APR 15 - 30, 2003

VOL. 1 ISSUE 1

The History of the 1^st Amendment

by

Professor R. E. Vision, Jr.

Associate Dean, School of Social Sciences at Bob Jones University

While many debates regarding the first amendment question just how much freedom of speech is supposed to be guaranteed by it, there is a more central point that is usually ignored – and which renders the whole discussion irrelevant.

Most of us have been taught that freedom of speech was something thought up by our founding fathers and put in the Constitution as the 1^st Amendment.

The reality is that the first ten amendments, which people love to quote when asserting their right to do this or that, were not put in the constitution by our forefathers, and never have, in anyway, been applied in law to mean people are free to do what they want to do.

The Bill of Rights, as these Constitutional fleas are often dubbed, are not and have never been an actual part of the Constitution.  Our forefathers created the great document that governs our nation explicitly without any guarantee of free this or that.

However, one pesky little colonial, who happened to be in France at the time the Constitution was made up, said he refused to accept the constitution unless these ten little boils were attached to its buttocks.  This man, who was a reputed atheist, derided such fine institutions as tithing by churches, wore his hair long like a hippie, snorted snuff, smoked hemp, and in general, acted in ways that were divisive and detrimental to a stable, prosperous society.

For these reasons, shortly after the Constitution was passed (having allowed these 10 moles to exist on the Constitution’s otherwise flawlessly white skin for the sake of political expediency), laws were passed to undo the ridiculous damage these 10 amendments, the 1^st of these in particular, would create.

During just the second presidency of this country, Alexander Hamilton was smart enough to pass the Alien and Sedition acts, in effect, eliminating any semblance of free speech.  In particular, these two laws took away the right of the long-haired atheist who came up with this “Bill of Rights” to say the sorts of things he was known to say.

It was easy for Hamilton to get these acts passed.  He simply whipped the nation into a French-hating frenzy, asserting that three spies, who – I laugh ‘til this day – he never even bothered to make up names for, just calling them X, Y, and Z, had come from France to gather intelligence that would be used to attack our country.  The whole spectacle is known as the, “X, Y, Z Affair,” by us historians.

X, Y, and Z.  How silly, you may think.  And yes, today a president would likely choose to demonize the names of actual people.  But back then people were slower to turn on someone without evidence, especially the French who had aided us greatly in the recent Revolutionary War, helping us to gain our independence in the first place.

So, Hamilton gave them nameless, faceless evil.  And it worked wonderfully.  The people backed the Alien and Sedition acts fervently, the long-haired atheist lost his right to speak his political views, and all was well in the country.

As you can see, no part of the Constitution ever intended to preserve even political freedom of speech.  No, my dear readers, we are only free in this, God’s country, to say and do moral things.  It has always been that way in America, and hopefully always will be.

Well, except for the brief period when that long-haired hippie, atheist, hemp-smoking, socially divisive, church-hating scum ran the country, having run for President for the sake of repealing the Alien and Sedition acts.  He won, alright, was the third president this nation ever had.

But we’ve manage to fix things since then.  And the rest is, as one would say, history.