The following is an essay I wrote for my school's magazine, C-Town and which was published on the First Amendment Center's website as a guest editorial.
I believe in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. I believe that our Founders put the freedoms guaranteed by this amendment first for a reason, that these freedoms are the basic tenets of our society, and that without them America would cease to be. I believe that the pen is mightier not only than the sword, but than the tyrant who would wield said sword.
To borrow a phrase from Edward Murrow, we are not the descendents of fearful men. Our forefathers were not men who feared to write, to associate, or to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. The pamphlets of Thomas Paine inspired Colonial citizens to take up arms against the unfair rule of the Crown. Uncle Tom’s Cabin exposed Americans to the horrors of slavery. Upton Sinclair and the muckrakers would begin things like the worker’s rights movement and food inspection with their controversial words. Never allow anyone to tell you that words don’t possess power.
And today, as our country faces uncertain times, many would tell you that it is dangerous to use our First Amendment rights, that these freedoms are somehow less important in today’s society. On the contrary. Never are these rights more important than in a time of national crisis. I would not wish in any way to make it appear that I am belittling the problems we as a nation face. But no threat, however large, is worth losing the free expression of ideas. Without this ability, everything this country stands for would be a sham; everything our ancestors died for would be in vain. A society is only as free as its minds.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy once reminded us that concealment of necessary information far outweighed the dangers cited to justify said concealment. That “there is little value in opposing the threats of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions.” Surely those words are true today.
America has succeeded in the past — and will only continue to succeed in the future — not because our weapons were better or our spirit was stronger. It was because of our freedoms, it was because of our thoughts. That is the bottom line, that free speech may be inconvenient to some, but that this inconvenience doesn’t allow governments the right to censor. And, as long as we have this little inconvenient right, we need a press corps willing to tell us the problematic facts, the truths that some may not want to hear. We thrive collectively on unorthodoxy, eccentricity and dissent. And it shouldn’t be any other way.
