These laws made it a crime-punishable by fines up to $2,000 and prison terms up to two years-to publish “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” intended to bring “into contempt or disrepute” the president or Congress. ![]() The United States, they believed, should aim less to subjugate the opinions of Americans than to implement processes that channeled, moderated, and refined opinions into laws consistent with not only the common good but also the government’s fundamental purpose, which was, as they and their Continental Congress affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, the preservation of “certain inalienable rights” such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Revolutionary generation stood so committed to this premise that in 1791, less than a decade after the successful completion of the War for Independence and three years after the enactment of a new federal Constitution, its members ratified the First Amendment, which affirmed that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The Bill of Rights was only seven years old, however, when Congress joined with the administration of John Adams in passing the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. They also recognized that the regimes best equipped to achieve this aim would be, almost by definition, the most dictatorial and oppressive. The belief that those who oppose American foreign policy support America’s mortal enemies often results in the chilling of public discourse and the suppression of actual and even suspected dissenters.įranklin and Jefferson understood that many different forms of government could squelch opposition to the country’s best interests. This is especially the case in times of war, when peaceful processes such as diplomacy give way to the use of force. ![]() Benjamin Franklin once opined that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Thomas Jefferson, perhaps paraphrasing his friend, wrote that “a society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither.” Each of these men seemed to recognize that times of tumult and perceived danger pose threats to fundamental freedoms at least as great as those that imperil America’s security. These, he believed, were the essential rights to one’s life, liberty, and property. ![]() John Locke, whose political philosophy helped to inspire and justify the American Revolution, explained that the first people to form civilizations left behind the perfect freedom of the state of nature in order to secure the liberties that mattered most.
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