The First Freedom and the Test of Our Character
What This Value Means
Free speech is the right of individuals to express their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and criticisms without fear of government punishment. It includes the freedom of the press, the right to assemble peacefully, and the right to petition the government when its actions are unjust or harmful. Dissent is the act of challenging authority, questioning policy, and advocating for change. Together, these freedoms ensure that the public can criticize those in power, debate openly, and participate fully in the direction of the nation.
Why It Matters
Free speech is essential for democracy, accountability, and social progress. Without the ability to speak openly, citizens cannot expose corruption, debate public policy, or advocate for reform. Dissent is how societies correct mistakes, confront injustice, and expand rights. Every major step forward in American history — abolition, women’s suffrage, labor rights, civil rights, LGBTQ equality — relied on people using their voices to challenge the status quo. A government that can silence its critics is a government unbound by the people it serves.
Where This Value Comes From
Free speech and dissent are rooted directly in America’s founding era.
- The First Amendment guarantees freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and petition, making them the very first rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
- The founders had firsthand experience with censorship and repression under British rule, which shaped their conviction that open criticism of government must be protected.
- Early American political culture was fiercely argumentative. Newspapers, pamphlets, and public debates were central to the revolutionary period and the ratification of the Constitution.
- Acts of dissent — from the Boston Tea Party to the pamphlets of Thomas Paine — were celebrated as patriotic and essential to liberty.
- James Madison argued that “the censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people,” establishing the philosophical foundation for First Amendment protections.
How American History Has Treated This Value
Free speech has been both honored and violated throughout American history. While the First Amendment has served as a powerful safeguard, moments such as the Alien and Sedition Acts, wartime censorship, McCarthyism, and state suppression of civil rights protests illustrate how governments often try to silence dissent. Yet over time, courts and citizens have consistently reinforced that free expression is central to American identity. Landmark rulings like New York Times v. Sullivan and Brandenburg v. Ohio strengthened protections for critics of government and expanded the boundaries of political speech. Social movements throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have relied on protest and public advocacy to secure equal rights and challenge injustice.
Why This Value Is Not Partisan
Free speech is not a property of any party or ideology. Both conservatives and progressives rely on the ability to criticize government and advocate for their beliefs. Efforts to silence political opponents, restrict protest, or criminalize dissent cut against the basic premise of American liberty. The First Amendment does not guarantee comfort; it guarantees freedom. A society committed to free speech must tolerate disagreement, criticism, and protest from all sides.
Closing Principle
Free speech is the cornerstone of American liberty, and dissent is the engine of American progress. Without them, democracy cannot function and justice cannot advance. To oppose these freedoms is to reject the first principle on which the country was built.
If you want to understand what America is supposed to be, you don’t start with the Constitution, or the flag, or even the Revolution itself. You start with the first sixteen words of the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. The founders could have placed anything at the beginning of the Bill of Rights — property guarantees, militia provisions, trial protections — but they chose to begin with the right to speak, to publish, to assemble, and to challenge the government openly. They did this because they understood something essential about power: if people cannot criticize it, it will inevitably become abusive. Free speech is not just one freedom among many; it is the condition that makes all the others possible.
The American Revolution itself was an act of dissent long before it became a war. It began with citizens gathering in town halls, writing pamphlets, and publishing arguments that challenged the legitimacy of British authority. Samuel Adams’s committees of correspondence, the fiery editorial pages of colonial newspapers, the audacious writing of Thomas Paine — all of these were exercises in free expression. The Boston Tea Party, which today is celebrated as a patriotic symbol of resistance, was an act of civil disobedience carried out by people who rejected the idea that loyalty meant silence. The founders didn’t protect dissent out of politeness; they protected it because dissent is what gave birth to the country in the first place.
Yet for all our national pride in the idea of free speech, we often forget how demanding a value it truly is. It requires a kind of maturity that does not always come easily: the willingness to hear ideas we dislike, to tolerate criticism of leaders we admire, and to accept that someone else’s right to speak does not depend on whether we approve of what they say. Free speech is not a reward for good behavior. It is not something granted only to the polite or the agreeable. It applies to everyone equally — the majority and the minority, the powerful and the powerless, the conventional and the radical. When it fails to apply equally, it ceases to be free speech at all.
Dissent is the natural partner of free expression. It is the act of saying no when injustice demands compliance, of standing up when silence would be safer, of challenging authority because authority is never above scrutiny. American progress has always relied on dissenters who refused to accept the world as it was. Abolitionists calling out the horror of slavery, suffragists demanding a voice in their own government, labor activists exposing exploitation, civil rights marchers confronting segregation, anti-war protesters challenging official narratives, LGBTQ advocates insisting on their humanity — none of these movements succeeded because they waited for permission. They succeeded because people raised their voices, organized, disrupted, and insisted that the country live up to its own ideals.
Free speech does not guarantee justice by itself. Words alone cannot change the world. But without free speech, the world cannot be changed at all. Every reform begins with someone naming a truth others would prefer to ignore. Every injustice persists because people are afraid to challenge the systems that sustain it. And every authoritarian impulse — from the petty tyrant to the dictatorial regime — begins with the belief that criticism is dangerous and must be controlled.
It is easy to support free speech when the words align with your worldview. The real test is whether you support it when the speaker is someone you profoundly disagree with. This is where many people stumble. They mistake disagreement for harm, criticism for treason, and protest for chaos. They imagine that patriotism means standing quietly while authority goes unchallenged. But patriotism is not obedience. In a free society, patriotism is the willingness to insist that the country be better than it is. A nation that cannot tolerate dissent is not strong; it is brittle. A government that demands silence is not confident; it is afraid.
The founders knew this. They had lived under a monarchy where dissent was treated as sedition, where criticizing the government could cost a person their freedom or their life. They built the First Amendment precisely to prevent the new nation from falling into that same pattern. James Madison argued that the people must retain “the censorial power” over the government, meaning the right to critique and expose wrongdoing without fear of reprisal. That idea is the cornerstone of American liberty. It is the mechanism that keeps government accountable and prevents power from calcifying into domination.
This is why attempts to silence opposing views — through censorship, intimidation, propaganda, book bans, or attacks on the press — are fundamentally un-American. They do not protect society; they smother it. They erase the very freedoms that allow us to make informed decisions, to govern ourselves, and to realize our potential as a democratic nation. When leaders fear criticism, it is not the critics who are dangerous — it is the leaders. When citizens demand that others be silenced, it is not order they seek but control.
Free speech is challenging, uncomfortable, and sometimes messy. It means hearing ideas that disturb us and arguments that unsettle us. It means tolerating protest, even when it disrupts our routines or offends our sensibilities. But discomfort is not the enemy of democracy; complacency is. A society that values free speech must accept that dissent is not a threat to the republic but one of its greatest protections. The ability to criticize government is the clearest sign that the government belongs to the people, not the other way around.
This value is not partisan. It is not owned by any ideology, movement, or party. It is a universal safeguard, a tool that protects everyone — including those who misuse it — from the concentration of power. When free speech is strong, society can correct its mistakes. When it is weakened, corruption thrives and injustice deepens. The health of the republic depends on maintaining a culture where truth can be spoken, where lies can be exposed, and where those in power can be challenged without fear.
If you want to know whether someone truly believes in American freedom, listen to how they treat dissent. A person confident in their ideas welcomes debate. A person committed to democracy tolerates criticism. A person who demands silence is not defending the country — they are rejecting its first and most important promise.
Free speech is the beginning of American liberty. Dissent is the force that moves it forward. Together, they form the heartbeat of the nation, and they remain the tools by which we build a more just and honest society.