Constitution Day has become an annual fixture each
Sept. 17 in the nation’s schools since it was mandated by Congress in 2004 —
and 2012 may well be the best year yet for understanding its history and
appreciating its meaning.
A few days ago, the nation took notice of the 11th
anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., and
the thwarted attack that ended in a Pennsylvania field. Make no mistake, the
terrorists’ ultimate target was more than our national buildings and monuments,
more than the thousands of innocents who died — it was our nation’s way of
life, its economic system as well as its laws and freedoms.
The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights — with its
First Amendment protections for freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly
and petition — were in the crosshairs of the cowards who commandeered airliners
as weapons and used twisted religious bravado as justification to attack the
United States and its way of life.
Eleven years later, there’s no question that
ultimate attack failed, miserably.
Not more than a day after the anniversary, a
perverted sense of righteousness in defense of faith — outrage over a cheap
propaganda movie intended to insult Islam’s greatest figure, Muhammad — sparked
extremist mobs to attack U.S. embassies in Libya and Egypt, and later to murder
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three security officers.
Within hours, the incidents and deaths had become
the latest flashpoint in a caustic presidential race. And the freedoms of
religion and speech were pitted against each other: Was it a misuse of free
speech to produce a film portraying Muhammad as a libertine and sexual deviant,
knowing it was likely to provoke violent reactions worldwide? Or was it simply
an exercise of religious and political speech that, though provocative to some,
falls well within the First Amendment’s protection for free expression?
But as bitter as the debate was in the United
States, and as widely as it raged, there were no deaths and no riots, no mass
arrests or government crisis as a result of criticism of either the Obama
administration or those who produced the film.
Why? The Constitution and Bill of Rights.
A system of laws in place for more than 220 years
guarantees the freedoms that are our nation’s safety valve for the release of
emotional pressures on red-hot issues; that restrict any attempt by government
officials to shape the debate or silence the debaters; that ensure the
“marketplace of ideas” isn’t overrun by those who would burn down the stalls of
those with whom they disagree.
Not long ago, that same Constitution and Bill of
Rights protected the tea party marchers and Occupy Wall Street protesters who
used freedom of speech and the rights of assembly and petition to challenge
government policies and public officials they opposed. In other nations,
arrests or brutal repression would have shut down both movements.
Even as we should marvel on Constitution Day over
what those two documents mean to our lives each day, we should be in awe of
what they mean for our future. The nation’s Founders drew up a legal roadmap
for how our government would operate — the Constitution — and the nation
adopted it only when it was accompanied by an equally strong guarantor of our
individual rights, each an amazing achievement. But the greatest quality, for
me, in both documents is the profound confidence those Founders put in
succeeding generations.
Government was not the ultimate ruler — that final
measure of power was reserved instead for the people. And if the people could
freely express their beliefs and ideas to seek change, peaceably, in government
… well, then the unique system of self-governance would work.
Under our Constitution, mutual respect is not
mandated by gunfire and terror. Changing hearts and minds — no matter how much
insult and anger are involved — is not a process of mob rule and murder. Riots
do not take the place of reason.
We have our resilient Constitution and Bill of
Rights to guide us in settling our disagreements and setting out our
aspirations. That’s worth celebrating — not just on Sept. 17, but every day of
the year.
About the author: Gene Policinski, senior vice president and executive
director of the First Amendment Center, is a veteran journalist whose career
has included work in newspapers, radio, television and online.
This article was published by the First
Amendment Center.
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