Camus Excerpt

“James Madison, the author of the First Amendment, foresaw this exact situation of a government that ignores laws. In fact, and I didn’t know this until I had to research the speech, he was originally opposed to the Bill of Rights because he didn’t think paper guarantees could stop a corrupt government. So he thought bigger. He put together a document that was designed to inspire a certain personality type that would resist efforts to undo the experiment. And here a very important quality came play. James Madison was a great writer. The 44 words of the First Amendment were composed with extraordinary subtlety. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech and here’s the alliterative part, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. What was he saying? The First Amendment didn’t confer rights to the people, it didn’t entrust government with guaranteeing them. Instead, the founders stood to the side the way an old country recognizes a new country, and they simply acknowledged an eternal truth, the freedom of the human mind. And this is what censors never understand, speech is free. Trying to stop it is like trying to catch butterflies with a hammer or stop a flood with a teaspoon. Choose your metaphor, but it’s a fool’s errand. You can apply as many rules as you want. You can threaten punishment. You can lock people up. The human mind always sets its own course, even in spite of itself. The poet William Ernest Henley explained about a century after the Constitution was written, he said, remember, it matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”