The above quotation comes forth from the father of our Constitution, and the fourth President of the United States of America, James Madison. One suspects that most people are not only completely unfamiliar of this quotation from the papers of James Madison, but are also confused or befuddled by what it is saying, since most people as a matter of course, do not see opinions as property. However, if are not able to freely communicate your opinions in public, subject only to basic sensible restrictions regarding credible violent threats, extortion, defamation, and other things of this ilk, than your freedom of opinion, has been truncated, and thereby your conscience has been violated, and when a man's conscience is no longer his own or has been restricted by governmental agents or other institutions, than your freedom has been compromised.
A vibrant society is a society that isn't necessarily comfortable for all people all of the time, because everyone is actually entitled inalienably to their own opinions, their own goals, their own desires, and so forth, so that, in an ideal world, government's position on this type of interplay is a position of hands off, unless one's opinions become actions that are actually crimes against another individual or the state; in the vast majority of situations, though, for most opinions, whether elegant or hateful, all should be allowed in the marketplace of ideas.
When, instead, some given person, some given court, some given institution, or some given government, determines that they are the absolute arbiters of what is or isn't allowed to be spoken, or what is or isn't allowed to be written, or what is or isn't allowed to be thought, than freedom, and in particular that property which is specifically your opinion is no longer free but restrained and thereby imprisoned.
In point of fact, governments are instituted amongst the consent of the governed, specifically to protect and to uphold impartially the property rights of the individual, of which, your opinions, your thoughts, and your speech, are your own property and should never be violated, without proper due process of law.
Too many present day policies are policies that impinge upon the rights of the people to simply express themselves, so as to thereby narrow viewpoints expressed more and more in the public square, to a place in which a restriction has been made that the only legitimate opinions that people are permitted to have are ones that are in lockstep with the current flavor of the day, and thereby all other opinions are therefore illegitimate and not permitted. This type of thinking, especially when backed by dubious laws, rules, and regulations, is not only unconstitutional but an illegitimate taking of the property of all people which have been precluded from expressing their opinion in an open and free manner.
In an dictatorial society, first they take away all of your physical property so that you own nothing in your own name, than they control and monitor all of your expressed ideas and actions to conform to state control, and finally, through the diabolical usage of today's and tomorrow's technology, the very last piece is put into place, which is that even your unexpressed thoughts and opinions which are not state sanctified are eradicated, making you effectively just one more cog in the machine.