The First Amendment states: “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.”
With this amendment comes a shield of protection and freedom: A protection from religion and of religion – a freedom of conscience; A protection of speech and press – a freedom to interact with the world; A protection of assembly and petition – a freedom to act upon the world.
With this amendment also comes the 8 values or theories of free expression:
Marketplace of Ideas
Participation in Self-Government
Stable Change
Individual Self-Fulfillment
Check on Governmental Power
Promote Tolerance
Promote Innovation
Protect Dissent
What the first amendment means to me is that it ensures that I have a platform to share my beliefs and use my freedoms to stand up for what I believe in. It is something that empowers me and gives me the ability to empower others around me by advocating for them. Not only this, but another important aspect of the first amendment to me personally is the right to access information and the right to seek, receive, and communicate that information freely. This is why the first value of free expression, the Marketplace of Ideas, resonates the most with me.
The Marketplace of Ideas theory is also known as the Discovery of Truth. It was first suggested by John Milton who was one of England’s foremost political philosophers. His Areopagitica was an appeal to Parliament in 1644 arguing that the press should be unlicensed, and ideas should be judged in the marketplace of ideas. In other words, when truth and falsehood are allowed to freely grapple, truth will win and become even stronger. Even bad and crazy ideas should be allowed in the marketplace of ideas as they will serve to further strengthen the truth.
As an former English major with a great appreciation for creatively crafted metaphors, I had to share this quote from Milton’s Areopagitica:
“For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defenses that error uses against her power: give her but room, & do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught & bound, but then rather she turns herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be adjourned into her own likeness. Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes than one.”
Another article from The First Amendment Encyclopedia defines the marketplace of ideas as "the belief that the test of the truth or acceptance of ideas depends on their competition with one another and not on the opinion of a censor, whether one provided by the government or by some other authority.”
When people are allowed to freely share their ideas, truth will prevail because people will argue and disagree which leads for a hunger for the truth. They will continue to seek, searching for data and proof, until there is no answer but one...the truth. People deserve this basic thing.
And yet, the government finds itself taking that right away by restricting people’s rights to freely share. Social media censorship has been a major issue in our society today and directly relates to our First Amendment rights. Helen Norton, a free-speech scholar, explains: “Once the government chooses a platform that permits public comment, it has created a type of forum for nongovernmental parties’ speech, and it is now bound by traditional First Amendment principles when regulating the speech of the commenters on the problem.”
Of course, government officials have the right to share their beliefs freely on social media and advocate for their own causes. However, that expression becomes the speech of the government under the government speech doctrine. This is when First Amendment controversies arise, especially when these officials try to shut down or silence opposing viewpoints.
It also is an issue when we see the government getting involved in the censorship of certain social media accounts. According to Desert News, top-ranking Biden administration officials appear to have pressured Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to censor content that the federal government considered misinformation. The lawsuit’s discovery revealed 45 federal officials who communicated with social media executives on what information to censor, especially in regards to Covid-19.
This is what makes me righteously angry. I, along with many fellow Americans, would like to hear all the information and come to an informed decision myself rather than have the government filter what information is available to me.
With all of this in mind, it stands to reason that, along with the value of the marketplace of ideas, the fifth value of expression protecting a check on governmental power and the eighth value of protecting dissent are also very important today.
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