The Declaration of Independence states that everyone is endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights that governments are created to protect. The Constitution was adopted to secure the blessings of liberty to Americans. The Bill of Rights was adopted to adequately protect individual freedoms from government power. Other parts of the Constitution foster equality or justice or representative government. But the Bill of Rights is only about individual freedom.
The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects the freedom of speech. That freedom is basic to self-government. Free speech creates a marketplace of ideas and fosters participatory democracy, allowing an educated citizenry to cast votes to elect its leaders.
Recently a constitutional amendment was proposed that would have limited freedom of speech. The proposed amendment would have abridged the fundamental right of free speech by enabling the government to limit the spending of any funds intended to influence elections. This would have gone far beyond limits on campaign financing to restrict spending by individuals or groups to express political views to the public during an election-- effectively prohibiting citizens from speaking their opinion. The democratic process is not strengthened by deterring political speech and shielding American voters from hearing different points of view.
On the contrary, our founding fathers believed that the more political speech the better, particularly during an election. I trust American voters to sift through opposing points of view and make up their own minds without governmental interference.
Restricting freedom of expression is a slippery slope. First come restrictions on speech, what comes next? Every week, hundreds of Iowans spend money to send letters, make phone calls, or travel to Washington, D.C., to exercise their First Amendment right to petition their government for redress of grievances. Should that be curtailed as well?
This amendment did not pass, but that alone is not comforting. This would have been the first time in 227 years that the Bill of Rights was amended. The Bill of Rights, which was adopted to protect these very freedoms, should be preserved. Government should protect freedom, not limit it.