Ladies, a serious question about the U.S. First Amendment…?

The First Amendment of the US Constitution expressly protects citizens’ rights to free speech, including, but not limited to: hate speech, e.g. misogynistic, misandritic, racist speech and so forth.

Although I’m not particularly keen on hate speech, as I find it distasteful, I am a big fan of the US Constitution and feel that the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights was not written in a flippant manner. I greatly fear totalitarianism, and I fear that altering the Bill of Rights will advance the US in that direction.
Question: Should the First Amendment be altered? If so, what additional Federally protected freedoms should be confiscated from US citizens?

I would hate to live in society that doesn’t allow even the dumbest members to have a voice. I think politically correct crowd are doing America a HUGE disservice by trying to keep everything “nice and controversy free”. I think hate speech is ridicules and ignorant, but how will you know where society really is if you don’t let the morons speak too!

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No, it should stay as it is. I might loathe some of the bigoted crap that people often spew, but I don’t want to make it illegal for them to say it. Mostly because I don’t want it to be illegal for me to voice my own opinions, some of which are surely unpopular.

HOWEVER… please note that privately owned websites such as Yahoo Answers are not Congress, and as such they can make their own rules regarding what is and is not allowed. If they decide not to allow “hate speech”, then so be it, and you and I both have to follow their rules if we want to be here whether we think they’re fair or not. There is plenty that I won’t say on here out of respect for their rules, although I am perfectly free to say it elsewhere… on my own blog, maybe. Freedom of speech doesn’t extend to private groups, as much as we might want it to.

I got over this issue when I was a DJ for my college’s radio station, and they wouldn’t

allow me to play songs that had cursing in them until ater 10PM.

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I think altering it may put
congress in a bad situation cause then they have to decide what is “hate speech” and what isn’t. Than everyone and theyre mother would be in trouble. I think some people in America just need to get a better sense of ethics and values. People shouldnt have to be completely controlled by laws, we should have a good sense of right and wrong.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 11:17 am and is filed under Social Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.