1. Creating a context for the First Amendment

1. Creating a context for the First Amendment

1.1. The nation is a political state, not a market or a corporation.

The United States is a political body constructed through political laws and political regulations.
We tend rather to think in depoliticized terms.
Is the United States simply a huge corporation? What rights do we have in a corporation? As employees? As stockholders? Are these rights meaningful without being embedded in political framework?
In inventing the United States there were at least four central concerns:

1. How to create a society protecting the interests of citizens over the concentrated power of kings or tyrannts.

2. How to recognize the emerging philosophy of natural rights: that all men (people?) are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

3. How to create political freedom in order to preserve religious freedom.

4. How to build on and preserve the rights of property in the face of tyranny. (From Held, Models of Democracy, 1996)

5. All of above needs depend on a political framework.