{"id":12907,"date":"2007-09-17T11:20:13","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T15:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12907.html"},"modified":"2007-09-17T11:20:13","modified_gmt":"2007-09-17T15:20:13","slug":"happy-constitution-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/happy-constitution-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Constitution Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suspect Hallmark doesn’t offer a card for the occasion — at least, not yet — but thanks for the efforts of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), today is Constitution Day in the United States. Even the president, whose appreciation for the document is suspect, issued a presidential proclamation<\/a> to honor the day.<\/p>\n

In light of the occasion, it’s probably a good time to take a look at the results of the 10th annual First Amendment Center’s national survey on the “State of the First Amendment<\/a>.” This may not surprise you, but it appears Americans don’t know a whole lot about their constitutional rights.<\/p>\n

Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that the nation’s founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the “State of the First Amendment 2007” national survey released today by the First Amendment Center. […]<\/p>\n

Just 56% believe that the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme — down 16 points from 72% in 2000. […]<\/p>\n

25% said “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” well below the 49% recorded in the 2002 survey that followed the 9\/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, but up from 18% in 2006.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One in four Americans believe the First Amendment “goes too far”? Really? Ouch.<\/p>\n

Looking though the detailed survey tables<\/a> (.pdf), a few other noteworthy results jumped out at me.
\n
\n* Most Americans don’t know what’s in the First Amendment. There are five freedoms — freedom of speech was the only one named by a majority of respondents (64%), followed by religion (19%), press and assembly (each 16%), and petition (3%).<\/p>\n

* Asked if newspapers “should be allowed to freely criticize the U.S military about its strategy and performance,” a combined 37% of Americans said they shouldn’t.<\/p>\n

* Asked if musicians “should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive,” a combined 42% of Americans said they shouldn’t.<\/p>\n

* Asked if people “should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups,” a combined 39% of Americans said they shouldn’t.<\/p>\n

* Asked if people “should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups,” a combined 56% of Americans said they shouldn’t.<\/p>\n

* A jaw-dropping 55% of Americans agreed with the statement that the U.S. Constitution “establishes a Christian nation.” (For the record, the Constitution doesn’t mention God, Christianity, or the Bible at all. It’s an entirely secular document.)<\/p>\n

* In one of the rare pieces of good news in the survey, a majority of Americans opposed a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, 59% to 38%. As recently as 2000, the public leaned in the other direction, 51% to 48%.<\/p>\n

Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, said the “scariest<\/a>” numbers dealt with freedoms for religious minorities. Only 56% agree that freedom of religion applies to all groups “regardless of how extreme their beliefs are” — down from 72% in 2000. More than one in four say constitutional protection of religion does not apply to “extreme” groups.<\/p>\n

Happy Constitution Day. We have a lot of work to do .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suspect Hallmark doesn’t offer a card for the occasion — at least, not yet — but thanks for the efforts of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), today is Constitution Day in the United States. Even the president, whose appreciation for the document is suspect, issued a presidential proclamation to honor the day. In light of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}