Why liberals hate the First Amendment

Liberals are constantly telling the world how much they love the First Amendment. The reality is that Liberals hate the First Amendment with the same sort of fiery passion with which an evangelical hates the Devil.

The first reason liberals despise the First Amendment is that liberals hate truly free speech.  If you look at all of the cases which supposedly establish liberals support for free speech you’ll discover they’re all cases in which things liberals want to say were being obstructed.

Generally speaking liberals only invoke the First Amendment when trying to defend the publication of classified documents that could damage the US, such as the Pentagon Paper, revealing secret programs that help us win the war on terror, such as the NYT’s revelation of a secret program to monitor terrorists financial transactions, burning or otherwise desecrating the American flag, or pushing pornography into every aspect of modern life.

The problem is that saying that you should be able to say what you want is not support for freedom of speech.  Supporting freedom of speech means declaring that people who disagree with you should be allowed to speak.

In that area the liberal track record is pretty bad.  The same liberals who declare burning flags to be patriotic strongly support the FACE act which makes it illegal to peacefully offer a pamphlet to a women entering an abortion mill.  Similarly liberals who declare that it’s parents job to pay for software to filter out Internet porn declare that Fox News should be banished from the airwaves because Fox says things that liberals don’t like. Then there’s the whole Politically Correct speech movement that is unabashedly designed to silence voices liberals don’t agree with.

Back in the last millennia liberals would hold up their defense of Nazi’s who wanted to march in Skokie Illinois—a primarily Jewish neighborhood where a number of Holocaust survivors lived—as proof that they supported freedom of speech.  But that argument only holds if one assumes that liberals aren’t anti-semitic, not to the level of wanting to eradicate Jews but not too concerned if Holocaust survivors have to allow Nazi’s to march past their houses.  Yet the modern liberal movement seems to have no problem with the thought of Israel being wiped off the face of the Earth so maybe that’s why they no longer hold up the ACLU’s defense of Nazi’s as proof of liberal tolerance—though the ACLU still thinks it’s an accomplishment they should be proud of.

The liberals view of free speech is really more closely aligned with the concept embodied by the old Soviet newspaper Pravda—Truth—or Goekbbel’s than with what the Founders intended.  Liberals are all for being able to say whatever they want to but they don’t believe that people should have to endure “incorrect” statements from those who disagree with the liberal establishment. 

In a sense it’s amusing that the same liberals who constantly attack the Catholic Church for the Index Librorum Phohibitorum, books that the Church felt were so horribly wrong as to be bad for people to read, even though it was eliminated in 1966 are today in our bright new millennium calling for the censorship of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

The simple truth is that liberals abhor free speech; they only use the First Amendment to tear down social objections to things like pornography and treason.

Liberals distaste for the First Amendment does not end with their disdain for truly free speech.  Liberals also are very unenthused about what the First Amendment says about freedom of religion.

That’s understandable because in society religion is the only institution that, by its very nature, declares that there are limits on government power; the whole inalienable rights granted by our Creator thing.  To liberals who view the state as the be all and end all of life the right to practice one’s faith is a horrible error in that it limits the power government can wield.  Given that liberals view the state as the only entity that can lead men to the promised land obstructing it is a grave sin indeed.

As with freedom of speech liberals will claim that they respect freedom of worship. But of course the Constitution does not say that people are only free to worship; the Constitution says that the government cannot pass laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion.  People exercise their religion when they live their lives according to the tenants of their beliefs.  Worship is part of that but the Constitution is clear that the government cannot force people to go against their faith in how they live their lives—which is why the Quakers don’t have to be snipers.

Clearly if liberals actually liked what the Constitution says about freedom of religion they wouldn’t be hell bent on forcing people who think abortion is a grave moral evil to directly fund it through the HHS mandate.

If when faced with existential crises like the Civil War and WWII the country could grant conscientious objector status based on deeply held religious beliefs why can’t the country let those whose faith condemns abortion, sterilization, and artificial contraception not have to offer insurance policies that cover those things?  No one has ever died to a lack of abortifacient chemicals or birth control pills. Additionally no one is compelled to work for individuals or organizations whose beliefs show that those “services” are both evil and bad for people so if that sort of “health” coverage is a deal breaker folks can just work elsewhere.

Another area where liberal hatred of the religious aspects of the First Amendment is visible is liberal’s constant effort to drive religion out of the public square.  To liberals a copy of the Ten Commandments—which convey the basic morality on which American was founded—in a public building is a horrible thing. 

They attempt to say that their fanatical opposition to anything Christian in the public square is based on the Constitution but that’s clearly untrue. 

The First Amendment says

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

Even a casual study of history shows that the intent of the Framers was to avoid a situation that so many of the colonists had fled from in England; an official state religion.  The Framers knew that people couldn’t freely exercise their religion if there is one faith that is enshrined above all others; a lesson we’re relearning in this millennia with respect to Sharia law.

But even if one ignores everything that was happening when the Constitution was ratified the simple fact that it wasn’t until 1947 that anyone in America thought that the First Amendment contained a “wall of separation” between government and religion provides ample proof that the liberal view is based on a “living” Constitution not the law the rest of America follows.  For example in early America the government paid Priests to convert Native Americans and several states had official state religions; not really consistent with the modern liberal interpretation of the Constitution. 

The simple reality is that the liberal efforts to purge religion from government is based on the liberal desire to remove an obstacle to the unending expansion of government power which is so near and dear to liberal hearts.

Finally liberals actually also object to the Constitutions prohibition of the establishment of a state religion. That’s because liberals are working hard to establish their faith as the one and only one approved of by the government. 

Liberals are constantly working to ensure that their beliefs, ranging from same sex marriage to radical environmentalism, are enforced on all Americans through the full power of the Federal government.  In nature the liberal move to use the law to require all Americans to bend their knees to liberal beliefs, including by having to fund things many Americans find objectionable, is no different than what the Church of England did to Englishmen who disagreed with it in the old days.

Liberals object to the First Amendment for several reasons but the unifying theme is that the First Amendment limits liberal power and allows those who liberals disagree with to speak out; the simple reality is that liberals in America today are more opposed to true freedom than the state run Inquisitions that liberals so often condemn.