I am going to cry. Honestly, I am going to cry, bawl my eyes out, cry until there is nothing left, and scream until there is nothing left in me. But this time - not like the previous times in the past few days - the reasons will be purely out of unadulterated joy. Have you ever felt so fantastically inspired, so absolutely enthralled with a subject, so absolutely immersed in the subject of which you are studying, that one day you have a breakthrough and realize that this thing that you are studying, this world of facts and rhetoric and jargon which you lay on paper and read in text after text for hours and hours of your time, fits inside of you and inside of your mind? I can wrap my mind around something, guys. I’ve never been completely able to before. And the awesomeness of what I am about to attempt talking about cannot even be fully described with the incredible power of language which I have recently discovered right in the palm of my hand.

Political Science has always been an interest of mine. Growing up in a household with two very conservative Republican parents (and a very politically vocal father in particular), I was always more aware of the workings and misfortunes of America's government than the average person my age. I would get emotionally involved in the races, in the candidates, in the mystique of political theory even though I was nowhere near voting age, even when my age hadn’t reached the double-digits.

As I grew older and took more classes which focused on the inner mechanics of the government of the United States and the problems it faces, along with the general basic history of how our social contract came to be, the more I became interested in the material. Eighth grade was the first time I memorized the preamble. Tenth grade government class, one semester, was the first time I debated with peers over what we felt constituted the obscene, and who exactly was fit to determine that. In twelfth grade I took the plunge and enrolled in AP US Government, which I studied hard for and received a high grade in. I discovered that year the fun that was to be had in actually involving oneself in politics, by volunteering for a campaign. Originally for a class assignment, it grew into so much more, and although the candidate I volunteered for lost the primary, my time there became one of the most shaping experiences of my life to date - and directly influenced my decision to take Political Science in my second semester of college.

I received AP credit in high school for Political Science 1, and thus had no need to take it in college. I could have gotten away with taking any other course. In fact, I need not do any social science courses because all of my undergraduate requirements have been taken care of by my high school AP credit. I am taking these classes out of my pure enjoyment of the art of the social sciences. I was familiar with the professor, Mr. Michael Mills, from my previous semester at Vista. He is a short, stout, middle-aged man with a lot of knowledge and a whole lot more of opinions. He is not hesitant to tell you what he believes is right and wrong, and he is not hesitant to push you harder than any professor at Vista would dare push their students. My only challenging courses at Vista have been the two taken with him. My most interesting classes at Vista have been the two taken with him. Of course these are directly related. His booming voice would fill the hallways in between classes, and often I was intimidated by what I could already tell was his in-your-face, verbose teaching style. Still, despite my intimidation and despite my natural introverted nature, I signed up for Political Science 1 in December, and hoped for at least a review of AP Government two years before.

The first day of class absolutely blew me away. This man was absolutely great! This man was telling you what was wrong and what was right about politics. He was screaming at you that this was the time you were going to have to take responsibility for the people running this country. This is the time to understand what is going on, why it is going on, and to give a shit about what is going on, because that is the fundamental problem of the American government: the governed select the governors, and then stop checking in on them to make sure they are actually protecting our inalienable rights. Tell me, in the year 2002, is the Federal Government protecting the rights to every man's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Just what is the pursuit of happiness? And how did we get to 2002, anyway?

I used to view politics and political theory as a one-dimensional or perhaps, a two-dimensional sphere. This afternoon, to make an understatement, blew all of my previous views of political theory out of the water. In today's lecture, we began discussing the First Amendment of the Constitution, which says as follows:

"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."

Read that a couple of times. Let it sink in. Now, read it again, this time emphasizing the word preceding 'law'.

"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."

What is that? Congress shall make no law? That sounds very cut-and-dry to the average observer, don't you think? This means that Congress cannot make a law - not a single one - which prohibits the freedom of speech, of the press, of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. After all, didn't the theory of the Social Contract guarantee the right of the governed to attempt to alter the Government itself if it were not doing its job? And if it did not comply with these requests, the governed could rightfully oust this Government from it's position and replace it with a new one that did protect those three inalienable rights? You betcha.

Think a little more. What sounds wrong about this?

