Free Speech...or is that just too offensive for you?

(found on Richarddawkins.net)




This is our First Amendment and inherent in it lies the consequences of offending persons. To stamp out open questioning and criticism of absolutely anything not only teeters the practice of tolerance, it blatantly begs for a nation full of intolerant people because they are pregnant with ignorance.

Religion is already treated with an air of taboo because people are too afraid to say or question practices that they do not understand or do not agree with. If anything, religion should be the most important concepts to critically question. Women rights, homosexual rights, eating rights, and your right to practice your own religion (and to share it) without fear of reprobation is all dependant on being able to question and disagree with the very ideas and ideals of any religion which would confine, stifle, and imprison your own beautiful voice, your way of sacred worship or the lack of it.

Free speech gives us the very right to take a stand against intolerant acts that take away a women’s right to work, an African American to vote, a Christian to witness, atheists the right not to pretend, and it even gives Free Speech’s attackers the ground to suggest its removal from our mouth’s, inked hands, and printed words at the foot of our door.

Do you remember the Swedish Islamic Cartoons? What about the terrorist attack on 911, the bombings on London’s Underground, the vile murder of Theo van Gogh, and the endless list of intolerant actions? Think about your own questions or the conversations you have had with friends, do you believe those conversation should never again exist? Please take a few moments to read and learn about a country who does not believe in Free Speech, Turkey. Ask yourself, “Is this the way I want me, my family, and my friends to live?

It all sounds sweet to spare someone’s feelings until one’s feelings control a nation or a world. There are natural consequences to Free Speech and heinous consequences of its absence.

Cheers to the right of being offend and to offend! Now, lets talk about it.

Of Montreal: Gronlandic Edit - Great

This is great stuff: "I guess it would be nice to give my heart to a god
But which one, which one do I choose?
All the churches fill with losers, psycho or confused
I just want to hold the divine in mind
And forget all of the beauty's wasted

Let's fall back to earth and do something pleasant
We fell back to earth like gravity's bitches
(Physics makes us all its bitches)"

Candy From Stragers

Braids and pigtails woven by the wind
Framed a glossy crease
Chewing pink cotton candy bubble gum
And two smiling eyes blazed inside-out
Skin rouge and nurtured
I was told then, “Never talk to strangers.”
And so I never did,

But when I was 14,
and scrawny bones fashioned to brawny flesh
sweating pebbles and curvy streams from the yellow sun—
And proudly adorned with two new unbuoyant risings,
They offered their sweets instead,
Fingers still playing in the dirt, I slowly peered up

“Little girl so pretty,” they whispered
Calloused hands loosening my hair and skidding my cheek
“Let me teach you about love,”
Just long enough to hear the hum of unfolding metal
As the nook of my neck’s spine hung on the ridged end of a naked crib

And so, there I lay
Encapsulated in love and prickly cracked leather
Like sandpaper, scratching my tummy raw, red, and numb
My irises flickering back and forth, blue and white, turning outside-in
Tracing faces and shapes with the white drips in the ceiling
In-between the opaque and transparent whizzing of wood

15, 16, 17, 18…
Standing in front of a mirror
A used painting of camouflage and idealistic dreams
Dressed in crooked saline and fears
Scared to love, scared of lies
And haunted by the smacking echo of dry liquorish, so tearingly bitter

Susie E.

Moral Relativity

Alright all you Philosophy buffs, I need your help! I am currently taking my first philosophy class, my first two philosophy classes: Intro and Logic. I have a paper due on Tuesday asking the question, “Is morality Relative?” My first reaction was, “Of course it is relative!” Though, after some contemplation it came to me that I didn’t believe ‘morals’ existed, rather, no universally binding ones anyway (which is what Dr. was truly asking). So if that is true, then morality wouldn’t be relative because it wouldn’t exist. However, I talked with my professor to examine my own logic and my conclusion is that while this thought would be an acceptable paper, he hounded on my logic pretty hard (though constructively, of course). Honestly, I have no idea what the hell he was talking about…I think he thinks I’m more hip to the lingo than I really am. Consequently, I politely told him, “Thank you for confusing the hell out of me. I shall have to go contemplate. You must be a good professor. Damn you.” Seriously though, Mark, Jonathan, Billy, Lee, Phillip…get my brain going, I have a philosophers block.