“The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”

To think is the beginning of thought, beware of government/church indoctrination of socialism on a mass scale. 

The beginning? Each and every, any and all rights are inherent in and inalienable with a beings existence. Consistent with matter, I guess the nobility of man's rights are first recognized as a faculty of birth. In a representative republic at the "laws of nature and of nature's God" (Declaration of Independence), the body politic's sole authorization is to administer said unalienable rights (not sovereign individuals) as a guaranteed system of justice. Carnal man has long left that system of Constitutional liberty and justice for all for/with a tyrannical dimension where rights have to be protected from government (2nd Amendment for example — no longer representative of rights).