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.

It was on this day, September 25, in 1789 that Congress passed the Bill of Rights, adding 10 amendments to our Constitution, not the least of which was the First Amendment guaranteeing us the right to practice the religion of our choice, to speak freely, and much more.

I suppose it’s no accident that the anniversary of the Bill of Rights lands during Banned Books Week.

There isn’t much, not even Dawson’s Creek, that can rile me into a flushed-cheeked, incoherent passion quite like discussing the First Amendment and freedom of expression issues. My blood starts to race just thinking about it.

I had no idea this passion was in me until I took Gerald Conner’s media law class when I was a sophomore in college. I don’t think any class had as much of an impact on me as that one. It was in that class (and afterwards Conner’s “Freedom of Expression” class and Pete Meyer’s “Ideas of Tolerance in Western Political Thought”) that I discovered the very core beliefs that my whole value system is built around.

On that first day of class, Conner walked to front of the auditorium, put down his papers, turned to us and said, “Fuck the president.”

I think I might have gasped. He said ‘fuck’ right in class. Then he said it again. Fuck was the dirtiest of dirty words, according to my mom. The one word we could not utter in her presence, lest we get a disappointed mom lecture. And here he was, a college professor saying it right out loud in front of everybody.

It was exhilirating. The whole class was. It opened my eyes to the importance of the First Amendment, the responsibility that comes with being a reporter, and the ethical/moral gray area that surrounds so many of these issues.

I’ve always been a big proponent of J.S. Mill’s marketplace of free ideas. The one wherein he says that you put your truth out there to do battle in the marketplace of free ideas, and in the end the truth will win. It was really easy to be a proponent of that in the 90s when Bill Clinton was running the country and it seemed that happy days were here again.

Now I worry about the marketplace of free ideas. My faith in it has been shaken by the last five years as I watch this country that I love (yes, I love it and it goes against all my lefty, bleeding-heart liberalness to say it, but I still love it) devolve into this scared, intolerant, close-minded den of vipers. What’s happened to us?

Fuck the president. I blame him and his politcal machine for bringing us all into some sort of ideological dark age.

Fuck the president, indeed.

But I remain optimistic. I tell myself we’re in some sort of weird, culturally-conservative 50s retrograde time period and that soon, very soon we’ll have the political upheaval that marked the 60s. I can’t hardly wait.