JunkyardAngel said:
In oither words, when there is TALK of banning words by any government related people, the rest of us should start to worry. If no one cares about a SUGGESTION to ban a word, what is to stop them from taking it to another level?
The First Amendment to the Constitution?
Dude, what are you not getting here? my POINT is that if we the people ignore these samll "unimportant" infringements on our freedoms, Other People may take it as a sign thaty we do not care about these freedoms.
If small goverment offices, say city councils, begin passing small "non binding" resolutions to ban words and no one says a word about it, the next step is maybe a mayor passing a the ban, and folks saying, "Hey - who cares, it's a shitty word to use." True enough, a shitty word. So no one says anything.
Then the Governor says "Hey, this is a bad bad bad word...we need it to be illegal in this state to say this word! It is insulting and awful and....." and people agree, because hey, it really is a pretty shitty word, if you really think about how it is used.
All along the road "the people" agree, or can't be bothered even commenting about it and before you know it we are accepting that words SHOULD be banned and no one has even put up a fight.
Um, all ridiculous slippery slopes aside, the word can't be banned. Due to the First Amendment. Look, I'm as much a First Amendment absolutist as anyone, but forgive me if I don't get my panties in a twist about people passing non-binding resolutions. They're perfectly legal, perfectly normal, and perfectly meaningless. It's just silly political games. Nothing to get your dander up about.
PointBlank
New York, NY
November 2004
NOV 14, 2007 12:00 PM