Any society can will inevitably fail at achieving the freedoms previously listed if they do not try to expand it's horizons further. Freedom is always in peril, and only mankind can save it. We must all try not only to grow our technological knowledge, but also try to understand ourselves better as individuals and to criticize and improve the world around us. Bob Dylan once said that he not busy being born, is busying dying. We must challenge ourselves and our world around us, and try to promote growth in the individual's spirit, knowledge, and ultimately freedom.

Society often reacts negatively to change, as change results in power shifts and often creates damage to the dominate group. One step forward is often also one step backward: progress may be for the better, but it always has negative effects on the individual or the environment. Snowmobiles have created a great new form of recreation that give many individuals a lot of pleasure. That progress comes at the cost of air pollution deep in our forests, and silence disrupted by the roar of engines. Similarly, a new social welfare program means more bureaucracy, regulation, and taxes. An individual will get out of poverty, but at the same time that individual and others will be giving up more of their rights to government.

The greatest protector of those who desire change is the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution. It's protection for Speech, Assembly, and Petition of Government allows us to freely persuade, organize, and obtain change. Change is not easy, but most change in our society comes through such peaceful manners, that should be or are protected absolutely. Nobody should ever be penalized in our system for their beliefs or speech, no matter how extreme that my be. After all, provactive speech often is the best speech: it forces people to think about change. As Justice Anthony Blackwell once said, The First Amendment knows no false idea.

There are many groups that I dislike their political positions. I do not like John Ashcroft, the Ku Klux Klan, the Residents Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, but I believe none of these groups should be punished for my dislike of them. Maybe they are right, and maybe I am wrong. It would not be the first time that I've changed my political position, and I am sure you have changed your politics many times. Growth changes how we think, and it fundamentally alters how we act over time. Few people act the same way when they 20 years of age and when they are 42 years of age.

A world where peaceful challenges to the dominate ideology are prohibited, is one that will die in it's ignorance and will lead to violent solutions to problems that were previously solvable by peaceful means. At the individual level, an individual who fails to challenge himself will find himself doing little but dying—without a deep spiritual search and attempt to find meaning to the sometimes senseless world around us, we will all become nihilists living a world of nothingness.