A friend of mine wrote this and asked me to post it on my blog, and since I happen to completely agree with everything said, I told him that I’d be happy to. Without further ado,
On Free Speech
Dear people of America,
Since the election of Barack Hussein Obama a year ago, and to some extent for two or three years before that, our American right to free speech has been repeatedly violated by both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats tirelessly work to silence any public opposition to their cause in the media or in the courtrooms, while the Republicans openly attack and denounce anything that is associated with the Democratic party in a non-negative way. Both parties do their best to prohibit the opposing party from presenting their opinions in any public forum, all the while claiming that it is the other party that is the one who is taking from them their Constitutional right to free speech. The political chaos that this causes comes from a misunderstanding of the 1st Amendment in our Constitution. You see, free speech is not something that you can claim yourself while denying to others. While this may seem obvious and something that every sane American would nod their heads in agreement to, it is rarely practiced. We Americans have somehow begun to believe that we have a right to not be offended. Well, sorry to Fox News and the “Gay Rights” movement, but you guys can’t yell foul every time someone does something that offends you. Fox, Obama has the right to call you names and ridicule you if he wants to. Gay people, Judge Roy Moore has a right to publicly display his Christian faith while administrating your case in court. Does it offend you? Sure. But your demanding him to take down a personal plaque of the Ten Commandments and to stop public prayer in the courtroom offends him (and directly violates the 1st Amendment’s religious freedom clause). You cannot demand that he not offend you because in doing so, you are depriving him of the very right you claim in practice to posses – to remain unoffended. Everything everyone does is offensive to someone, it is simply a part of life. As an American citizen, I have a right to offend you.
It is an enormous logical fallacy to claim that the right to offend is offensive and therefore needs to be abolished, as that would simply be exercising the very right that you are trying to eliminate! The right to free speech granted to us by our political forefathers must imply a right to offend. I have a right to offend you, you have the right to offend me, it can be done no other way. If we were not allowed to offend one another, our government would be gradually and eventually replaced by an oppressive dictatorship, since no body of citizens would ever be allowed to offend the government by voicing their disagreements with it’s policies. This is the very thing that Fox News has been doing (I am not here to discuss whether or not they are right in their assertions, just their right to make them) towards the Obama administration, which resulted in Obama’s attempted repression of their rights to free speech as a result of his administration’s supposed right to remain unoffended, which led to Fox’s denial of Obama’s right to free speech as a result of their supposed right to remain unoffended… see the problem here? That cycle of plays out daily, if not hourly, between the various political influences of today, bringing only chaos and dissension to the nation. Lines are being drawn, either side of which is labeled either Democrat or Conservative, almost as if the nation is heading itself towards another civil war. America must learn that we have to be allowed to offend one another unhindered. We must learn tolerance, and not the tolerance that the liberals have that tells us to tolerate all points of view – unless that point of view involves intolerance. No, we must learn to tolerate even those who cannot tolerate us. Only then will we truly be the Americans that our forefathers fought and died for.
-Publius
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Politics, free speech, 1st amendment, the constitution, the constitution of the united states of america, religon, society, Publius, The Federalist Papers | Leave a Comment »


