This Just In – Our founders amended the Constitution, their masterpiece, with ten amendments that we commonly refer to as our bill of rights. They made decisions about placement and emphasis. Across many generations, we’ve known that the first amendment is first for a reason – without it, we don’t really have the other nine.
Our freedom of religion means that the government is prohibited from establishing a national religion. Our freedom of speech and the press means that we are not subject to government-only news. Not yet. The freedoms established in the first amendment are heavily armored with what the government is prohibited from doing.
As I studied journalism on the Chapel Hill campus 30 years ago, my deep affection and respect for the first amendment only grew. The more I understood its importance in protecting our freedom as a country, the more I appreciated that loving 1A and loving America was a complicated thing, because if you’re going to be devoted to free speech, you MUST defend extremely offensive speech and the speakers who use it to provoke, to enrage, to exploit and arguably to poison the thinking of young, vulnerable people. The remedy for offensive speech is more speech.
I held this in my mind as I walked by the pit on campus en route to the bookstore or the undergrad library and listened to the withering blast of hot air coming from some of the speakers there. I was destined to burn in hell if I didn’t submit to a man or if I thought about having an abortion. As a young mother at the time, I had a strong urge to tell some of these guys they needed a time out, but it became an exercise of personal discipline and commitment to have such a routine, compelling example of what 1A is really about.
If you’re going to love the first amendment, and I do, you have to say today that the brutal, sniper killing of Charlie Kirk, a 31 year-old right-wing provocateur in Utah yesterday was a brutal assault on every American’s freedom of speech and assembly and is completely intolerable. Full stop.
The list of many similar episodes of political violence recently are also horrific, but this one stands out because of the indications that this was carried out by a person with a plan, with precise skills and a ready escape. Given the incompetence demonstrated in the FBI’s leadership right now, I have little confidence that this assassin will be caught.
My political expectations thus far have been unfortunately accurate. I expected that the president would quickly declare Kirk a martyr for his cause. Last night he did. I expected one-to-one comparisons with Martin Luther King, Jr. and that has, of course, happened. Strictly for his own political benefit, I expect this president to deliver a eulogy for Kirk. He’s announced that he will award the presidential medal of freedom to him, posthumously. He can be expected to brush aside all questions related to the unfolding Epstein coverup and declare that anyone asking is un-American and insensitive to a national tragedy.
He will do these things for as long as it works to drive the headlines away from the Epstein story. He strolled into a DC restaurant this week to demonstrate his (false) claim that he had eliminated crime in the district. That’s right … with a presidential entourage of security, just pop out to any eatery you like. Funny that he chose a place called “Joe’s …”
Several patrons chanted at him that he is “the Hitler of our time.” Trump ordered that they be required to leave the restaurant.
They have freedom of speech and they used it. The most powerful person in the world could only react by sending them out of the restaurant. If you’re old enough to remember the violence and uncertainty of the 1960s, the vibe right now is regrettably familiar. It’s not a movie I wanted to see again, but I hold on to 1A as the light that will guide us out of this dark episode. As long as we have it, we need to use it.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
