Don't Censor Me
When we think of the reasons why America is one of the greatest countries in the world, our first reaction is our 1st Amendment rights; the freedoms gained through the blood of veterans and the toil of our past generations. Now, imagine if one them was slowly deteriorating due to future generations not wanting their feelings hurt. According to a November study done by the Pew Research Center, a society which surveys Americans for their views on social issues, 40% of Millennials (citizens aged 18-34) found that the government should censor speech that offends minorities. The shocking part is that the percentage has climbed through each generation--Gen X (27%), Baby Boomers (24%), and the Silent Generation (12%). Senior, Ben P., responded to the survey, "I'm appalled at these results. People need to stop being scared of what people think because this is a free country with freedom of speech." Following this ongoing trend, our children could end up favoring censorship as a majority. The study also revealed the less a citizen is educated, the more support they have for censorship. Furthermore, another study done by Pew revealed that over 60% of college students favor requiring professors to employ "trigger warnings" to alert students to material that dealt with free speech. Although organizations like the Westboro Baptist Church and the Klu Klux Klan push forward an extremely radical agenda, it is still their Constitutional right to express their opinions, and censoring them would mean we are allowing some governing body to censor others as well, and who checks this body? Who decides for the whole what is to be censored and what is not? Unfortunately, if we do not allow some, ridiculous as it may be to express, that would only mean a progression into a tyrannical society where the constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech no longer applies to all citizens. Listening to others’ opinions, whether contradicting of yours or not, unites us in that we are even able to voice them in the first place.
© Dana Rothstein
