Jacob Rees-Mogg Quotes
In the U.S., free speech and the press are protected by the First Amendment. It has a clarity unmatched by modern legislators and declares that 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.'
Rees-Mogg, Jacob. Opinion column. The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 2012.
Two decades later Jefferson, after his Presidency, had developed a different attitude towards the press. See {585116}.
This quotation was used ten years later by Virginia which, in convention, passed a resolution objecting to the Alien & Sedition Acts. The drafter of the original resolution was James Madison.
Striking down a law making cross burning a crime:
This was a decade before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. You can imagine the distress of Vermonters when the U. S. Constitution was written with no provision for absolute freedom of speech which they had had for a over a decade. They would not ratify the U, S, Constitution without the understanding that there would be a Bill of Rights added with the First Amendment.
Nixon’s views of free speech rights did not recognize the right of those who advocate revolution or government or system change in America. By his standard all of the Founding Fathers should not have been entitled to most of their early speeches. The Supreme Court repeatedly rejected his standard, distinguishing between speech to change or reform the government and illegal action to bring those changes about.
Jacob William Rees-Mogg is a British politician serving as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council since 2019, and who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Somerset since 2010. A member of the Conservative Party, Rees-Mogg is a social conservative.
