First Amendment

"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 grievance."

Amazing that this had to be drafted. That we, as a people supposedly "united", couldn't grasp the fundamental aspects of freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. I mean, wasn't it this exact concept we were pursuing when we boarded a rat infested schooner to sail an angry ocean in search of a homeland that provided us vast opportunities to grow as a population and as individuals?? What went wrong?

My answer would be that the same thing went wrong in newfound America as it does virtually everywhere a people decide to roost, subsist and propogate themselves. Overcome with abundance and prosperity, our humility falls away and morphs into the self-important concerns of a species that considers itself the epitome, the penultimate evolutionary achievement. Forgetting we are only a miniscule blip on the radar of the universe and that our tiny little existence is merely a galactic experiment, we founder in our own arrogance and acidity.

A grim picture, no? And all of this in reaction to dusty thoughts at bedtime of censorship of my own blog. Regardless of how personal this journal is, I have chosen to make it a public venue and in that choice I acknowledge my responsibility not only to myself but to my fellow man to pick and choose which thoughts, opinions and observations I put down. Only in my most private of thoughts, writings, and conversations can I dissect the deepest issues and concerns of my life.

In essence, to respect my fellows' rights via auto-censorship - To love, to honor in deference to the well-being of others.

Damn! I wanna say what I wanna say!