Ad Infinitum I am nothing but a patient man.

Reflections on Amendment 1

In a spirit of solidarity with the burgeoning political process happening throughout our fair country, (which I am never compelled to call 'America,') I plan to write reflections about each of the amendments with some thoughts as to how current events relate. What pray-tell do  I call our country? When we lived overseas, with other Americans, we referred to our fine land simply as 'the States' as in, United States. The nice and pithy moniker, USA comes to mind. I guess I'm just tired of hearing political candidates lump everything is as 'America.' That name belies our composition and make up as unique and autonomous states. Does it seem ironic to anyone else that candidates who call for small government use a name which inherently implies a strong, heavy central authority? On to Amendment 1.

There's a lot going on there. I won't even pretend to know anything about the evolution those words have taken through various interpretations by the Supreme Court. I will however look at each line here and offer some thoughts as they relate to current events. Do you think they lumped all these together because they are the most important and they wanted to make sure these got through? Just a thought.

--Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof;--
Do these two items seem to contradict each other to anyone? To me they essentially boil down to this: Congress can't establish a national religion and Congress can't interfere with the free exercise of religion. I guess they don't contradict each other but we look at how 'Separation of Church and State' gets construed it would seem that Congress does in fact make laws that impact the free exercise of religion. School prayer, anyone? Either way, this line does not say that Church and State must be separated, it simply says the State can't have an official church and that the state can't keep anyone from worshiping how they want to. Hence, Congress itself has a chaplain and begins each day with a prayer. If one is religiously inclined it may be worth while to encourage congress to pray a little harder. Just sayin'.

--or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;--
Congress can't keep us from speaking freely...and they can't suppress the press, no matter how much they want to...

--or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.--
Okay, so people have to be allowed to protest peacefully and to call on the Government to step in when things go wrong.

Contextually, I think we all know about free speech and the free press. I think we tend to read more into the religion clauses than are really there. As for peaceful assembly, it would seem that there is a lot of latitude in that interpretation. If there are any Occupy Wall Street people out there I would love to hear your perspective.