“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.”

The First Amendment protects a number of rights, so we’ll cover them individually.

Freedom of Religion

Much of the colonizing of America was based on a desire to escape religious persecution. The original colonists were all Europeans, where the Roman Catholic Church had held absolute power over religion for centuries. In the 16th century, however, a revolution in Christianity occurred, sparked by the activities of Martin Luther. Luther hadn't intended to start a revolution, however. He simply felt that the corruption he found within the established church needed correction. Eventually, however, his actions led not only to a break from the Catholic Church, but further factions within Christianity. This lead to centuries of religious wars within Europe.

In England, the break occurred, for less than noble reasons, during the reign of Henry VIII, when the Catholic Church refused to grant him a divorce from his wife because she had failed to provide him with a male heir. Henry VIII then broke away from the Catholic Church and founded the Church of England. The supremacy of Catholicism and Protestantism in England went back and forth for some time, while other factions within Christianity broke with the Church of England, which, ironically, began persecuting these sects.

Even those who fled to American in search of religious freedom were loathe to provide that freedom to others. Massachusetts, which had been founded by the Puritans, were intolerant of those who disagreed with them on religious matters, which eventually lead to the founding of Rhode Island, with a stated founding principle being religious freedom.

This history was well known to the American Founding Fathers. They were aware of the wars and persecutions that resulted from religious intolerance, and believed that they needed to encode within their Constitution the right to believe as one wishes. Thomas Jefferson said that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no Gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” The Founding Fathers, in this matter, were more interested in actions than in beliefs.

The First Amendment is the basis for the concept of separation of church and state. At the time, this was a rather radical notion to apply to a state. All of the European nations at the time held onto power through a combination of military and religious force.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, the government has no authority to dictate what people believe in any way. Your beliefs are held to be supremely protected in the United States (with the caveat that you cannot enforce your beliefs on others). If liberty doesn’t include the ability to think as you wish, then you aren’t really free.

Freedom of Speech

Here we have a protection of speech and the press, which basically comes down to the freedom to say what you want. Over time, this has been limited in areas that might cause immediate danger (the famous case being yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire) and when what is said is untrue and therefore injures someone (such as the cases of libel and slander), but there have also been limitations on speech in the United States simply because the views expressed were unpopular and considered dangerous. But this is exactly the kind of speech that needs protecting. Henry J. Hyde put it succinctly when he said, “Free speech is meaningless unless it tolerates the speech we hate.” According to Mike Godwin, “The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to band the other kind.”

Unbelievably, this right was attacked very early in our country’s history, and therefore has a long record of being in jeopardy. During the administration of John Adams, our second President, Congress passed and the President signed the Sedition Act, which criminalized not only false, but “scandalous and malicious writing” against the government, and were used by the administration to silence newspapers who opposed its policies. The act expired with the end of Adams’ presidency (Jefferson, upon entering the Presidency in 1801 pardoned those who had been convicted of violating the law), and so was never declared unconstitutional in court, but other mentions of the act by the Supreme Court have made it clear that were it to be tested, it would be found unconstitutional. However, similar acts have been passed throughout our history, particularly during periods of war.

It doesn’t matter how much you may hate the words of someone else, be they Nazis or terrorists. In America, they have a right to express their views, period. The idea behind this is that if all speech is protected, eventually the true and right ideas will rise to the surface. The weapon with which to battle wrong thinking is right thinking, not censorship.

Freedom of Assembly

During the Revolutionary period, meetings in Boston were under attack by legal means by the British occupying force. The patriots found ways (both legal and otherwise) around these limitations, but the point was, they were peaceful at these meetings, and there shouldn't be a legal right to curtail such activities. Protection of them was therefore written into the Bill of Rights.

Today’s frequent requirement of permits for meeting is a modern equivalent, however, and to a strict constitutionalist, would be considered unconstitutional.

Freedom to Petition

Revolution was not originally on the minds of our Founding Fathers. There were repeated attempts to petition King George III to address the problems in a peaceable manner. Here we have a protection of a similar right in the Bill of Rights that had as its ancestor the English right. It may be surprising that many of the concepts in the final Bill of Rights came from the Founding Fathers’ English heritage.