The First Amendment.
If you’re American, you likely learned about this in middle school. You read the following 45 words in all their grandeur, studying them in detail.
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 grievances.
Yes, I know. It’s about as riveting as a trip to the motor vehicle office. But the ideal behind these 45 words put a pep in our step.
They allow us to gather together and to have a say. They allow us to find strength in our voice, conviction in our beliefs and an audience in our midst.
Most of all, they allow us to tap into the power of discourse.
I owe my entire professional existence to the First Amendment. I started my career as a TV news journalist, with my rights etched in stone by those 45 words. Now, as a marketer, I facilitate discourse between buyers and sellers.
And I owe Words of the West to the First Amendment. There’s no way I would have been able to publish years of original thoughts without the license to speak freely.
Yes, the First Amendment is a timeless gift. One with the resilience to last through the centuries without losing its luster.
But recently, some warts have started to show.
In Back to The Future, Marty McFly travels back to 1955, thanks to a time-shifting DeLorean invented by the zany scientist Doc Brown.
If I had the keys to that DeLorean, I’d travel back to 1789. I’d head back to the year the first United States Congress stood in session.
This was the laboratory that yielded the first set of amendments to the U.S. Constitution — better known as the Bill of Rights. And front and center in the Bill of Rights is the First Amendment.
If I were to travel back to 1789, I would tell America’s early legislators that some 200 years later, an innovation would arise called the World Wide Web. And that innovation would help billions of people connect on something called the Internet.
I’d likely end up in the stockades for talking like this. After all, it wasn’t too long before this that settlers were burning young women at the stake, simply because someone accused them of being a witch.
But the risk would be worthwhile. For the Internet presents the greatest threat yet to the spirit of the First Amendment.
Free discourse has persevered throughout the generations. It survived a Civil War that left America reeling. It stayed afloat through a great financial depression and two global wars. And it provided the guiding light for the Civil Rights movement.
Even in the darkest moments, discourse tended to call to our better angels. While some truly terrible viewpoints have been shared throughout the years — such as hate speech and violent extremism — the balance of national discourse remained courteous and respectful.
I believe this prosperity of discourse had more to do with logistics than anything else.
In America’s earliest days, a message could only travel as far as the voice could carry. If someone spoke loudly to a gathered crowd, hundreds of people could hear it firsthand.
Members of the crowd could pass those words on to others further afield, but that secondary message would likely get diluted. Only those in the room where it happened got the unvarnished message.
This made it hard for radical discourse to spread. Harmful messages might poison the bucket, but not the entire well.
As time went on, technology chipped away at these limitations. Newspapers, radio frequencies and TV channels helped spread that firsthand message further and faster.
Yet, these new technology options came with their own limitations. Not just anyone could write for a newspaper or get airtime on the radio or TV. There were gatekeepers — such as editors and programming directors — controlling access and managing the message on each medium.
So, those who sought to use discourse to drag down society found their plans foiled. For every instance of a televised Klan rally, there was an image of Martin Luther King on the Lincoln Memorial steps, proclaiming I have a dream today. For every demand of an extremist to publish their manifesto, there was John F. Kennedy imploring America to go to the moon.
But now, things are different.
The Internet age is here. And the guardrails are gone.
The veil has been lifted.
Often, this phrase is a joyous one. Sadly, that’s not the case this time.
For the veil the Internet age has lifted was an essential protection. It was the buffer shielding us from the dark side of discourse.
Now, in a world with open access to a megaphone, we are seeing just how sinister that dark side can be.
Malicious discourse is no longer solely the domain of torchlit rallies in the backwoods. It’s no longer the specialty of radicalized criminals racking up collateral damage.
Instead, it’s in the hands of anyone with a smartphone.
A healthy respect for diverging viewpoints has gone by the wayside. Bullying and intimidation are rampant.
Those at the helm of these malicious campaigns run the gamut. They’re everything from middle schoolers to the middle age. They range from the far right to the far left. They represent the downtrodden everyman and the down-looking elite alike.
The expressions of vitriol they spew are no longer reserved for the masses. Like heat-seeking missiles, they can each be fixed upon a single target. One person. One family. One organization.
And the fallout from this prevailing brand of discourse has been brutal. Many have seen their dreams shattered. Many have had their livelihoods subverted. And some have even gone so far as to take their own lives.
This surely wasn’t the dystopian future America’s early legislators envisioned when they bestowed us with the power to speak freely.
Yet, it’s precisely the world in which we find ourselves.
It’s going to be difficult for us to find our way out of this sinkhole.
For as long as there is an open Internet full of popular social networking platforms, there will be cyberbullying. There will be those who launch digital grenades at others under the guise of an alias. There will be those who poison our discourse with little fear of repercussion.
This reality is bleak. But it is not hopeless.
We do have some control of our destiny. And that process starts with us putting our foot down and making our voices heard.
We can begin by letting those around us know that we won’t tolerate rancorous malice. That we won’t sit silent when other use the Internet to turn words into weapons.
We can continue by leading by example. By avoiding the temptation to use our First Amendment rights to make others feel pain — even if we feel it’s justified.
And we can take it to the next level by standing with the victims. By providing them the strength needed to sidestep the harm malicious discourse can bring.
These are only first steps. A first phase in a much larger crusade.
But they are steps in the right direction.
The First Amendment gave our society a great opportunity. Let’s make the most of it once again.