5 Great Reasons the First Amendment Should Be Abolished

People, people, people… I promised myself I was going to stop reading the news. Why? Because I felt as if it was driving me insane. Reading all the negativity, the hyperbole in the constantly spun rhetoric dripping out of the mouths of pundits like shit gobbled up ever-so-enthusiastically off of paper plates spray painted silver; and always hearing about what stupid thing some politician said, even though said politician is a hypocrite.

English: Sarah Palin at the Time 100 Gala in Manhattan on May 4, 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sarah Palin. It’s nice to see she’s so popular amongst conservatives, but I cannot understand why people take her seriously. Here is a person who basically quit her job to pursue bigger and better things (because it is much more lucrative making money talking out of your ass than it is serving your people for the full term you ran for). Whilst I’m no longer fond of President Obama, I really must say that Palin, in her most recent episode of letting her mouth do too much of the talking for her asshole, clearly has no concept of how organizations run. In Palin’s view, Obama should be omniscient. Of course, the IRS scandal happened on his watch. If it wasn’t on his watch, it would have been on someone’s watch. And even though the Congressional hearings on Benghazi have yielded little in the way of fruit, if anything, concerning the conspiracy to cover-up what actually occurred, people like Palin are still pushing the prevalent story. Why?

I’ll tell you why. Because of the First Amendment. Hear me out. This may be somewhat radical to some of you, but this is just what I’ve concluded after observing how the media operates, how politicians exploit how the media operates, and how gullible most people who consume media are: the First Amendment should be abolished. Freedom of Speech should be done away with. I’m going to tell you the 5 biggest reasons why.

Reason #1: Reading is Fundamental

Capt. Jean-Luc Picard

Reading appears to be one of the number one problems that we Americans have. I’d argue that we do not necessarily read; we pick out points of contention that we may or may not agree with, and we form any and all arguments around those. Case in point: Planned Parenthood performs abortions. That has appeared in plenty of articles, but all that opponents of abortion see is that one thing: that Planned Parenthood performs abortions. From there we get conjecture, leading into variant myths such as “Planned Parenthood spends federal tax dollars on abortions.” And even though it’s not true, the myth prevails. Why? Because people either don’t know how to read or otherwise find reading unimportant. By reading, I don’t mean simply letting your eyes follow the lines of letters across a page. By reading, I mean putting into context the entirety of what you’re reading, and then perhaps even researching a little further to ensure that what you’re reading is, indeed, the truth of matters.

Reading is fundamental. The First Amendment should be abolished because, if we’re too lazy to read, learn, and actually know what we’re talking about, we shouldn’t waste time or effort speaking on it, either.

Reason #2: Freedom of Speech, or Freedom to Repeat the Talking Points?

Phineas the Parrot

We have the freedom of speech. We have this amazing power that was granted us in the blood of our ancestors, right or wrong. We waste it, though. Most of what we use it for is to parrot what the experts are saying on television, on the radio, and online. My question is, if all we are going to do is constantly parrot and repeat talking points ad infinitum, why do we need freedom of speech? We may as well abolish it right now and let the powers that be decide for us what we need to say and think.

Reason #3: Your Freedom of Speech is Under Threat, but Let’s See What HoneyBooBoo is Up To Tonight

NoFreeSpeech We have this freedom of speech written into our constitution. I think we take it for granted, though.

“But, Sahm, if it’s in the United States Constitution, it must be guaranteed.”

