The issue of free speech is a very hot topic in current events today, with issues like the anti-gay demonstrations going on at military funerals and the recent anti-Semitic remarks made by John Galliano or the historic overthrow in Cairo. Speech is an amazing thing, it allows us to interact with the living things around us, allows us to express our wants and needs and feelings to one and other. Words can change the course of an event as easily as the wind changes the course of a kite. Free speech allows us to make history, to start wars or to stop them, to build governments or topple them. With out it amazing things like the historic overthrow in Egypt, or the birth of our own wonderful country would not be possible. Unfortunately however not all speech is helpful and productive speech. Terrible things are said everyday, awful things that are ugly and hurtful. And yet despite the hurt these words can cause, we as a country have absolutely no right to stop or restrict the expression that the freedom of speech allows, this is of course excluding the laws already in place to protect people from the excessive emotional abuse of some speech. We cannot however stop a person from expressing their opinions no matter how screwed up they might be. Doing so is just plain unconstitutional and would break the very foundation of this country. And if we do decide to start censoring speech who gets to decide what we are and are not allowed to say? The powerful that's who, and when you put a few people in charge of something so powerful a freedom as speech then, they will eventually abuse that power and use it to gain power over other things we consider our fundamental rights, until eventually we are living in a dictatorship. Think about this for a minute, all dictatorships from Hitler to al-Bashir have one thing in common: they all censor the masses allowing only the speech they speech they deem good. If we start to infringe upon that crucial freedom of speech we are starting down a very dark and scary path that will end nowhere good, no matter how good the intentions behind that first step. In my opinion that path leads to a place very reminiscent of Orwell's 1984.
Signing of the Constitution 1787
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Freedom of Speech
The issue of free speech is a very hot topic in current events today, with issues like the anti-gay demonstrations going on at military funerals and the recent anti-Semitic remarks made by John Galliano or the historic overthrow in Cairo. Speech is an amazing thing, it allows us to interact with the living things around us, allows us to express our wants and needs and feelings to one and other. Words can change the course of an event as easily as the wind changes the course of a kite. Free speech allows us to make history, to start wars or to stop them, to build governments or topple them. With out it amazing things like the historic overthrow in Egypt, or the birth of our own wonderful country would not be possible. Unfortunately however not all speech is helpful and productive speech. Terrible things are said everyday, awful things that are ugly and hurtful. And yet despite the hurt these words can cause, we as a country have absolutely no right to stop or restrict the expression that the freedom of speech allows, this is of course excluding the laws already in place to protect people from the excessive emotional abuse of some speech. We cannot however stop a person from expressing their opinions no matter how screwed up they might be. Doing so is just plain unconstitutional and would break the very foundation of this country. And if we do decide to start censoring speech who gets to decide what we are and are not allowed to say? The powerful that's who, and when you put a few people in charge of something so powerful a freedom as speech then, they will eventually abuse that power and use it to gain power over other things we consider our fundamental rights, until eventually we are living in a dictatorship. Think about this for a minute, all dictatorships from Hitler to al-Bashir have one thing in common: they all censor the masses allowing only the speech they speech they deem good. If we start to infringe upon that crucial freedom of speech we are starting down a very dark and scary path that will end nowhere good, no matter how good the intentions behind that first step. In my opinion that path leads to a place very reminiscent of Orwell's 1984.
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