Three Simple Lines

"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."

-- First Amendment, written by James Madison

It came up in news this week that a majority of Americans would like to rewrite the First Amendment.  They aren't exactly clear on how it'd be worded, or if it could be contained on four lines.  They just seem to think that you need more control, than you need rights.

What I always admired about James Madison and the three lines is the compact nature, blunt wording, and limited focus.

In those days leading up to the 1780s....you had no television....no radio.....no internet, and very limited news via regional newspapers.  So after you'd eaten for the evening....you likely sat on a front porch or by a fire....with someone who'd dropped by and engaged in a two-hour conversation.  A beer or whiskey was shared, and deep thoughts exchanged.

These conversations were way beyond anything that we'd talk about today.  You would talk about the thrill of religion, or the sermon from last weekend, and then you'd dwell on the aspects of freedoms around religion.

Then you might pick up the topic of newspapers, and how they were careful to say things but often picked on simple things like some horse-buggy going into a river, or barn-fire.

Conversations went on and on, and you would dig deep into the crust of  what was free and what ought to be prohibited.

Imagine over an entire decade....five-hundred of these conversations with like-minded people.  So when someone stepped up to your porch and asked for the basic freedoms to write into the Constitution.....you knew the compact solution and it was not that hard to write.

Today?  If you gathered forty people and asked for prohibitions, limits, curbs, 'fences', liberties or rights....this could get complicated.

You could end up on day ten of this exercise with 3,000 lines, instead of four.

You might go and create a truth-seeker under a congressional mandate who dictates what is truth, and what is not truth.

You might go and suggest a license for 'press' must exist, and that only the federal government, not the state government....could manage such a thing.

By day thirty of the exercise, some of the forty people assembling the new 'rights' would come to realize that you can't have a 3,000 line first amendment, and you start to chop on this.

By day sixty, you wake up as the key member of the forty 'writers'....to realize that you are now back down to just five or six lines, and almost identical to the original words of Madison.

What made America different from almost every nation that existed at the beginning?  It was rights written into the First Amendment....not limits.