Most people are quite familiar with the First Amendment, which states in part that: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” Indeed, it would seem that the First Amendment provides us with the right to freedom of speech, but that would also seem to presuppose that without the First Amendment, there would be no right to freedom of speech, and quite frankly, that interpretation is flawed. It has to be remembered that the Constitution is a constitution of enumerated powers and nowhere in the Constitution including the Amendments to such, is there anything stipulating that the people are precluded from having freedom of speech. In other words, the Constitution as the governing document has specific enumerated powers and therefore is limited to those enumerated powers, and no more.
The fear of those debating the Constitution was that enumerated powers or not, the Federal government, might well aggrandize onto itself, more and more power, at the expense of the States and of the people, and therefore they argued successfully that the people needed to have a Bill of Rights, protecting them from this anticipated future infringement. The problem though with adding these rights for the people is that those very rights, meant for the benefit of the people, could eventually be circumscribed by the government to align with its own interpretation of what those rights, did or did not mean. So then, while there were powerful arguments on both sides in regard to the necessity of the Bill of Rights, those that wanted or insisted upon the Bill of Rights, won out, and thus the Amendments to the Constitution were made, though the powers that be were careful to see that the Ninth Amendment was also added which stated: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”, which one would think would therefore represent a failsafe for the people, that they would not be relinquishing any of their unalienable rights to that Federal government, ever.
Regrettably, when we fast forward to the present age, we recognize that in regards to the First Amendment, legislation has been passed that clearly restricts freedom of speech, for various reasons, of which, the upshot of those reasons, is that this is being done for the supposed benefit of the people, though when looked at with even a cursory glance, this would appear to be legislation passed or interpreted in favor of the federal government so that they can aggrandize onto itself more control of that speech, and therefore of what is or is not permitted by that government to be spoken, written, or expressed.
It has to be said, that despite the First Amendment, or perhaps because of it, the federal government seems to be in charge as to what is or what is not freedom of speech, and that this is ever-changing into the belief by the federal government, that our freedom of speech, needs to be monitored and restricted, for the good of society – somehow misunderstanding that freedom of speech, is in actuality that which the federal government has no legitimate right to infringe upon.