Part 5 of the Build an Ark series by Education Independence. By Lauren Gideon, Director of Government Relations, Education Independence.
Building is not a single action—or, for the context of this conversation, it is not a single verb. It is a set of civic activities, the formative work through which free people construct independent spaces and defend them from encroachment. In this installment of the Build an Ark series, Education Independence examines the five civilization-building actions protected by the First Amendment: submit, speak, publish, convene, and defend. Together, these verbs map the jurisdictions the state cannot enter, and they articulate the building skills through which education independence is constructed, sustained, and defended within the economy of freedom.
Within our theme “We Must Build an Ark,” there is a structure: a subject, a transitive verb, and a direct object. Our activity is building. But building requires different skills depending on what is being built. The skills necessary to build a house are not the skills necessary to build a family, a community, or a culture. Different kinds of building require different kinds of formative action. So what are the formative activities through which we build a durable structure capable of preserving education independence through cultural instability?
What our founders understood is that a free people requires jurisdictions—spaces of formation, conscience, memory, community, and lawful dissent—that the state cannot enter without violating the very nature of what it means to be human. These jurisdictions are not protected because the state is generous. They are protected because the rights and responsibilities that define them are endowed by the Creator and inherent in our humanity. The state did not institute these boundaries. It can only acknowledge them or violate them.
What Are the Five Building Verbs of the First Amendment?
The First Amendment protects five civilization-building actions—submit, speak, publish, convene, and defend—each operating within a jurisdiction the state cannot legitimately enter. Below, we examine the five verbs that those jurisdictions protect and what it means to build within them.
Religion: What Does It Mean to Submit?
The free exercise clause protects the jurisdiction of conscience, the domain where the individual stands accountable to an authority higher than the state. The verb here is submit—acknowledging that reality and authority exist outside the self, and that the individual is responsible for coming into conformity with that order.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Augustine called this the ordo amoris, the ordered loves. To submit is to love rightly: to pursue what is real and true, reckon with its obligations, and conform life to those obligations. None of these steps of alignment can be compelled. An independent space for education cannot be built on disordered consciences any more than a house can be built on sand. Submit comes first because everything else depends on it.
Speech: What Does It Mean to Speak?
The free speech clause protects the jurisdiction of thought, the sphere where ideas are pursued, tested, and articulated. The verb here is speak, and the classical tradition divides it into three disciplines: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.
“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”
- Grammar names things as they are.
- Dialectic teaches us to reason well, to follow truth to its conclusions, and to recognize when an argument has gone wrong.
- Rhetoric expresses truth in ways that move others toward it.
You cannot speak rightly without all three, and you cannot develop all three without freedom. The independent education domain is not built in silence. It is built through minds formed to speak rightly, teaching other minds to do the same.
Press: What Does It Mean to Publish?
The free press clause protects the jurisdiction of memory, the sphere where ideas are committed to the permanent record and released into time. The verb here is publish—an act of intellectual courage that says: here is what we believe to be true, committed to the permanent record, to be examined, contested, and either vindicated or corrected across generations.
“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press.”
A movement that does not publish its own canon will be defined by those who do. Education independence must commit its vision to the permanent record and trust that truth, examined honestly, will vindicate itself.
Assembly: What Does It Mean to Convene?
The assembly clause protects the jurisdiction of convention, the sphere where free people gather voluntarily around shared truth and shared commitment. The verb here is convene, which is not merely to occupy the same space, but to gather with purpose around a shared vision of what education is for, who holds authority over it, and what is worth passing on.
“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
You cannot compel a convention. You can only compel attendance. Mere attendance is not the same as voluntary, purposeful convening.
Petition: What Does It Mean to Defend?
The petition clause protects the jurisdiction of lawful defense, the sphere where free people face the state directly and demand accountability without violence. The verb here is defend.
“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Nehemiah understood this. When opposition came against the wall, he did not put down the shovel. He picked up the sword and kept building. The sword did not replace the shovel—it made the building possible. The independent education community does not carry the sword of steel, but the sword of argument: reasoned, published, and accountable to the public. Defense and construction are not opposites. In hostile territory, they are the same activity.
How Do the Five Verbs Work Together?
The five verbs do not operate independently. They are an ecosystem—each one feeding, requiring, and reinforcing the others in a specific order that cannot be reversed without consequence:
- You cannot speak what you have not first submitted to.
- You cannot publish what you have not first articulated through speech.
- You cannot convene around what has not been published and preserved.
- You cannot defend what you have not first convened around.
This is why the First Amendment is not a list of five unrelated freedoms. It is a single integrated protection of the ecosystem through which free people build independently. The founders did not enumerate these freedoms arbitrarily. They named the verbs of civilization—the activities without which no independent space within society can be built, sustained, or defended.
Submit. Speak. Publish. Convene. Defend. Together, they are what building looks like.
What Does It Mean to Build for Flourishing?
Building is not a single action. It is a set of constituent activities, each protecting and feeding the others, each operating within a jurisdiction the state cannot legitimately enter. Builders do not manufacture flourishing directly—they cultivate the conditions in which flourishing becomes possible.
The family that submits to truth, speaks it clearly, publishes it faithfully, convenes around it deliberately, and defends it courageously is not guaranteed to see the full harvest. But it is faithfully building something that lasts—something capable of carrying truth, goodness, and beauty across generations in a society that would otherwise consume them.
That something is the ark. And that is where we are going next.
Frequently Asked Questions
A: Education independence is the conviction that the sacred pursuit of education exists outside the jurisdiction of the state. It holds that parents, not the government, bear the authority and responsibility for the formation of their children.
A: Building spaces of independence consists of five constituent activities protected by the First Amendment: submitting to truth above the state, speaking through grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, publishing an independent canon, convening voluntary communities of formation, and defending those jurisdictions from state overreach. Together, these activities constitute the economy of freedom through which an independent educational space is constructed and sustained.
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