Will principled conservative judges protect flag burning?

We know where the framers stood on unpopular speech and where the lion of constitutional originalism landed

- LZ GRANDERSON COLUMNIST

NEIL GORSUCH after President Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2017.

DID YOU KNOW the first newspaper in the future United States lasted one day?

The official reason the governor of the Massachusetts colony shut down Publick Occurrences was because publisher Benjamin Harris — a stern advocate of freedom of speech — failed to get a license. The unofficial reason was the British government did not like what Harris' publication had to say, characterizing its content as "uncertain reports." More than a decade would go by before the monarchy would allow another newspaper to be published, one with the king's approval.

That was in the fall of 1690 — roughly 85 years before the start of the American Revolution and nearly a century before the ratification of the Constitution. Before there was a 1st Amendment or even a United States, there was an authoritarian government in place restricting speech, spreading fear and jailing those who dissented. Colonial life under these conditions is why "freedom of speech, or of the press" was written into the Bill of Rights before the right "to keep and bear arms." The forefathers understood that to ward off tyranny, the people must have access to the pen as well as the sword.