Do not Restrict the Words Just Watch Them.

Usually in life when thinking about the present it usually causes you to refer back to the past. Today’s topic is free speech and if limits should be placed on it during war time. This an issue that America has been dealing with ever since the late 1700’s starting with Alien and Sedition Acts .These laws made it a crime to write, print, utter or publish anything false, scandalous and malicious against the government of the United States, house of the Congress of the United States or the president of the United States. Violations of the first amendment like this continued with the civil war, WWI, and WII. During these wars if you wrote or said anything negative against America regarding the war you were likely subject to a penalty of prison or a fine. These were all blatant violations of the first amendment.

Now America is faced with a new war time issue, the patriot act. My knowledge of the patriot act is not vast, but I do know at any time the government wants they can hear my conversations. This is quit scary in many ways but I do not think it is in any way a violation of our free speech. If you’re a terrorist then yes it violates your right to tell your comrade to blow up the plain over the telephone. However this does not restrict our freedom of speech.

Through out this war people have been speaking out against it and no consequences have been given out for it (as far as I know, which I probably don’t so feel free to argue). In fact I think that you will find more anti-war demonstrations than pro ones(well at least on cranky docs).So we see that our speech is very free, the fact that the government has the ability to hear what we say doesn’t mean they are controlling it.

The point of this blog though isn’t whether or not we have free speech during war time, rather it is whether or not we should be able to use it to its fullest extent during war time. My opinion on this isn’t really relevant to that of political reasoning. I do know that it is our right to speak out against the government as we please, so politically and technically I say no restrictions should be put on our speech during time of war seeing that it is our right to say whatever the hell we want.

However I do say we definitely should think very hardly before we exercise this right from an ethical stand point when we speak out giants the war. As we know many soldiers have died in this war on terror and many soldiers are still fighting it. This obviously resulted in many families grieving over lost son’s daughter’s sister’s brother’s mothers and father’s. These soldiers that are still fighting in Iraq would like to believe they are fighting for your protection and so do their families. If your relative or you were fighting in a war would you like hearing that the war they are fighting and dying for is a joke, I think not.

I am not saying we should not be allowed to say these things. I am simply to watch how they are said. So when I see a slide show like this (http://know-our-enemy.net/make-no-mistake/index.htm) showing a mother crying over her son’s grave and on top of this photo it says “mission accomplished. It doesn’t make me think about the negative effects of war rather I think that how this mother must feel when she sees the tears she is pouring out for her son are being used to mock thee very cause he died for. One should thus realize that our fine president and government do not really care for these anti-war ads and likely will never see them.

To end I will again simply say that it is always our right to say as we please, but when you say it during these emotional times consider whom you will displease.