My Aftershock

Even though I haven’t been to many other college campuses around the nation, I think it’s safe to say that ASU has a fairly strong chapter of Students for Ron Paul. I see the table out most days, by the fountain at the Memorial Union. I’ve stopped a few times; mostly because I’m walking with someone who wanted to learn more. I think one day I’ll go talk to whoever is there about their political beliefs, and then I’ll blog about it. That will be fun. I think I have a seriously messed-up view of what is fun.

Well, at the Barack Obama rally, the Students for Ron Paul were obviously there. And by there, I mean, they were extremely audible. From what I heard, their words tiptoed the line between acceptable and just plain rude. It’s also important to remember that I wasn’t actually inside the rally. (I showed up about 20 minutes after doors opened, and it was to capacity.) I was actually quite close to the Ron Paul table, but someone inside the fences would never have heard them. Mostly they were just disagreeing with everything Obama said, quite predictable I thought. I’m not sure what happened to these loud students, they could’ve very easily just moved to another location; for whatever reason, their remarks stopped about halfway through the speech. I heard rumors that they were told to be quiet by Obama’s henchmen, but four years of high school taught me not to trust rumors. On the same subject, there’s an article from the East Valley Tribune about a different incident from within the rally regarding free speech. A Ron Paul supporter was standing on an elevated tower in the middle of the lawn with a Ron Paul T-shirt as a sign. Now, there were Obama signs everywhere; both ones given out by his workers, and homemade ones. Still, security officers, who were either affiliated with Obama or just rented out by him, felt the need to tell the man with the Ron Paul shirt to sit down. Eventually, they asked him to leave the rally.

I felt the East Valley Tribune article explained the problem here quite well. I don’t want to keep paraphrasing it; obviously there was a serious problem with freedom of expression. I guess I bring this up because the press is centered entirely on the freedom of speech. Spending half a semester in The History and Principles of Journalism has taught me that the only thing that makes the press possible is that tiny portion of our Constitution. These incidents just put everything in perspective for me; I’ve been lucky to live in an environment where my basic freedoms haven’t been jeopardized (With only a few unfortunate exceptions; the most recent being my inability to express myself through an eyebrow piercing without being disowned by the Whitmire Clan.). In the grand scheme of freedom issues in American History, getting harassed by security at a Barack Obama rally is fairly inconsequential (genocide, slavery, segregation; these issues tend to pull a little more weight), still, this tiny incident just shows the fragility of our government. Americans function with the knowledge that we will be able to wake up every morning with certain guaranteed rights, I mean, my entire career is going to depend on these rights; we never think about how easily they could be taken away or the consequences that could come from such actions. This was fairly off my general topic, but I was inspired; I’ve always been a sucker toward my inspirations. And I’m sorry for being preachy as well.

This is very comprehensive article on the basics of freedom of speech. I found it refreshing. It has a slightly liberal bias, you’ve been warned.

I’m not sure if everyone will have access to this article, it’s from a Stanford library. It really sums up the debate of the extent to which freedom of speech should be limited, so I hope you can see it.