 Freedom of speech, of course, comes immediately to mind. Then there is the other one, and the one after that, and then those other two… maybe the right to free home food delivery during the college playoffs? If you cannot remember them all, you’ve got lots of company. Consider Justice Amy Coney Barrett. On the high bench for four years, she has already made her mark as an incisive and independent thinker on the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet Barrett could only name four of the rights protected under the First Amendment while under the pressure of her nomination testimony. When asked to enumerate them by then-Sen. Ben Sasse, Barrett got a puzzled look on her face and asked, “What else am I missing?” Of course, this this was just a momentary lapse on the part of someone whose early career included clerking for Justice Antonin Scalia. Four out of five is for most people a pretty good score. The Annenberg Public Policy Center performed a survey in September that revealed that only one-third of Americans could name a majority of three of the five rights. Only 7 percent could name all five. So what are the five specific rights guaranteed under the First Amendment? And what are the percentages of Americans in Annenberg’s poll who got them right?
In her hearing, which one did then-Judge Barrett suffer a temporary memory lapse about? The last one, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Annenberg’s poll also shows that less than two-thirds of Americans can name all three branches of government. These are, of course, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. No wait, Moe, Larry, and Curly? The good, the bad, and the ugly maybe? Thank goodness for Wikipedia. Even better, let’s restore a solid civics education to American high schools. If virtually every American child can learn all the cartoon characters on Bluey, we can instill the basics of our constitutional order. Comments are closed.
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