Section D

Words are the collective forces of the universe; within them is the power of life and death. Those holding this power are charged with the responsibility of using their powers for good. The right to free speech is not a right held by most people in the world. And yet there are still conflicts that arise from things that people say and write. I believe that this right should not be taken away from American citizens. I say that because taking away this right would cost more than just the right of privacy. The first amendment states that Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. This basically means that Americans have the right to express their feelings whether written or verbally expressed. This right extends to the proclamation of your religion and the right to protest peacefully.

Taking away this right would also mean that there would need to be laws in place for those who made statements that the American government deemed as inappropriate. This in turn would make the rate of people going to jail sharply increase. The motto of the United States of America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. America was founded upon freedom taking away this basic right would be the first step on the slippery slope back to the very oppression that the founding fathers were trying to escape when they founded they founded this country. If the government put limitation on the first amendment then it would negatively affect the American government. Recently there was an Anti-Islamic bomber that bombed a government building in Norway. When asked about his motives behind the bombing he referred to works of a conservative blogger. He said he used her works in his manifesto defending his religion. In response to this an American journalist wrote that the conservative blogger was responsible for the attack and she had the blood of those deceased from the attack. The conservative bloggers are in no way responsible for the attacks in Norway. If you placed the blame on the bloggers then you would have to blame chemistry teachers for every student who has ever used a homemade bomb.

Text can be taken many different ways depending on the mind state that the reader is in. Depending on the tone that the reader reads the blog can change the way that words are emphasized. This changes the way that the reader interprets the texts. An Anti-Islamic terrorist is obviously in a different mind state than that of a typical American person. The conservative bloggers did not write the blog in expectation that the terrorist would use it as a manual for terrorism. The American bloggers were speaking to a different group of people in a completely different part of the world. The terrorism merely used her ideologies for their own destructive purposes. The writer cannot be blamed for the connotations that different readers had. The responsibility lies with the reader. Anything that is written is left to interpretation the true meaning is only known by the author, and can only be discovered by consulting the author of said article. It can be said that the Anti-Islamic terrorist would have committed a violent crime against humanity with or without this article being written because the offender was angry. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are two items that go hand in hand. They are two freedoms that accomplish the same thing except with a different method. If the government altered this amendment then they would also have to amend the peoples right to privacy. This includes phone taps and internet filters. Taking away the right to free speech would mean that America would need to place monitors on the internet for bloggers and word finder sensor filters for the phone lines. Taking away the freedom of speech would be more of a burden for the American government than an accomplishment. Bloggers online have the right to state their opinion on different topics in America. The government could never possibly monitor all that bloggers do online and should never try. The internet is like an open field for which bloggers are like farmers planting words and ideas. These words and ideas go to the metaphorical market for people to read and shop for ideas and what they do with them is their business. The only time that the government should intervene in this market is when the fruits planted are deliberate bad fruits. An example of this would be the videos that terrorist leak about how to be a successful terrorist videos on YouTube. These posts are the ones that the government needs to read and eliminate. The difference between the two scenarios is the intent off the two articles. The conservative

blogger was communicating to convey her ideas about government policies. The terrorist video was recorded to spread a sense of terror and to spread fear and pain. Although I believe that the government should not take away the freedom of speech I think that this right is only extended to the American population. The terrorists that are posting videos about their expositions should be monitors and eradicated. But for those normal American citizens the right should be extended. The government needs to monitor what is acceptable for the American internet. Videos such as the terrorist YouTube videos mentioned earlier the government should delete and track down the source. These videos come from a source outside the US government; therefore they are outside the first amendment. These are what the government should be focusing on stopping because the spread of these videos would have a direct effect on action of those Americans whose mind state is outside of the typical content American. Otherwise American bloggers should maintain their right to freely express themselves in the cyber world.