Argument Against Freedom of Speech
People who live in North America, think of it as a basic human right, but now we may be in danger of losing this right. The threat is not from external enemies, but from within. People have fought and died for this right and now a generation of young adults is being raised not to believe in freedom of speech but rather that they should have freedom from the speech that they dislike. This is a threat to our society.
This is highly common in Europe, Russia, and China where the country’s sensitivity-based censorship attempts to ban anything unpleasant or hateful, it even bans criticism of religion. The United States is not new to the rising trend of suppression of speech, or what is sometimes called “Political corrections”. This is particularly happening at American universities and colleges. Highly restricted speech code is now the norm on campuses. on March 6, 2019, a conservative activist reported named Hayden Williams was attacked while recruiting students for Turning Point USA at the University of California-Berkeley. Months later, people in Hawaii were told they could not hand out the constitution to their fellow students and that they could not protest NSA policies outside the school’s free speech zone. F.I.R.E. took these colleges to court for reasons like this, but the fact that they had too, shows us how bad it has become.
The newest threat to the First Amendment comes from something called “ Trigger warnings” which is alerts that warn students that they are about to read or hear something that triggers a negative emotional response! New demands for trigger warnings are popping up on campuses across the country. People against the First Amendment encourage students to scrutinize speech for “Microaggressions” which is any statement that might be constructed as racially insensitive, sexist, classist, otherwise un PG. Campuses are policing students on what they should and should not say.
Other Americans criticized F.I.R.E.’s viewpoint by saying that the First Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated and a threat to liberty and privacy. Paul Denlinger CEO and founder of ChinaBridge Marketing makes a critical observation: a free-society is not necessarily a healthy society. Paul Denlinger also said, “Too much free speech causes distraction, superstition, rumor-mongering and lost productivity”.
Arguments against free speech are made only by people who fear the loss of control over others. When the First Amendment was adopted in 1791, there were no communications devices remotely like the iPhone, laptop, or the radio and many of the advances of modern communication were far from being invented. Nevertheless, the communications devices of today that are easily accessible are vastly different from the ones our Founding Fathers had, and they didn’t have to weigh the risks of one man offending thousands from behind a screen. This is the opposite that is needed. Americans are the only ones who can make a difference by not staying quiet and by speaking out.
