That's the voting rights part. Freedom of speech gives you the right to tell your representatives how you want them to represent you. If you choose not to get involved in a contested issue, your representatives will think that the issue is not important to you. They will then prioritize their efforts accordingly. As far as everyone else is concerned, an opinion you don't act upon is indistinguishable from not having an opinion at all.

Freedom of speech makes representative politics a market, where effort is a key currency. You may dislike markets in general or think they are inappropriate in some situations, but they are an inevitable consequence of individual liberties.

Our nation would be a better place if people wrote their congressman more, and posted on social media less.

What about a social media site for congressmen where you can only, like / vote / comment if you are a verified constituent and every post is linked to a real identity. And moderation was done wikipedia style. As in a comment may be removed, but you can see why it was removed and it's content and author can still be viewed via history or something similar.

Why would said Congress folks care?

Bold of you to assume the congresscritters are interested in reading the letters written by constituents. At the local and state level I've had _some_ success in getting in touch with my local reps but when it comes to the federal level? Nothing. Every email I've ever sent is responded with the generic "Representative foobar is working for all americans blah blah blah..." followed by the generic press release they send out every few months.

It is the job of congress to write up and pass laws concerning matters I will never understand, and for which I am grateful that I am not obliged to understand.

Ideally, but what if those representatives and all of their credible opponents are doing a bad job and have been for years?

Then that's the way the cookie crumbles.

What do you want me to say? Throw away the constitution because congressmen are idiots, lets do direct democracy and all pretend we're experts on everything? Nobody can be informed on everything; anybody who thinks they are is obviously an obvious idiot who doesn't know his own limitations. No, direct democracy sucks for anything much larger than a canton, and certainly for any group with interests as serious and diverse as America's. What we have now is far from perfect, but it works reasonably well and I wouldn't throw it away in exchange for a nuclear-armed ochlocracy.

The mere thought of that sends shivers up my spine.

A friend of mine is fond of a saying - ‘Democracy is the theory that the people deserve to get the government they vote for, good and hard’.