Safety Valve

The continuing episodes of protest and dissent in the United States have their basis in the First Amendment to the Constitution, a great safety valve that is lacking in most other nations of the world.  The First Amendment creates a sanctuary around the citizen's beliefs.  His ideas, his conscience, his convictions are his own concern, not the government's.

-- William Orville Douglas (1898 - 1980), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court with a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, Points of Rebellion (1970) p. 3