Our nation has traditionally revered the First Amendment's protections for speech, including speech we hate. In 1943 – at the height of World War II – Justice Robert Jackson announced the Court's ruling that a public school could not compel a Jehovah's Witness student to recite the Pledge of Allegiance with this quote: "[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
In a case where the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Texas statute prohibiting burning the American flag, Justice William Brennan wrote, "[i]f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
In a 2011 case where the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protected the rights of protestors to display signs at a military funeral saying, "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "F** troops," Chief justice Roberts wrote: "[s]peech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate."
In a case where the Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act – a statute making it illegal to lie about one's military service – Justice Kennedy said: "[w]ere the Court to hold that the interest in truthful discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech, absent any evidence that the speech was used to gain a material advantage, it would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court’s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom."
The evidence is overwhelming then, that the First Amendment is wholesome and necessary for the public good. If that last phrase sounds familiar, it's because it's straight out of the Declaration of Independence. In the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson laid out a list of grievances the Colonies had with the King of Great Britain. The very first one was this: "[h]e has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." In issuing Executive Orders targeting law firms that argue positions counter to Trump's interests; in denying funding to universities that are too "woke"; and in weaponizing the FCC to target speakers who mock him, Trump is unquestionably refusing his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. It is un-American. Thomas Jefferson would back me up on this.
America is not a thing; it is an idea. And deeply embedded in that idea is the notion that people can speak their minds without government sanction. You cannot purport to love America and hate the First Amendment. In 2020, when Trump hugged the American flag at the CPAC conference, I considered it a stupid political stunt. Now I see that it was an act of pure hypocrisy.