What has happened to a country where there are advertisements for booze on every block; yet someone makes a very ambiguous statement about using a smoking device and is not protected by the First Amendment?

This country is going to pot, one idiotic Supreme Court decision at a time. In January of 2002, a couple of students went to a school-supervised rally to watch the Olympic torch go by. In an act exercising their free speech, the group held up a large banner reading: “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

The main perpetrator of this assumingly legal demonstration was an 18-year-old named Joseph Frederick. He appealed his suspension, which eventually went all the way up to – you guessed it – the Supreme Court.

The conservative judges ruled in favor of the school in meting out a suspension to the student for advocating illegal drug use.

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that “the school’s interest in protecting its students from exposure to speech ‘reasonably regarded as promoting illegal drug use,’ cannot justify disciplining Frederick for his attempt to make an ambiguous statement to a television audience simply because it contained an oblique reference to drugs. The First Amendment demands more, indeed, much more.”

This is a great violation of the First Amendment indeed! What has happened to a country where there are advertisements for booze on every block; yet someone makes a very (and I mean very) ambiguous statement about using a smoking device and is not protected by the First Amendment? People have died to protect this country.

And what are they protecting - a country that punishes people for exercising their rights in the Constitution.

I can tell you that I am worried about the future such actions might create. I see a future in which people can only say what they are told and say it when they are told. It is a slippery slope argument, but it always starts with something ambiguous and unnoticed.

So I say that we stand up in this case of politically correct hegemony. Be kind with your words, but say what you mean and say how you feel. Life is too short to respect certain rules, and any rules against the right to speech are laughable in the least – and dangerous when enforced. Is it because we are afraid that we rarely speak our minds these days? A professor of mine once told me that there needs to be a balance between the freedom of a person to say what she wants and the effects it could have on society in a negative or dangerous way. I say screw the idea that free speech should be curtailed because of the possible pain and danger it could cause.

Life is tough, so get a helmet; and if you can’t stand the heat, get out of an environment like a school, where people will, and should, test the line of free speech. Words can hurt and be dangerous, but only if you let them. And you know what? You can use your own words, too.

The beauty of this country is our right to disagree and express our opinions without having to use extreme measures. If the principal hated this expression so much and was so sure it was a drug reference, all he had to do was clarify the schools anti-drug policy on the P.A. the next day.

When judgments like this are handed down, it takes out the most important arsenal we have to defy our government and speak our mind. So go out there and exercise your rights like our founding fathers intended. Do not be afraid, because even though the government won this time, there are many rounds in a good fight.

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