Simple. Congress has made laws. Laws against things like criticizing the Government - they catch you making a comment about blowing up the White House and you've committed a federal crime. You send fake Anthrax in the US Mail and you get caught? You've committed a federal crime. You distribute kiddie porn on the Internet, or through the mail? You have committed a serious crime. You'd like to get up in front of a group of people and run around naked in public? There are laws against such things. The famous case of the Naked Man in Berkeley is a prime example of this. He wanted to walk around naked because he felt that it was his First Amendment right to boycott American materialism and manufacturing practices. The city of Berkeley passed a law that required him and others to cover their privates in public, or be prosecuted.

Now, there have obviously been laws made which abridge our freedom of speech and expression. I could not walk into an R-rated movie alone when I was twelve - that is a limit on what I can and cannot be exposed to, what speech and expression the Federal Government feels I should hear. There are laws as to what can and cannot be shown on network television. The majority of what we are exposed to on television is a watered down version of soft-core pornography. Without sex and sexual innuendo, what would Friends do? I'm guessing they would sit around and say nothing, because although that show is on at eight pm, when many children are still awake and watching television with their parents, it revolves around the sexual lives and sexual interactions of six very close people. We put labels on video games to warn for violence and sexuality; we do the same for CDs. These latest two have been more recent, within my generation's childhoods, certainly. These are written laws both recent and old, which abridge the literal interpretation of the First Amendment, as it is written in the United States Constitution.

Many good questions and points were raised in discussion while I was attempting to come up with one coherent point (I finally sputtered something semi-moot to my classmate sitting behind me once the lecture was over, but I'm not sure she understood where I was coming from). For example, what exactly constitutes "obscenity", and who is the person responsible for deciding what is obscene and what is, well, artistic expression? For example, an art gallery owner in Cincinnati began showing nude paintings of men one month in his art museum; a now-deceased artist had crafted them. The Chief of Police of Cincinnati walked into that museum and told him that he had to remove the exhibit immediately, that it was obscene, that it was inappropriate, that it was not to be tolerated. The owner of the museum protested vainly that it was his First Amendment right to show these pieces of art and that they were a form of artistic expression. He lost this battle.

Also mentioned on that same vein is the idea of whether something benefits society, or merely harms it - for example, pornography. How does pornography benefit society? How does (this was said in class, not necessarily my opinion) the degrading of women, the objectification of women as something to prey after, a benefit to American society? The answer is that there is no obvious benefit to pornography in this society. If there is no benefit, then why not get rid of it entirely? Why not make it illegal, like kiddie porn is illegal? Because then the people who make their livings off of making pornography scream that it is their freedom of expression, and their freedom of speech, to pose naked women in compromising positions and sell those women, and those positions, to other anonymous people.

Profanity is also related to this. In 1997, an Act went before Congress that would have made "Profanity" (which I am told is anything from modest swearing to names of genital regions up to pornographic spam emails and some of the cruder stuff we see on the net these days) on the World Wide Web illegal. This ridiculous bill would have made even the word 'breast' illegal to include on a web page or a research document. Companies all over the country sued the US Government, saying that their business would be hurt tremendously if this bill were to be passed, and people spoke out, insisting that their efforts to research something as simple as a medical condition on the web would be made nearly impossible. The bill was overwhelmingly defeated.

This was the point in class when I began to get remarkably tense and irritable. I don't give a flying fuck about pornography. In the long run, I actually think that some women enjoy it, and I wouldn't mind being in a few photo shoots while I'm still in college, and it's nice to feel sexy around people who don't even know you. But a Government that would take away my right to say "dammit" on a street corner, or write what I am writing now in my online journal, is no Government I would ever, ever concede to live under. I cannot think of many Governments who could censor me, and probably others, much more than this. I would rather have my right to strip in front of a photographer taken away than my right to curse under my breath or express my private thoughts on a piece of internet I have paid for with my own money. I would not dare show my face in support of this construct ever again.

But then that nagging question returns: why are we compromising with the First Amendment? Aren't we supposed to interpret it literally? If we interpret it literally, which I believe we are told to do, then it says blatantly, forcefully, powerfully, and confidently that Congress will make NO laws abridging the aforementioned rights of the people of the United States. Since Congress has made such laws, none of this is making any sense anymore to most people. How can we have an Amendment to our most sacred law document, the Constitution of the United States, not providing us with the protection it promises, without small allowances on their part to get around it? This isn't just the law, this is the Constitution, and the freedom of speech, expression, and assembly is by far regarded as the most important, and the most fundamental right of the people of the United States.