Why We Have the First Amendment

The First Amendment is arguably the most important addition to the Bill of Rights as it set the United States apart from the rest of the world's governments at the time. It gave its citizens freedoms from being tied to religions, petitioning the government, to publish their thoughts without censorship, and most importantly, freedom of speech. Freedom of speech allows for the expression of most any ideas people may have, without fear of punishment or censorship from the government. While there is speech that is frowned upon by our society it is just as necessary as acceptable speech and should be protected equally.

A country that allows all speech to be heard it allows for society to grow and learn from its mistakes and what is and isn't socially acceptable, the First Amendment is very key in "Promoting Tolerance" with this. This is a very difficult concept for many to understand in today's society, especially on social media. We see celebrities being canceled by society for what they have said in the past that are not acceptable in today's standards of speech and things they have said today that are not looked on with a positive light. Cancel culture is a very extreme way of trying to teach society what is acceptable, but in its basic format it's exactly how society should operate and learn. 

 

In 2020, author J.K. Rowling tweeted multiple tweets about her view on the trans community, and was met with instant backlash and continued ridicule for comments she has not yet relented on. When this occurred, people used this opportunity to teach the masses in order to help the wider society better understand the trans community and what people might not have known. This is a rare example of cancel culture achieving this goal of helping society understand what the norms of our acceptable speech have become. Rowling's original tweets have not been taken down as they are protected, because Twitter is an American company, and it serves as a reminder of what unacceptable speech is today. But in most cases, cancel culture does not work like this or teach our society new ways to act. As we saw in 2018, when actor/comedian Kevin Hart was chosen to host the Oscars, old tweets of his resurfaced of him using homophobic language. These tweets were from 2009 to 2011, and Hart has since apologized for his tweets many times, but this is not the way we should use hateful speech to grow into a better society. Hart tweeted these things in a time where it wasn't great to say what he did, but it wasn't damning for people to say this like it is today. We as a society know what he tweeted is not socially acceptable today, but we can't learn and grow our understanding of acceptable speech by applying today's standards to yesterday's society. We need to allow speech we don't agree with to be heard in order to know what is socially acceptable.

The First Amendment not only protects the speech deemed socially acceptable by the general public, but also to "Protect Dissent". That's why there are so many political Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, YouTube channels, and websites that are considered very outlandish and conspiratorial, but are allowed to exist because it falls under the protection of free speech. While these opinions are not a part of the majority in most cases they are allowed because our government's power rests in the "consent of the governed". The government only has power because its people allow it and recognize its legitimacy. The people are almost encouraged to voice their opinions on the government to allow it to better govern in a way that benefits all. In addition to speech criticizing the government being protected, the same goes for speech against other people or groups. Anyone can publicly disagree with an organization/person for valid reasons and be protected by the First Amendment. For example, Tucker Carlson can disagree with the majority opinion on intervening in Ukraine with valid reasoning and not face serious consequences because of the First Amendment. We need to allow people to voice opinions that are against the majority because we cannot live in a society only seeing one side of each story.