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FREEDOM OF WHAT: Freedom takes a strong stomach, but many of us have indigestion; Inside the 1st Amendment

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From: Sunday Gazette-Mail
Date: 20040718
Author:Charles Haynes

"Liberty is a food easy to eat, but hard to digest; it takes very strong stomachs to stand it."

It may have been written in 1772, but Jean-Jacques Rousseau's famous aphorism captures America's ambivalent attitude toward freedom in 2004. The findings of the latest State of the First Amendment survey are in - and many Americans seem to suffer from a bad case of civic indigestion.

Conducted each year by the First Amendment Center, the 2004 poll starts with the good news. Only 30 percent of Americans feel that the First Amendment "goes too far" in the rights it guarantees. That's a drop from the ...

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