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Essay on The First Amendment

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The First Amendment

America was built on freedom. Freedom to speak, freedom to choose, freedom to worship, and freedom to do just about anything you want within the law. America’s law was designed to protect and preserve these freedoms. The reason the United States of America came to exist was because the colonists fled Great Britain to get back the freedoms that were taken away from them by the Monarchy. In countries where Monarchies and Dictatorships rule, there is little if any freedom to speak of. Citizens of these countries are persecuted or even killed if they attempt to exercise any of the basic freedoms. In these countries there is no free speech, no right to choose government, no right to express religion, no right to own …show more content…

Even in the early stages of American history there was an urge to put legally protected freedoms into written government documents. The result was the drafting of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, by James Madison. The applications of the personal freedoms described in the Bill of Rights, particularly the freedom of speech, have been challenged repeatedly in American courts of law and elsewhere. These incidents and challenges of authority reflect the defensive American attitude toward the ever-important freedom of expression and the growing significance of personal rights throughout American history.

Without this amendment, women would have never had a voice in political issues. Dr. Martin Luther King would have never made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech that influenced millions. The press would have never been allowed to cover the “private affairs” of president Bill Clinton. The American citizens would never be allowed to protest, picket, rally, or make any attempt to influence the government. The framers of the Constitution were aware of consequences like these, and, in making an effort to preserve the freedom that America had fought so hard to obtain, added this and many other amendments to the Constitution.

In American tradition, the value of the individual, and individual opinion, is held in high esteem. Free expression is the means by which consensus is reached and central authority is balanced. In this democracy,

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