Protecting the First Ammendment

Gunther Spore

Mr.Kubiak

AP English 3

17 January 2015

Blog #1

My opinion on the first amendment is that censorship of what people say out loud or write in books is wrong. I do not believe that the government should have anything to do with regulating what people say, no matter what they are saying. I do believe the government has a legitimate duty to regulate commercial speech to protect consumers but other than that I do not understand why our government would censor what people have to say. Even hateful speech has to be protected because it is someone’s opinion, if we start to censor what people have to say, no matter how evil it might be, then it opens the door for censorship of everything. The argument brought forth by Derek Bok was particularly interesting to me. In his case a confederate flag was hung on a college campus, insulting people who believed this to be a symbol for slavery. Some members of the community demanded that the school make the people who put the flag up take it down: "To disapprove of a particular form of communication, however, is not enough to justify prohibiting it" (Bok 70). I think this quote is spot on, too often today people’s feelings get hurt by what other people believe so they try to have them censored. The problem with censoring one action is where do we stop? If we ban what is said in books or online why don't we ban people on what they say? In my personal life I cannot think of an instance of when I was censored for posting something online via Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. I have had friends though that have posted stuff about the rivalry between Strake and STH that have been called into the dean’s office and had their post asked to be erased. As a minor and a student, I can see our schools stance on the subject of what gets posted online, but that being said I do not agree with it. For our school to monitor us in an area that has nothing to do with school is creepy and intrusive to me. Part of the process of forming young men is learning that your actions have consequences and it is better to learn that lesson growing up than when you’re in the real world, and for Strake to censor what we say online is depriving us of that lesson.