Many people know me to be a very outspoken individual. I am a natural debater and programmer who breaks down problems into smaller, more logical pieces. I like to get reliable sources from a variety of locations before I decide an opinion for the problem, and then look to find a solution for it.
This makes me very open minded to different perspectives, because I believe that everyone has something to teach us. Since different people come from different backgrounds, cultures, experiences, and knowledge bases, I enjoy listening to them about what they think about certain things and get a chance to learn more about people and the world in general. I believe that everyone should have equal rights to do the things they want to do (as long as it’s positive), and I believe that people should be heard for what they believe is right, because solutions can come from the simplest of places.
But there’s a price that comes with this freedom that we Americans are so proud of. We fought for this freedom with the lives of so many in the past. We worked hard as a nation to gain it. We put the best minds at the time together to decide what we wanted to declare as ours—and the freedom of speech was the first thing we wanted. Yet we, as modern Americans, are using this right to speak our minds completely incorrectly.
Any official debater knows that there are more than two perspectives or opinions to a problem, and that it is important to know as much about one side as it is to know about the other. In fact, competition debaters must prepare debates for both the pro or con side of a subject (along with rebuttals against the opposite’s side) and the side that they will publically debate is decided before the competition with a flip of the coin. Good debaters also know how to identify the reliability and credibility of the sources they get information from, to ensure that it is accurate and useful. They also know how to identify and rebut against fallacies (or misconceptions of information that are worded so it sounds as if it supports your side) when their opponent uses them.
I’ve seen too many people who try to start debates over something when they clearly don’t know what a debate really is. Instead, they argue that their side is rightand no information from anyone else will convince them otherwise. First of all, this is extremely closed-minded, and this kind of attitude will not help evolve our society to understand more, but instead make us more stubborn. When we are more stubborn about our opinions, we like to use the defense of “freedom of speech” when others try to give us information that proves the opposite of what we believe. In a sense, we use the first amendment almost like a wild card when we don’t have anything else to say.
Our stubbornness leads us to get ‘proof’ from wherever we can that seems to support our side. We get information from places that are not reliable or not credible (like the study that ‘proved’ that vaccines caused autism, even though the article was discredited because the researcher who came up with the results messed with the numbers to make it look like there was a causation, when there wasn’t even a correlations, or connection, between vaccines and autism) and use them to try to prove our side. We believe that, if one source tells us one fact, that it must be true. Instead of looking at multiple sources from different biases, we just try to believe one.
Another closed-minded thing that we do in the name of the first amendment. Sometimes, we get information that is not completely true because we heard it from someone and assumed it was right the exact way that they said it and we never go to find the original source to get the full story the way it was supposed to be. Without the original source, we pass this untrue information along and it gets worse the more it passes (think of the game “Telephone”).
Other times we don’t even look up information, but instead we start using fallacies to attack the person who doesn’t agree with us. Or we try to use fallacies to make our side sound better; for example, a slippery slope fallacy would be “if we make gay marriage legal, next we’re going to make polygamy legal, then we’re going to make bestiality legal, then everything’s going to be legal.” We use these kinds of fallacies when we don’t have any information, but try to use logical loops that make it sound like it’s worse than you think.
If people disagree,we believe that we can just explain that we have the right to say whatever we want, which also makes us incredibly insensitive to others. We believe that the freedom of speech can bubble anything we say into a safe bubble that doesn’t have the ability to hurt others. I’ve heard high schoolers at my practicums insult someone, and when someone tells them they shouldn’t have said that, they throw their hands up and say, “freedom of speech,” as if it takes back the insult they just gave.
This use of our right makes it seem as though our forefathers were trying to provoke bullying and a lack of empathy among our youth and others. Yet, if others use this kind of tactic against the bullies, it’s not right. This happens in the adult world, too. Donald Trump can say whatever he wants at his rallies, but if an African American or Muslim says something in his rally that Trump does not agree with, they are removed—sometimes very violently. This makes the freedom of speech unequal, meaning that only certain people have the right to say what they want, but others do not.
One of the most frustrating things I find in arguments in the sake of the first amendment, is the fact that we are using all of these debate no-no’s while we also are not trying to decide on a solution. I can’t tell you how many times I see these arguments about something that people saw on some media, and all they do is state their opinion and then other people jump in to attack their opinion.
Not only are these frustrating because no one is debating or discussing the topic with any actual information about the real story while also mistreating each other to come out on the ‘right’ side of the argument, but no one steps back from the argument and says, “You know what? You’re right, this is a real issue that we’re looking at. Instead of trying to decide who of us is right, we should probably find a solution to the problem with the information that both of our sides have.” So instead of moving forward with a new understanding of the topic, these arguments often become more like complaints. There are no discussions or actual exchanging of information for a probable middle ground. It’s all just a tug-of-war between his side and her side and they just keep tugging and no one ever takes and no one ever gives. So no one ever wins.
That’s great that we have the freedom to say what we want to say, but we’re so caught up with what we can do with this freedom that we take for granted, that we never question whether we should do it. What’s ironic about this whole problem is that the Bill of Rights was created with Great England in mind. Our forefathers wanted to build our government around enabling ourselves to work against a controlling government like when we were a colony of Britain. The first amendment—the freedom of speech—was created to give people the freedom to speak out against the government.This is contrary to, for example, Russia and their colonies—where “Putin memes” are outlawed and anyone who is caught speaking against the government could be arrested. This kind of situation is what the amendment is supposed to protect us from. Instead, people utilize it as an excuse to have the right to say anything that they want to splash our opinions on. In the long run, it has made many people selfish, close minded, insensitive to others, at an unequal disadvantage to one another, immature in their use of facts and logic, and they become filled with the idea that their opinion is more important than their critical problem-solving skills.
