Second vs. First Amendment

[Buzzcook]

Free Speech zones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
A woman was arrested for laughing at Jeff Sessions.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...-laughing-in-sessions-hearing-heading-back-to
Peaceful demonstrators arrested, without charges.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...p-administration-punishing-dissent-protesters
Government promotion of religion.
https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-promises-litigation-todays-trump-executive-order
Citizens attempting to petition congress being turned away.
https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/articl...arch-of-dimes-meeting-over-senate-health-bill

The first amendment is under threat. It has been during the entire history of the country.

The importance of the 1st amendment to the operation of a democracy can't be over stated.

Obama was supposedly the greatest threat to the 2nd amendment in history. The main thing his administration did was remove rules prohibiting guns from national parks.

 

[zukiphile]

To clarify, the rollback of the National Parks restriction was legislation, not BHO administration action. That BHO had a congress that stood against the restrictions he urged isn't a matter to BHO's credit on this issue.

I have read enough to know that common sense has little to do with law and law is complicated but I am going to ask anyway.

You might not want law to merely reflect the sense of the current community. Some of the value of relatively fixed constitutional rights is that they don't yield to momentary passion as readily.

Significant rights of speech and effective defense have the potential to cause white hot momentary disgust. Whether its killing little children in Newtown, or displaying a picture of a crucifix in urine or wearing national socialist garb to march through Skokie, disgust is the normal reflex. Yet, if the sense of the community is disgust, that may not be a firm foundation for wise policy.

Why isn't it automatic that any law restricting an amendment isn't scrubbed with strict scrutiny?

That's another of those short questions the real answer to which is long. The short version: the COTUS is just a document the text of which is as important as we make it. When people with the power to make the text unimportant decide to make it unimportant, that's a problem.