TheSon of Sam? Law: The First Amendment Gone Gray.
The First Amendment is, perhaps, of all the constitutional rights that American's hold dear, the most precious in our hearts. The right that grants us freedom of speech was deliberately first on the list of new priorities, thus suggesting the founding fathers believed the freedom of expression deserved the foremost place in this innovative and radical Constitution. Simply stated, all Americans deserved to be heard. All Americans had something significant to share. All Americans no matter what color, creed, religion or gender would be granted to right to formulate opinions and assert their beliefs. It is essential for this enlightened nation to hear the opinions of all of her citizens. How else can we grow, learn, and mature as a free society without this basest of human needs?freedom of expression. .
Indeed, all Americans have and deserve that right granted to us in the First Amendment. But, as in all truly great and profound ideas, there exists the dreaded area where black and white mix, giving over to gray; where our deep-rooted beliefs tend to tangle with the bramble of human emotion. Do ALL Americans deserve to be heard? Did Americans Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy deserve such a right? What about Americans Charles Manson, Danny Rolling (the Gainesville murders), Ottis Toole (Adam Walsh), Angelo Buono (The Hillside Strangler), Albert De Salvo (The Boston Strangler), or Andrew Cunanan, the murderer of Gianni Versace? Do these Americans, and their families, not only deserved to be heard, but actually be allowed to profit from their words and heinous actions. According to the founding fathers, the First Amendment reached to all Americans?even to Susan Smith, the mother who so cruelly and methodically rolled her locked car into a South Carolina lake while her young sons slept in the back seat. The First Amendment was 100% available, laid out before murderers, rapists, child molesters, bank robbers, embezzlers, and the rest of society's evil.
