Monday, September 7, 2015
Morals vs Rights
The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..." As I was watching the case studies, I realized there was no choice, but for the court to rule people like Franken and Dr. Pierce innocent. After all, they were only practicing their freedom of speech. The whole time, all I could think about was morals and ethics. They should not be questioning the First Amendment, but should be questioning these people's morals. If we did not have the First Amendment, how do you think these case studies would be different? In the Dr. Pierce case study, if terrorist attacks had not occurred, do you think the case still would have been taken to court? What is the turning point at which people start questioning our rights? While we were watching the case study on Prussian Blue, I could not help but notice laughter breaking out across the classroom. People in my class thought it was funny because we live in a society that is very accepting of differences, so to see those girls writing songs about white supremacy, my classmates could not help but laugh. How would everyone's reactions differ if we lived in the South in the 1800s?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great post Megan. Since I wasn't in class to see the reaction (it's always laughter) I am so glad you posted this. I'm especially impressed with your thinking about the approach to questioning of the Bill of Rights rather than individuals ethics and morals. Thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteMegan, I think you brought up a great point about how it would be a completely different situation if the first amendment was not a factor. I do not think that most of these cases would be brought to court if we did not have the first amendment. On Prussian Blue, I think our class was laughing due to pure amazement that there are still people who have that skewed mindset in our society. I don't think that we know how to react to that kind of severe and blatant racism.
ReplyDelete