{"id":762,"date":"2008-05-22T21:50:06","date_gmt":"2008-05-23T01:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/?p=762"},"modified":"2008-05-22T21:50:06","modified_gmt":"2008-05-23T01:50:06","slug":"freedom-of-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2008\/05\/22\/freedom-of-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom of Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

I see two things done a lot that really bother me, because people get very<\/em> into their arguments, not realizing that they’re entirely wrong. Both happen to concern the First Amendment and freedom of speech. It might be best to begin by quoting it (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n

Congress shall make no law<\/strong> respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press<\/strong>; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<\/blockquote>\n

The first thing I see happen is somewhat difficult to concisely define, but essentially, some public figure will make some sort of idiotic statement that ends up causing great offense to one group or another. Some people get upset and request an apology and a retraction of the statement. The person who made the remark, though, refuses to apologize because of his right to freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

I suppose they’re right: they do have the right to say offensive things. But it’s utterly irrelevant to criticism? Actually, quite the opposite is true! Freedom of speech is what gives others the right to criticize your<\/em> freedom of speech! It always struck me as a non-sensical argument, to vehemently “invoke” your Constitutional right when no one was trying to encroach on it in the first place.<\/p>\n

I see my second pet peeve even more often! Freedom of speech refers to government actions<\/em>. If you start yelling profanities in school and the teacher tells you to stop, it’s not violating your Constitutional rights. When you vandalize Wikipedia and I undo your edit, I’m not violating your Constitutional rights. When the (private) school newspaper realizes that your article was plagiarized and bans you from submitting articles for the rest of the year, they’re not violating the First Amendment. If the government’s not doing it, it’s not a First Amendment violation!<\/p>\n

It boggles my mind how many people miss these points!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I see two things done a lot that really bother me, because people get very into their arguments, not realizing that they’re entirely wrong. Both happen to concern the First Amendment and freedom of speech. It might be best to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living","category-politics","category-rants-raves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}