Dear Editor,
A quote that stood out to me when writing my drafts is “The pen is mightier than the sword.” This quote reminds me of why we have the first amendment. If we had control over what our people could say or not, we would strip away the human right of free speech.
It has been shown time and again that a government without free speech does not prosper. 1952 Cuba, 1917 Russia, 1789 France and 1688 England are all examples of governments overthrown by the people due to no free speech.
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It goes to show that if we had not gone through the experience that so many countries have gone through before us, we would make the same fatal flaw of no free speech in our government. Because we evolved, we now show many examples of fulfilling basic needs in our democracy, but none compares to the magnitude of our first amendment.
Jonah Bratcher
