The shifting boundaries of freedom of expression in the United States

Since the drafting of the bill of rights in

1791, the right to freely express one’s thoughts, significantly protected by the first of the ten amendments to the federal Constitution, has represented a characterizing and very fundamental principle of the American liberal democratic system.

In the collective imagination, as well as of every single American soul, no right better represents the very essence of the society of free men, embodied in the US nation, than the possibility granted to each individual of the so-called ‘land of the free’ to criticize political power, its symbols, its men, the faiths of others and even to express vulgar, openly racist or discriminatory appreciation at will. How much, however, has the freedom to express one’s opinion and dissent been, and is, really guaranteed in practice in the American system?

Is it a giant with feet of clay ready to collapse in the face of the first shock or a real bulwark against any attempt to censor uncomfortable and counter-current opinions? These are the questions everyone is asking, especially during the war time where the concepts of ‘enemy’ and ‘democracy” have soft edges. The widespread belief that the US system effectively protects the free expression of everyone’s thought, even when this is highly problematic or politically inappropriate, is certainly not without basis.

It finds, in fact, confirmation in precise guarantees granted in North American land to those who express their opinion in situations and circumstances in which other systems would otherwise limit that freedom.