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To: SeekAndFind

The First Amendment is the FIRST amendment for a reason.

We have freedom of religion — no theocracy is possible.

Our opponents want Freedom FROM religion and they actively seek to stomp out Christianity. Not OK. They engage in projection (as always) and declare us to be Bad Guys and theocrats when the reality is that they are oppressive atheists who want to crush freedom.


3 posted on 11/07/2019 6:55:56 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Well said. Many seem to forget that the First Amendment, indeed all of the Bill of Rights, are restrictions on Government, not the people. So the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses restrict the Government from interfering in religion, but do NOT restrict the Church or Citizens from injecting religion into government. SCOTUS has not always seen it this way, of course, but they are wrong.


9 posted on 11/07/2019 7:27:22 AM PST by NCLaw441
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To: ClearCase_guy
The First Amendment is the FIRST amendment for a reason.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments are ninth and tenth for a reason, too.

Because if you stop and think about it - see the example of the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th - the most recent amendments have priority over the earlier ones.

I’m going to shock you: the First Amendment is overrated. It certainly was overrated by Justice William Brennen in his (unanimously decided) New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision.

Scalia argued his view on “textualism” was the ultimate defense of the First Amendment. In March 2012, an Associated Press report said he told an audience at Wesleyan University that the Court’s early justices would be “astonished that the notion of the Constitution changes to mean whatever each successive generation would like it to mean. … In fact, it would be not much use to have a First Amendment, for example, if the freedom of speech included only what some future generation wanted it to include. That would guarantee nothing at all.”

That opinion didn’t prevent Scalia from harsh criticism of what is widely viewed as one of the essential court rulings protecting free speech and a free press — the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

At the Newseum in the Aspen Institute 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, Scalia said the landmark ruling meant “you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether it’s true or not.

“Now the old libel law used to be (that) you’re responsible, you say something false that harms somebody’s reputation, we don’t care if it was told to you by nine bishops, you are liable,” Scalia said. “New York Times v. Sullivan just cast that aside because the Court thought in modern society, it’d be a good idea if the press could say a lot of stuff about public figures without having to worry. And that may be correct, that may be right, but if it was right it should have been adopted by the people. It should have been debated in the New York Legislature and the New York Legislature could have said, ‘Yes, we’re going to change our libel law.’”

But in Times v. Sullivan, Scalia said the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, “… simply decided, ‘Yes, it used to be that … George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we don’t think that’s a good idea anymore.’”

JUSTICE SCALIA: THE 45 WORDS — AND ORIGINAL MEANING — OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

I’d like to find the link to the video where Scalia expounded on the Bill of Rights in a most interesting and convincing way. Scalia noted that:

The Sullivan decision asserts that the First Amendment affects the right to sue for libel. The First Amendment, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, are structured to deny that claim.


16 posted on 11/07/2019 8:58:23 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (Socialism is cynicism directed towards society and - correspondingly - naivete towards government.)
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