Amendment I

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."

This amendment establishes rights of American citizens that the British settlers didn’t have in Great Britain. It protects the people from having a national church that they have to belong to; it also protects the people from not being able speak freely, practice their chosen religion, and peacefully protest and petition the government.

I believe this amendment is fundamental to the identity of our country because it is in the forefront of things that define our country. We are known as the ‘Land of the Free’ and this is a major reason why. We have rights in this amendment that many countries do not have. He can state that we don’t agree with laws or the government and we can even petition laws to be passed without fear of retaliation from our government.

I chose this video because it is an example of the freedom of speech we, as Americans have. If our nation had an established religion you couldn't speak out against, then this video wouldn't be possible or this man would be prosecuted. In countries like Germany a lot of material is censored and people have to create blogs through US internet because they are not allowed to talk openly about their support of racism or hate.

 This video was created in response to the video, "Google: What Does Free Expression Mean to You?" This video claims that Google/YouTube participates in censoring and deleting material, blocking websites, and restricting citizens' use of internet. I wanted to display this video to show that in countries such as China, freedom of speech and of the press is not heard of. Websites are blocked by the government. In order to keep the revenue from China, Google works with China's government to block certain sites, often result in error messages and down servers. I think this is a perfect example of how the internet would be in America if there was no First Amendment.  However, I do feel that the American Government does not tell its citizens all that they need to know(i.e. the government led many to believe we were at war searching for weapons of mass destruction, only to find there were none...other that what WE sold to Sadaam).