Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Freedom of Speech?

If you've caught a news report in the last week or so, you may be aware of a new "scandal" concerning the internet. A known pedophile created a web site to teach adults how to take sexual advantage of young girls...and not get caught. The site was taken down by the host, but not before causing a huge controversy, as you may expect.
Now, most everyone will agree that since our Constitution has stood for over 200 years and has helped make us the strongest nation on earth, we probably should leave well enough alone. I agree. Our Constitution is a document that was created in a time when the forefathers couldn't have ever conceived the ideas of telephones, TV, internet, cell technology, etc. And yet? the Constitution still stands. As well it should. God knows that as a writer, a blogger, a speaker and general American, I would give up my life to protect our American freedom of speech. Then, some child molestor is interviewed on the O'Reilly Factor, states he prefers females from three to ten years old and, were it not illegal, he'd be out touting his web site and trying to form intimate relationships with these girls. This, faithful reader, really, REALLY makes me question whether or not ol' Amendment #1 is worth it. Is it worth it to have a child harmed to protect a criminal's rights? I think not. Yet, it IS worth it to protect the rights of 300 million Americans who do not typically abuse their privledge of free speech.
I don't ever want to think about our Constitution failing, faltering or being so watered down that we cease to be Americans. So, in a case like this? We Americans have to exercise our freedom of speech to keep idiots like this from being heard...spam the site, complain to the web hosting company, designers don't take the job, some smart computer person create a net disease to shut down the site, whatever-just keep this kind of sickness from being spread past the words on a computer screen.

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