Alphecca

Edit the 1st Amendment

Most folks like myself think our Bill of Rights is almost more important than The Constitution because it actually enumerated the individual rights of the citizens of the new nation. Certainly, critics of The Consititution such as George Mason influenced James Madison to write the amendments that came to be known as the Bill of Rights.

Our founding fathers were wonderfully brief in their written creations (not so in the conventions that led up to them) but perhaps that brevity has resulted in much of the arguing and court interpretations that have hounded our rights ever since then.

This is the first of a series of posts that will give you the chance to straighten things out. How? Let's think of this as an exercise in "alternate universes" where you are a member of that first Congress held in New York City in March of 1789. And everyone speaks and writes as we do now.

Here is the original First Amendment:

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.

A couple rules apply however: All of the amendments are one sentence long (albeit some are rather long sentences). For the purposes of this series, I'll allow your entries to be TWO sentences long but you are confined to a maximum of 75 words (total for both); the original is only 45 words long. How would you have worded the First Amendment so that it couldn't be misinterpreted or could not have it's original meaning twisted by the courts? Would you add anything to it? Just tweak it for clarity?

You need to get the following points across including:
1) Freedom of or from religion.
2) What about the "seperation" of church and state often mentioned in modern court cases?
3) Freedom of speech and the press and all that it might cover.
4) In fact, what IS "speech" and "press"?
5) Freedom of protest.
6) What of any future government regulation of these ideas?

That's a lot to cover in just 75 words!

In this alternate universe you can pretend you are visionary and throw in clauses that might cover future developements in our society.

Let me give you an example or two. Someone on the far-right might word it:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or the prevention of the discussion of our Christian roots in our schools and government buildings; or abridging the freedom of non-obscene speech, or of the legitimate press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, as long as it and any variation of it is never mentioned in our classrooms, our public venues, or our government institutions; or abridging the freedom of speech in any possible form of any possible subject, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemble, hold violent protests, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

A note on comments: Blacklist is on so if your post gets bounced, look for words of a sexual, pharmaceutical or gambling nature as culprits. If you are still having trouble, just email your comment to me and I'll post it myself into the comments. Also, it is not necessary to use a real email address to post and nothing need be entered in URL.

Put your example at the top of your entry and then follow it with any comments you'd care to add.

I'd like to encourage readers from all sides of the political spectrum to participate. I'm not just looking for people who share my viewpoint. I would just ask that everyone respect each other's opinions. I'm not looking for flame wars although I certainly urge you to discuss each other's entries...

We'll confine this post to the First Amendment and immediately following it I'll have a post covering the Second Amendment.

Good Luck and have fun!