We Must Protect The First Amendment At All Costs vs. No Thanks, I’ll Just Take My Freedoms For Granted Until They Disappear

By Amanda Jacobson

POINT

We Must Protect The First Amendment At All Costs

Almost every day, the establishment seems to get it wrong trying to use Donald Trump's words to paint him as a dire threat to our democracy. What so many fail to see-and what his supporters have long understood-is that Trump is a showman. When he speaks at rallies, he's not telling us about his literal policy positions. More often than not, he's just trying to entertain.

Without accepting that simple fact, mainstream reporters and politicians will always risk looking hopelessly out of touch.

For instance, when Trump says he's going to be a dictator on day one of his term, what he's really doing is trying to trigger the left, pure and simple. When he tells a Fox News interviewer that he'll use the National Guard to persecute political opponents like Nancy Pelosi, he wants Democrats to throw a fit. Liberals who work themselves into a tizzy over it are just making his point for him.

There is still an incredible amount of pearl-clutching over how anyone could vote for Trump after everything he's said: How can so many still support a man who has called for shooting peaceful protesters in the legs? Don't these people realize the ugly history he invokes when he threatens to deport millions of immigrants for poisoning the blood of our country"? Can our precious democracy even survive a second Trump term?

Let's get real. Trump is a skillful politician who knows how to manipulate the media environment through shock and awe.

Of course, what a president says matters. But what Trump is telling us is largely symbolic. You would think that nearly a decade into the former president's political career, journalists would have learned that lesson.

By Todd Barnes

COUNTERPOINT

No Thanks, I'll Just Take My Freedoms For Granted Until They Disappear

Um, I'm not. Sorry if that makes me sound like a dick. I'm not against the First Amendment or anything. If someone said I could, like, erase the First Amendment right now, I'd say no" in two seconds. It's just that the First Amendment is not something I think about or intend to think about anytime in the future. I guess what I'm planning to do is just take my First Amendment freedoms for granted until they're gone.

Look, a busy person like me isn't going to spend a bunch of time in his day going to bat for the First Amendment, not when I can just act like it'll always be there until one day I'm proven disastrously wrong. For me, it's much more convenient to pretend that the First Amendment is untouchable and then discover way too late that its freedoms are fragile and can actually be stripped away from all of us. Possibly forever.

Yeah, I'll eventually learn the hard way. For now, though, I'm more than okay with fooling myself into believing I won't.

If you ask me what freedoms are contained in the First Amendment, I can give you speech, and I think religion's another? Maybe the right to choose lunch? I dunno. I can't tell you what the others are, or even how many there are, which is totally fine because I'm just waiting until they vanish to find out what they used to be. Makes sense, right?

Hey, if people want to protect the First Amendment, I'm not going to stop them. I hope they do a great job. And who knows? Maybe I'll check in on my rights from time to time. But if I'm being honest, I'm just going to kick back and assume all is well until it really, really isn't. I guess it won't matter what I do after that.

The post We Must Protect The First Amendment At All Costs vs. No Thanks, I'll Just Take My Freedoms For Granted Until They Disappear appeared first on The Onion.