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.
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