The First Amendment And It's Importance - Ryan Maloney
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The First Amendment of the United States Constitution declares: 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. Meaning, we have the right of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom to assemble and freedom to petition. The First Amendment is a huge portion of our country and very important to each of our individual lives in how it affects each one of us. If we did not have an amendment protecting these five things you would not be reading this right now, because I would not have had the right to express my opinions through this writing. The First Amendment matters to me because it gives me the ability to express who I am and what I stand for, because I have the freedom of speech, religion, press, assemble and petition. Having freedom of speech, I am able to state my perspective with opinions. It is my right to say and express how I feel. In my blog that I did, ”Better Safe Than Sorry”, I wrote; “government should have the right to investigate to the fullest extent of any suspicious person and their activities…” I was able to use my freedom of speech to write about how I felt about the prompt and why. Having the ability of freedom of religion I am able to worship any god I want. I won’t be forced to worship one specific god and don’t have to worry about being executed, because I am a Christian. This moves into having the freedom to assemble. I have the right to assemble at church to worship with others. It doesn’t even have to be a religious matter in order to assemble. It could be any sort of group, private, or public with religion, political matters or any social purposes. Having the ability to have the freedom of the press, I can establish information. The government does not have the right to control what information is put online, TV, newspapers and any other information source. In a blog that I did, “Obama Limiting Military Voting Rights”, I wrote;President Obama should not be trying to limit the men and women that are fighting for our country in voting, he should be for the rights giving them every opportunity to be able to vote. Through the information about Obama and limiting the voting rights, I was able to use my freedom of press to gather information and form my own opinion. Lastly I have the right to petition. This means I can petition for anything I feel should change, or stay the same. The public can ask for changes whether it be a change in the government, state, etc. Through this, I have the ability to exercise my free rights of what I stand for. When we first started the semester on the First Amendment, I would only have been able to tell you that it had something to do with free speech. I didn’t know it included religion, press, assemble and petition. Over the last seven weeks I have come a long way from what little I knew before. I was unaware that the First Amendment had so much more detail. Through going more in depth with the First Amendment I learned that not all free speech is protected under the First Amendment. Such as, Clear and Present Danger, which associates with harms brought that the government has the right to prevent. Fighting words, or words that are likely to cause a breach of the peace, which is hateful speech. Libel and slander, that deals with the intention to ruin the reputation of a person and, or an organization. Obscenity, which deals with indecent sexual conduct, work that is an unhealthy interest, or if it is seriously missing any significance out of anything historical, artistic, political, or scientific. Lastly, the conflict with other legitimate social or governmental interests, which would be a reason to limit the First Amendment rights, because of conflicts dealing with national security. Through the last seven weeks I have learned that the First Amendment impacts a lot more detail than just freedom of speech and even having the right of free speech, because there are still cases of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment. |