By Peter Van Buren

Here's the First Amendment of the US Constitution, in full: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Those beautiful words, almost haiku-like, are the sparse poetry of the American democratic experiment. The Founders purposely wrote the First Amendment to read broadly, and not like a snippet of tax code, to emphasize that it should encompass everything from shouted religious rantings to eloquent political criticism. Go ahead, re-read it aloud at this moment when the US government seems to be carving out an exception to it large enough to drive a tank through.

As the occupiers of New York City's Zuccotti Park, like those pepper-sprayed at the University of California Davis, or the Marine Corps veteran shot in Oakland, California, recently found out, the government's ability to limit free speech, to stopper the First Amendment, to undercut the right peaceably to assemble and petition for redress of grievances, is perhaps the most critical issue our republic can face.

If you were to write the history of the last decade in Washington, it might well be a story of how, issue by issue, the government freed itself from legal and constitutional bounds when it came to torture, the assassination of US citizens, the holding of prisoners without trial or access to a court of law, the illegal surveillance of American citizens, and so on.

in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Econom...