Speaking of the First Amendment: Why We’re Better Off with the Constitution We Have

​Steven Greenhut in Reason cautions those on the left and right who want to call a Constitutional convention to revamp our founding document that anyone “who has watched the moronic sausage-making in Congress and state legislatures should be wary of opening Pandora’s Box.”
 
Greenhut points to the United Kingdom to get a sense of where we’d be if the Bill of Rights were up for grabs. Every year, thousands of Britons are detained, questioned, and prosecuted for online posts. Greenhut recounts the story of a 74-year-old grandmother who was arrested by four police officers for holding a sign in proximity to a Glasgow abortion clinic reading, “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.’”
 
He writes that in contrast to the “Congress shall make no law” clarity of the First Amendment, the British speech code allows such quashing of speech to “protect national security,” “territorial integrity” “public safety,” “disorder or crime,” “health or morals,” etc., etc.
 
“A constitutional amendment stating, ‘no law’ is more protective than a statute with asterisks and exceptions,” Greenhut concludes. “With the political Left devoted to limiting speech based on its fixations on race and gender and the political Right's willingness to, say, deport students who take verboten positions on the war in Gaza and malign reporters as enemies of the people, I'd hate to see how speech protections would fare in a refashioned constitution. Traditionally, the Left has taken a ‘living and breathing’ approach, insisting its plain words and founders' intent are up for reinterpretation.
 
“Sadly, modern conservatives, who previously defended originalism, seem ready to ditch the Constitution when it hinders their policy aims.”
 
He quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis from a 1927 free-speech case, Whitney v. California, who noted that the founders, who had won a violent revolution, were not cowards who wanted order over liberty. The Justice wrote: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
 
Greenhut concluded: “We don't need to revisit the Constitution, but to uphold the protections already within it.”

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