“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.”  – Thomas Jefferson, in a Letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787

If Jefferson’s eyes were on America today, he would remind us that the right to peaceful dissent to prevailing societal views is embodied in the First Amendment as an inalienable right granted by God, not government.  He would then turn to those engaged in violence and remind them their right is to peacefully assemble, not riot.

This is a right to seek out, receive and transmit ideas that are not necessarily popular.  These ideas might indeed be very unpopular.  But, you cannot truly say with integrity that you are for freedom of speech if you only mean those things on which you agree with being said, written or otherwise communicated.

There are some reasonable limits to this.  Essentially, the underlying limit is that the rights of others ends where mine begin.  Conversely, my right to this ends when it infringes and encroaches on the rights of those around me.  Now, recently, it has become popular to suppose that means if we feign outrage at comments made or even are truly outraged that we can constrict the rights of others.  That might be in some instances.

We as a society have thus far defined this a speech that constitutes a clear and present danger.  And this is, my friends, subject to an imaginary balancing act called the reasonable person standard.  If I yell out, “Fire”, in a crowded movie theater, there can be made an illustrative case that it may well cause harm to those in the theater.  If I tell you something that you personally disagree with  but will not directly hurt you, well then as I understand these things, it’s within my right to do so.

This is where the God given right to dissent begins…