The First Amendment Polarization

                In today’s America, everything offends somebody. The government is faced with the tough task of protecting the peace while at the same time upholding the First Amendment as written by our founding fathers. But the public had started to cling to the idea that the individual has a right to not be offended, and if they are offended, the accused “offender” is clearly in the wrong. Thus the idea of censorship was born. However, we must make sure not to go to either extreme on the polarized First Amendment debate; we cannot and should not censor everything and we cannot and should not protect every form of free speech. In terms of what we should not protect under the First Amendment, I agree with Lawrence in “On Racist Speech.” Racist speech and other direct verbal attacks should be regulated because they pose an imminent threat to the peace. Simply because the history of racial tension in America, it should not be protected under the First Amendment as harmful speech. We can accurately distinguish between harmful and offensive by looking at the effects of the speech. Harmful words carry a danger of imminently disturbing the peace. Offensive speech merely contradicts someone’s personal beliefs. Like “fighting words” or words that indicate “clear and present danger,” racist speech has a history of inciting violence, and is therefore harmful rather than just offensive. As Lawrence says, “Everyone concerned with these issues must find ways to engage actively in actions that resist and counter the racist ideas that we would have the First Amendment protect” (Lawrence 65). But offensive speech is another matter entirely. As previously mentioned, modern society operates to some extent under the delusion that some speech should not be tolerated because it offends people. The proponents of this argument miss part of the point of free speech; we have the right to disagree with others. Humans are always going to disagree with one another. That is why I disagree with the ideas of “Why the Pledge of Allegiance Should Be Revised.” We shouldn’t take the time, trouble, and extensive effort and uproar merely to satisfy the offended. For these reasons, and because of the mere definition of offensive, I do not believe we should censor speech deemed offensive. I found the position of Bok in “Protecting the Freedom of Speech on the Campus” to be very persuasive: “it is extremely difficult to decide whether a particular communication is offensive enough to warrant prohibition” (Bok 67).  So while harmful speech should not be protected by freedom of expression, the censorship of offensive speech would violate the basic principles of the First Amendment and would be extremely difficult to distinguish.