While puttering around the city today, helping Shannon move back into her apartment and doing all sorts of errands, my brain kept returning to the sheer number of changes that have taken place since September 11th. Tonight, I learned that there’s now proof of the change that I’ve suspected has taken place, and which scares me the most: nearly half of America now believes that the First Amendment goes too far in protecting free speech. Of course, there’s a certain amount of irony in that — people criticizing their government for extending them the right to speak out against their government. Makes your brain hurt if you think about it enough…

There is one other finding of the poll that may put all this in the right light, though: 63% of people judged that the American educational system does either a fair or poor job of teaching students about the freedoms of the First Amendment. Perhaps if people were taught more about the importance of free speech, they’d appreciate it all the more.