This is a monthly series throughout 2026, the Semiquincentennial year. You can see the other parts here:
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January: The Declaration
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February: Preamble to the Constitution
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March: Article I: Lawmaking
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April: Article II: Executive Branch
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May: Article III: Judicial Branch
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June: Bill of Rights
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July: Happy Birthday, America!
In our discussion of rights, back in June, we talked about
what is a right, so we can recognize what we’re dealing with. Because a lot of
Americans have been confused about that for a century or so.
And we covered a bit of history related to the Bill of
Rights, and how we got those first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.
Then we talked about the first of the five rights in the
First Amendment: the right to freedom of religion.
So that leaves the other four in that amendment, and a
number of others in the remaining Bill of Rights. We’ll see what we get through
today.
The other four rights in the First Amendment are:
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Freedom of speech.
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Freedom of the press.
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Freedom to peaceably assemble.
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Freedom to petition the government for redress
of grievances.
Last week we talked about the pandemic a bit—and a little bit of the 5th
Amendment (which was invoked 111 times by Fauci in that Senate hearing). And
it’s interesting to note that all of these First Amendment rights were abridged
during the pandemic.
The Constitution guarantees us that government will not
abridge these rights—and yet government did anyway.
Our discussions here are intended to inform us, so that we
don’t blissfully go along with whatever government officials say. Because
government is fire, and it needs to be carefully contained, or it gets out of
control and burns. In real terms, rather than metaphorical, government is full
of humans, many of whom are motivated by power and greed, and they work for
those motivators, rather than for the good of society. Some—maybe even the
worst—work for the power and money with the full conviction that they are doing
it for our own good, even when they’re doing it against our will.
So, about those guaranteed rights.
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