Right to Opinion Quotes
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.
Adams himself, when President, led the passage of the Alien & Sedition Act which were a major restriction on freedom of speech that was on the books until Thomas Jefferson pardoned all those convicted. There were many other restrictions which over the years were wiped away by policy and court opinion.
It is ironic that Pakistan, the creation of Jinnah’s efforts, has to a great extent adopted Sharia (Islamic Law) resulting in severe curtailment of freedom of speech and thought. Professors languish in jail for not teaching the history of Muhammed in the orthodox way, people are sentenced to death for what the local mullahs regard as blasphemy—results which from Jinnah’s point of view were terrible.
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.
In 1989 the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, claimed that Salmon Rushde, a British author and Iranian native, had written a blasphemous book and should therefore be killed. Not all Muslim spiritual leaders agreed:. 6 weeks after making this statement on television, he himself was assassinated.
