Panic about the First Amendment to the US Constitution

Another panic about the First Amendment to the United States Constitution--US teens 'reject' key freedoms (BBC News):

A significant number of US high-school students regard their constitutional right to freedom of speech as excessive, according to a new survey.

Over a third of the 100,000 students questioned felt the First Amendment went "too far" in guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, worship and assembly.

Only half felt newspapers should be allowed to publish stories that did not have the government's approval.

The survey of high school students referred to in the BBC article was conducted by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The press release reporting the survey is here. Download the complete "Future of First Amendment" Report (PDF, 456K).

So there is the usual worry about schools not doing their job, young people are ignorant and apathetic slackers, civilization is declining, things were so much better in the past...

The first thing I noticed when reading the report was this sentence:

Even in the best of times, 30 percent of Americans feel that the First Amendment, the centuries-old cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, "goes too far."

So the same proportion of high school students as the population at large believe that the First Amendment goes too far? Wow! What exciting news! I am so glad that the Knight Foundation spent $1,000,000 to find this out.

So this cartoon used to illustrate the report is misleading on two levels:
For a larger version of the cartoon, go here. 

1. Young people know as much about the First Amendment as their elders.
2. The 'Editors Note: We tried to stop this cartoonist from making you look uninformed...But that's his First Amendment right.' is making a fallacious point. Newspaper and magazine editors routinely stop writers, cartoonists, and photographers from saying what they want to say. Every few months, for example, there are reports about newspapers refusing to run certain Doonesbury comics because they disagree with Gary Trudeau's politics. And that doesn't count the hundreds of newspapers that do not carry Doonesbury at all. So let's not pretend that newspapers, magazines, radio and television programs, etc. exist in a First Amendment utopia where free expression is the highest ideal.

As a public service, Ghost Town Orange brings you the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that's gone.

For by the life and death of Jesus,
God's mighty Spirit, now as then,
can make for us a world of difference,
as faith and hope are born again.

--Brian Wren
This is a day of new beginnings, 1978, alt.
(1st 2 verses)