My favorite freedom

Amendment I

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.

Still in a mood to celebrate July 4th, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate my favorite freedom guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States. The Bill of Rights is a list of 10 amendments to the constitution that specifically list rights that Americans citizens are guaranteed.

I have a friend who's Austrian who told me that every single Austrian paycheck has a deduction for the Catholic church and that citizens do not have a choice in the matter. This would be unthinkable in America. Christian culture predominates in America (not always graciously) simply because that's the majority, but I have met Agnostic, Atheist, Bahai, Buddhists, Confucian, Hindi, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, and Wiccan people about town. I don't know any Janists or Zoroastrians but, who knows, my circle of friends may be too narrow.

A fun way I experience other cultures is to visit and worship in other people's churches. My very favorite places to go are African-American churches because the music and the clothes and the joy are fantastic. Next would be Catholic Churches that are drop-dead gorgeous where passionate believers are engaging in all of their favorite rituals.

My own church is Congregationalist, which is very, very American, because it is governed from the bottom up. Barack Obama, until he parted ways with his minister, was a Congregationalist. Besides that grass-roots lack of hierarchy, what I fell in love with was the music (gorgeous, traditional hymns) and the strong sense of progressive social justice that runs throughout the history of my denomination.

But anyway, freedom from state religion is not my favorite American freedom. I got sidetracked. My favorite freedom is the freedom of speech and press. I think the healthiest measure of a democracy is the ability to say "the emperor has no clothes."

When bad ideas are allowed to hit the air, they can be quickly rejected. I was reading a book the other day about a culture that is known for people saying one thing and doing another. Why won't they say what they actually believe? Because political correctness is so powerful, that to say out loud what you actually believe, is unacceptable. There must be no correlation between speech and actions. Talk about a way for kids to become confused and believe lies. How does a culture move forward, grow, and be flexible if ideas can't be talked about?

A big part of free speech that is hard to live with is speech that is tasteless, irresponsible, and/or hateful. But hateful speech spoken out loud, in freedom, can be countered. Hateful speech, whispered, can not.

I've had a couple instances in my life where I had the opportunity to stand up and defend free speech. One time, when I was serving on my local library board, Madonna published her book "Sex." Fundamentalist Christians showed up at our board meeting demanding we remove the book from the public library. If we caved into their very emotional and vocal demands we would have been violating our own standards of selection. Our originally adopted selection policy required purchasing every single title that was on the New York Times bestsellers list. Madonna was #1 on that list. I made the motion to stick by our policy. I believe it passed unanimously.

Most of the time, I feel lonely in my appreciation of this freedom. Not very many Americans seem rabidly passionate about it. The erosion of civil liberties that is taking place in my country does seem, frankly, un-American.

For example, reading that our Guantanamo interrogation techniques had been borrowed from Chinese communist torture techniques seemed 100% plausible because it's so alien to our values. It all seems so insane. This isn't the way Americans do things! Which brings us back to the question: why then, ARE WE DOING IT? And I ask that with the greatest respect and appreciation for the mission of the people who keep us safe.

Until the present administration came into power, I never once thought about "does the Constitution apply to everyone who is physically present in the geographical boundaries of America or just the citizens? Does it still apply to American citizens when they go overseas? Does it apply to the way we expect our government to behave outside of our geographical boundaries to non-citizens?