Positive Liberty

The First Amendment Center has just published the results of its annual survey of American knowledge and attitudes concerning the first amendment; the results were quite mixed.

First, the matter of knowledge. Of the five specific rights guaranteed by the first amendment, only freedom of speech could be identified by more than 20% of respondents. 64% could name freedom of speech. 16% could identify freedom of the press, 19% could identify freedom of religion, 16% could identify the right to assemble and only 3% could identify the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. I find that appalling.

The survey asked many questions about people’s attitudes toward the first amendment and constitutional rights in general. Unfortunately, I think those questions are too abstract to mean all that much. They asked people to rank various rights as essential, important, not important or don’t know. 94% agreed that the right to assemble, protest and petition the government was either essential or important, while only 5% said it was not important.

But this is entirely in the abstract. Start asking specific questions and those numbers would likely drop dramatically. Does the KKK have the right to assemble and protest publicly? Highly unlikely that you’d get 94% affirmative on that one. Ask if anti-abortion foes should be allowed to protest outside abortion clinics, or if gay rights groups should be allowed to protest outside churches, and you would almost certainly find those numbers going down quite a bit.

Indeed, the survey did exactly that later on. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement “Any group that wants to should be allowed to hold a rally for a cause or issue even if it may be offensive to others in the community”, the support drops to 69%, with 28% opposed. People support freedom in the abstract. When they’re confronted with the notion that sometimes freedom means someone is going to be offended, that number drops sharply. But it’s good that it’s still nearly 70%.

Interestingly, the reaction on religion showed a bit of a split. When asked to judge the importance of “the right to practice the religion of your choice”, 97% said this was either essential or important, with only 2% saying it was not important. But when asked to judge the importance of “the right to practice no religion”, the numbers dropped: only 89% considered that essential or important (and the number that thought it essential dropped a full 17%), while 9% said this was not important. I suppose we should be happy with 89% support, but that’s still nearly 10% of the country who think that it’s not important for people to be able to abstain from belonging to or practicing any religion.

This one surprised me a bit: when asked to agree or disagree that “Public school students should be allowed to wear a T-shirt with a message or picture that others might find offensive”, only 22% either strongly or mildly agreed, while 74% either mildly or strongly disagreed (and over 50% strongly disagreed). On the question of whether student newspapers should be allowed to report on controversial issues without school approval, opinion was pretty evenly split with 47% agreeing and 51% disagreeing.

Here’s a question I think was badly worded:

Do you feel that the freedom to worship as one chooses…applies to all religious groups regardless of how extreme their beliefs are, or was never meant to apply to religious groups that most people would consider extreme or fringe?

The results were 56% saying that all religions were covered by freedom of religion, while 28% said it was never intended to cover those that are extreme or fringe. I would replace “extreme” with “unusual” and I bet the first number would go quite a bit higher. The word “extreme” I think tends to imply violence and I bet that changed the results on that question.

Here’s another result that surprised me a bit. When asked to choose between three possible answers concerning Christmas celebrations in public schools, here were the results:

43% agreed that “Public schools should be allowed to put on Nativity re-enactments with Christian music.” 31% agreed that “Public schools should have assembly programs in December that have music from the Christian tradition, but religious music should not dominate.” And 18% agreed that “Public school programs in December should be entirely secular.” I would have thought the first number would be considerably higher.

Now some frightening results that clearly conflict with the earlier results and demonstrate that the outcome is quite different when you ask specific questions rather than vague ones. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive”, 55% agreed, while 42% disagreed.

Likewise when asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups”, 60% agreed and 39% disagreed. That’s nearly 40% of the public who think that you should not be allowed to say things that are offensive to some religious group; that’s frightening.

Yet remember, 98% of these same people surveyed, when asked to agree or disagree with “the right to speak freely about whatever you want”, said that they considered this right either essential or important. In the abstract. When you get specific and ask about things that might offend someone, that support suddenly drops by 1/3 or more. Always a good thing to keep in mind on such surveys.

More bad news: when asked to agree or disagree with the statement “Teachers and other public school officials should be allowed to lead prayers in public school”, 58% agreed and 39% disagreed. And 65% agreed that “The nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation.” Those numbers change slightly when the question is phrased as “The U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation”, which 55% agreed with.

Some interesting results on questions about the Bible in public schools. 80% agreed that “A public school teacher should be allowed to use the Bible as a form of literature in an English class.” 88% agreed that “A public school teacher should be allowed to use the Bible as a text in a comparative religion class.” But only 50% agreed that “A public school teacher should be allowed to use the Bible as a factual text in a history or social studies class.” That strongly suggests far lower support for schools teaching that the Bible is true than I would have guessed.

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