People should be ashamed…
at this article. To summarize, the majority of people know jack shit about what’s in the first amendment. Now I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a big history or political or legal guru at all, but come on! I was absolutely astonished that only 2/3 of the people surveyed could think of freedom of speech. And 3/4…that’s right, 3/4…of the people could not name more than 1 of the 5 freedoms listed (for the record, they are speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition, in short form). I can see people not remembering assembly and petition court, as they aren’t ones people talk about much in the media. But how do you grow up in this country w/o knowing freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press?? I mean, people always seem to love referencing their freedom of speech to incorrectly state they have the right to say anything at any time to anyone. Do they just not realize that it’s part of the first amendment? If you were asked before reading this to name the five freedoms granted in the first amendment, how many could you name? All of them? None? For myself, I could have named the 3 I mentioned, then kicked myself for not remembering freedom of assembly (or whatever it’s properly called), and felt ignorant for not knowing the freedom to petition.
Posted by: Fuzzy Bunny | 03-02-2006 | 11:03 AM
Posted in: General
Yeah, people don’t know thing one about their rights. Which is one of the real problems this country faces. People can’t be expected to stand up for their rights when they don’t even know about the ones they have.
But if you really want to get the job done and make the world a better place, we should truncate the First Ammendment after the first five words: “Congress shall make no law” period. At least this way, they won’t be able to make matters any worse!
We should have the right to say anything at any time to anyone. Short of telling someone to kill or harm someone else explain why we shouldn’t?
Well, Lemmy, I think you just answered your own question…
Not at all. “Say anything at any time to anyone” implies that we should be limited in the speech we use towards other people. I think the quote is trying to say that we shouldn’t, for example, use certain “offensive” words to certain people. I’m looking for a clarification as to what we shouldn’t be able to say in Sara’s opinion. I just threw the example of ordering a hit on someone as a far out example, but I don’t think that’s what the quote was referring to.
Yeah I heard about this on Glenn Beck in the morning and was laughing my ass off as people were naming more Simpsons characters than amendments. I think I could have named 4 or 5, not in order though.
Lemmy:
actually i was referring to things like yelling “fire” in a movie theater, which is illegal (unless of course there’s a fire). but threats would fall into the illegal category too. I was not talking about offensive language or insulting people or whatnot.
I like to comment on previous posts in the most current post to throw people off. But seriously Sara(no h), i am jealous of your ability to play DDR because it seems like I can only ever play that game under certain circumstances and so i never get to play. I know waking up earlier than you have to in the morning is hard, but I find waking up to play video games a lot easier than waking up to go work (even if you have to work when you are done playing)