More Than Half of Americans Think the First Amendment Provides Too Many Rights, screamed a recent headline in a Reason article. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) conducted the survey. Emma Camp Reports:
"Evidently, one out of every two Americans wishes they had fewer civil liberties," Sean Stevens, FIRE's chief research adviser, said on Thursday. "Many of them reject the right to assemble, to have a free press, and to petition the government. This is a dictator's fantasy."
This is scary. But the survey also indicates that many people don’t fully understand the First Amendment.
This latest survey indicates that many Americans are concerned about the security of free speech rights, yet also eager to censor speech they personally find distasteful.
I expressed my sentiments about my place on the American political spectrum in My FB Post
"This is a dictator's fantasy." -- Sean Stevens, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
I have always thought of myself as an American—not in the shallow sense of having won the "birth lottery," but in the deep, universal philosophical sense—a Founding American, a man of The Enlightenment; of the Declaration of Independence; of the U.S. Constitution. I have also suspected that I am in the minority in this country. This poll confirms how right I am. Today, I am in the political wilderness, not Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, Left or Right. Looking at the political landscape today, I see what's missing from the American political spectrum, however it is measured—a place for AMERICANISM. (If you think I’m exaggerating, consider how the question is worded. The Constitution doesn’t “provide” our rights. It recognizes and protects them.)
Yet, that's my place. I am in a shrinking minority. My only question is, Am I among the last of a dying breed, or one of the first of their return? Let's hope for the latter. If not—well, I'm an atheist, but I'll say it anyway—May God Help Us!
Related Reading:
Contra Mark Levin, Americanism Rests on Reason, Not Faith
A New Textbook of Americanism — edited by Jonathan Hoenig
On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence
America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson.
The Collectivist Left Appropriates an Inhumane Christian Doctrine to Obliterate Americanism
1 comment:
Waal!, I'll just go 'head 'n' cite Ayn Rand on this. She said the human spirit can never be extinguished, and I agree, at least as long as there are Homo-sapiens. As long as there are Homo-sapiens there will be this thing we call the faculty of volition.
So, there will always be some dodo bird who'll want to be free, will discover what it actually is, and that he still wants it. He will figger out what it's good for (his life and for everybody else's life) and what it requires in his dealings with others.
The concepts of rights, morality, law and legality, justice and government are already contained and implied in all this and will, thus, be in his head at that point whether he knows it or not. He will figger it out in time and start taking action.
By that time, he will be an American even if he's the only one. He will bring others to the point where they'll see it and accept or reject it. Some will accept, and that's enough. It'll be a new New World for them.
If being an American is a dying breed and gets dead but there are still Homo-sapiens around, it'll come back, something like described above. This is fact, not a fiction tale or fantasy.
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