Steven den Beste once wrote, of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, that "it is, in my opinion, the single most important sentence ever written in the English language": "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."
I used to think that this was something of a grab bag, with a bunch of different things all thrown together that were only distantly related. I now know different. This is all of a piece. Every part of it serves the single purpose of sanctifying freedom of thought.
The prohibition of establishment of a religion is there because a state-mandated religion could potentially try to use the power of law to enforce its own religious orthodoxy even on unbelievers, as has happened many times in many other places, and thus preventing those unbelievers from making their own decisions. The "free exercise" clause helps by stating that each of us gets to make our own decision in this regard; otherwise the government could effectively enforce orthodoxy by outlawing everything else.
Freedom of speech and the press are obviously important, but there are two sides to each. We generally think of freedom of speech as the right to say what we want, but it also means that we have the right to listen to what we want. Equally, freedom of the press gives us the right to read what we want. What these do is to guarantee to us the widest possible access to information on as many topics as possible, since you can't hear what isn't spoken nor read what has never been printed.
And the right of free assembly gives us the right to meet with others who agree with us, and the right of petition means we can try to actively promote our beliefs and try to influence how government acts.
This is the fundamental philosophy behind our entire system in the US: the belief that our government will serve us best if we as citizens have full access to information, unrestricted right to form opinions about what we learn, and full ability to communicate what we've concluded to others and to try to influence our government. Nothing remotely like this had ever been tried before.
It bears repeating: "This is the fundamental philosophy behind our entire system in the US."
Maybe you've run across the work of someone whose mere byline will cause you to immediately read what he's written, regardless of its title or subject matter. For me, these guys include—among a very few others—Mark Steyn, Richard Fernandez, Victor Davis Hanson, Christopher Hitchens (doesn't mean I agree with him, necessarily), Charles Krauthammer (or him), and Thomas Sowell. Ever since I watched this interview on Uncommon Knowledge, Andrew Klavan has been among them. He's an original thinker, with a discerning wit (early in the Uncommon Knowledge interview, when explaining why he chose a certain character for his protagonist in a novel, he says, "The whole thing about building a story like this, is, 'what character do you put in the story to make it come to life?' If you...if you put Othello in 'Hamlet', the play is over in two minutes—if you put Hamlet in 'Othello' the play never ends.").
If you'd like to hear more from this entertaining and thought-provoking character, here he is doing a stand-up analysis of a persistent and intensifying threat to the fundamental philosophy behind our entire system in the US:
The United States is strong enough to recover from almost anything—except the loss of our freedom of thought. Think about it.
(Hat tip: Slublog.)
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