Mar 17, 2020 3 min read

Regular readers know that James Madison, born this week (March 16) in 1751, is my favorite Founding Father, and easily the most underrated of those visionaries who created our government and nation. He was chiefly responsible for creating both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, although he originally opposed the latter, thinking it unnecessary because the national government the Constitution created had only had those powers given to it by the Constitution. Therefore, since the Constitution did not give the government the power to curtail speech, religion, the press, assembly, and so on, there was no need for a document that prevented the government from doing things it had no power to do.

But he changed his mind when he realized how suspicious the American people were of this Constitution. Since it gave the national government many powers that the people thought were threatening, they wanted their rights spelled out in a way that prevented the government from ever encroaching upon them.

The chief right being, in Madison’s mind, free speech. The government the Constitution created was unique in history because it made the people, not the government, the sovereign rulers. Unlike past governments, in which the rulers were sovereign and the only rights the people had were those the rulers grudgingly gave them, under the Constitution it was the opposite. The people were sovereign, and the only powers the government had were those given to it, equally grudgingly, by the people. In fact, the people gave the government only enough power to secure their rights, under the law, to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

To Madison, a government in which the people were sovereign meant there must be an informed citizenry to guide the government in exercising its powers on their behalf in the best possible way. “Public opinion,” Madison wrote, “sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.” To ensure an informed citizenry, the people’s freedom to communicate – to freely exchange ideas – was essential. This meant freedom of religion, a free press, the freedom to assemble to discuss issues, and even the freedom to “petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the little-known fifth right in the First Amendment that allows the people to complain when they think the government isn’t exercising its powers to their benefit.

That in turn meant the freedom to express one’s opinions without fear of reprisal, either by the government or one’s fellow citizens, especially when those opinions offend the government and one’s fellow citizens. As history shows, ideas and opinions that were originally thought wrong and offensive often turned out to be right.

Free speech, and only free speech, makes that possible.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s e-mail address is bruce@historylessons.net/.