Most Americans Ignorant Of Their First Amendment Rights

The First Amendment Center does a survey every year for a report on the First Amendment -- and this year's survey shows most Americans are embarrassingly ignorant of what rights are contained in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This should bother anyone who values our democracy, because the First Amendment contains the five basic rights that are necessary for the survival of our democracy -- freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to petition our government, and the right to peacefully assemble.

The First Amendment Center just asked an open-ended question -- Can you name the specific rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution? A majority of Americans could name only one of those rights -- the right to freedom of speech. And even that was known by only 68%, a pitifully low percentage. None of the other four rights was able to garner even 30%, and about 29% of the respondents could not name even one right guaranteed by the First Amendment. How can it be that 3 out of 10 Americans can't name even one right?

This is nothing new though. That 68% who know that freedom of speech is a First Amendment right is the highest percentage in the 15 years of this century. And at no time in that 15 years has any of the other rights garnered as much as 30% knowledge. The really crazy part is that a lot of these ignorant people loudly proclaim their "constitutional rights" (even though they don't know those rights) and vote (many times for a candidate in favor of restricting those rights).

I guess this could explain the 113th Congress though. Ignorant people will vote for ignorant officials.

The First Amendment Center survey was done in May 2014 of a random national sample of 1,006 adults, and has a margin of error of 3.2 points.