Not so my naïve friend. There are plenty of cases wherein your freedom of speech has not been protected, or has been otherwise usurped by entities that are nonhuman. Freedom of speech has constantly been under attack from the following:

The right not to be offended.
Political correctness.
Fear of being labeled a terrorist.
Being labeled as unpatriotic or anti-American.
Retaliation against the Student Press at various campuses across the United States.
Out of context interpretations of statements of opinion as statements of fact.
Out of context interpretations of statements people may not like, in general, as hate speech.
Supreme Court Cases, such as the Citizens United case and the subsequent ruling that corporations have the freedom of speech and can, therefore, contribute massive amounts of money to politicians without oversight.
Death threats, hate mail, and defamation occurrences in lieu of an expression that the masses may not agree with.
Law enforcement acts of excessive force when engaging with protestors on public property.
Laws enacted in various states to circumvent the 1^st Amendment (e.g., three US States penalize recording the police, and various incidents have occurred nationwide wherein individuals have been arrested for otherwise benign actions involving recording devices).

The freedom of speech is always under threat. But most of what we use it for is to parrot our “leaders”, and we lose bits and pieces of this freedom daily.

Recently, someone commented on one of my posts, minded me to be careful because the government might decide to label me a terrorist. And that’s a possibility I’m aware of. What’s the leap for them to start labeling individuals just saying random shit online as terrorists? We’ve already seen that the fed usually interprets laws in the broadest possible sense, with cases such as the AUMF Hearings. And that’s probably what’s coming, next, especially with pushes for the enactment of legislation such as SOPA/PIPA (2011-12), ACTA (2011-12), and CISPA (2013).

The First Amendment should be abolished on the grounds that we simply do not care about the First Amendment.

Reason #4: The Proliferation and Glorification of Stupidity

stupidity and politics, You know how difficult to say someone or something is stupid? Well, these days, it’s not hard at all. With the advent of social media, even the major news sources are getting their news from sources that, a couple of decades ago, we would not have considered reputable in the least bit. I find it a shame when I go to the Huff Post and I see a story about something that occurred on Twitter or on Facebook, mostly because what’s posted on those forums is, more and more, being taken as authority. The fact is, of all the examples I and my lady have debunked, not one of them was difficult to do so without a cursory Google search. The right information is available. It’s just a matter of filtering out the BS. What most rather do, however, is believe what they see right off the bat.

It’s just like this Illuminati / NSA website hoax that people believed for a while. I wrote an article a year ago about how this hoax could be pulled off. And while I understand that a layperson may not necessarily realize from the jump that a domain name can be redirected to any other URL the domain owner chooses, the fact that people really believed that the NSA and the Illuminati were one in the same simply because typing in Illuminati backwards and adding a “.com” led to the NSA’s website. Well, it can also go to KFC’s website, too: itanimulli.hostei.com.

The First Amendment should be abolished because people are easy, and they’re utterly shameless about it.

Reason #5: Freedom of Responsibility

The biggest reason the First Amendment should be abolished is because people refuse to take responsibility for their actions, or to accept the consequences of their rights. Of course if I go and talk shit to you, you’re going to be mad. You have every right to talk shit back. But that’s not how it works. Like I said in Reason #3, the freedom of speech is always under attack. And perhaps that is just a consequence of the right to free speech. Of course, it doesn’t excuse the hypocrisy that exists on both sides of the aisle, and in the middle of the aisle, between Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. It doesn’t excuse the actions of the court; it doesn’t excuse the actions of many boards of education. You have freedoms, but with your freedom comes responsibility. You are responsible for what you say, and if you cannot accept responsibility for the consequences of your words, good or bad, then perhaps you don’t deserve the freedom of speech.

First Amendment

It should be abolished.

Or maybe we just need to grow up? Maybe we need to be a little bit wiser? Maybe we need to really, really scrutinize our government, the politicians, the media, and all of these right-wing and left-wing activist groups pushing whatever agenda is popular at any given moment. Maybe we should scrutinize ourselves. Maybe, then, we could understand the value of our voices, individual and collectively. When will the days be gone when it’s not the media who’s helping us to decide who leads us, but an honest effort on our part to actually understand the prevalent issues and call those who are, in fact, crazy, crazy? When will we care enough to say to our federal and state governments that they’re doing too much talking and not enough listening to us?

When will we rise up and use our freedom of speech like the sword it was meant to be?

Just a thought.

King me.