Google American loss of liberty or anything like that and you'll find plenty of shocking results aside from warrantless wiretaps and opening of postal mail as well watch lists among many other things), this poem reminds us that the loss of liberty does not come overnight, it is a slow but steady process until one day it is too late. Hopefully the Supreme Court will start the ball rolling in the right direction with their pending decision on the 2nd Amendment.
People often forget, that while the 1st Amendment is at the very core of America, so is the 2nd and without it, the 1st is worthless.
And people also sometimes forget that the Bill of Rights is about individual rights. Don't take my word for it, Thomas Jefferson wrote it himself "A bill of rights, is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."
Jefferson's position gained advocates, and a compromise was reached. State legislatures agreed to ratify the draft document with the understanding that the first national legislature meeting under the new constitution would pass amendments guaranteeing individual liberties. That is precisely what occurred. By 1791, these 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, had become part of the supreme law of the land.
Now if you're still with me, read this:
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms REPORT
of the SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION
of the UNITED STATES SENATE NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS
Second Session
From the preface:
We did not guess at the purpose of the British 1689 Declaration of Rights; we located the Journals of the House of Commons and private notes of the Declaration's sponsors, now dead for two centuries. We did not make suppositions as to colonial interpretations of that Declaration's right to keep arms; we examined colonial newspapers which discussed it. We did not speculate as to the intent of the framers of the second amendment; we examined James Madison's drafts for it, his handwritten outlines of speeches upon the Bill of Rights, and discussions of the second amendment by early scholars who were personal friends of Madison, Jefferson, and Washington while these still lived. What the Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear — and long lost — proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms. The summary of our research and findings form the first portion of this report.
...
Both as an American citizen and as a United States Senator I repudiate this view. I likewise repudiate the approach of those who believe to solve American problems you simply become something other than American. To my mind, the uniqueness of our free institutions, the fact that an American citizen can boast freedoms unknown in any other land, is all the more reason to resist any erosion of our individual rights. When our ancestors forged a land "conceived in liberty", they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against governmental interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.
Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman
Subcommittee on the Constitution
January 20, 1982
PermaLink / Posted by: Tony
