![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Writer's Block: Thesaurus Day
Jan. 18th, 2012 07:57 am[Error: unknown template qotd]Craiglockhart
Jan. 18th, 2012
Writer's Block: First Amendment
Jan. 18th, 2012 12:22 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]The dissemination of ideas is what keeps a person, and a society, free. Just as courage is "rightly esteemed as first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others", so freedom of speech is the first of personal freedoms.
But freedom of speech is NOT just the freedom to speak, it is the freedom to HEAR; to hear the voice raised against injustice, to hear the cry of the soul in bondage, to hear the words of those who fight oppression with truth.
It is the ability to say "I matter" and have that statement be true.
And it is endowed to us from our Creator by our mere existence; no government, no leader, no court grants it to us. It always HAS, and will always BE our birthright as human beings.
But freedom of speech is NOT just the freedom to speak, it is the freedom to HEAR; to hear the voice raised against injustice, to hear the cry of the soul in bondage, to hear the words of those who fight oppression with truth.
It is the ability to say "I matter" and have that statement be true.
And it is endowed to us from our Creator by our mere existence; no government, no leader, no court grants it to us. It always HAS, and will always BE our birthright as human beings.