Skip to main content

The First Amendment

You should be glad we have it

On December 15, 1791 the United states adopted the first of the ten amendments that would be known as the Bill of Rights. The first amendment states, ““Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”. This amendment exists to this day and protects the American people from having certain freedoms taken away from them. 
In the United States, we encourage our people to speak of anything they wish even if it is negative towards their government. It is written so that the government cannot interfere with our beliefs and the way we choose to express ourselves. Although we have this freedom, the first amendment does not protect those from putting ourselves or others in harm's way with our speech.This exception is not to inhibit those but to protect them which is why the amendments were created so early on. 

A Yuhan woman of China posted a video to the internet regarding what she acknowledged as “this pneumonia virus in Wuhan” that was striking her country. As the video progresses, she speaks of how it affects her family, friends, and the people around her. Unlike with anything else, these people being affected by the virus could not buy medicine or be admitted to the hospitals even if they had money to spend due to the government. In addition to how the government is handling the virus, she also expresses that unlike Hong Kong and Taiwan they do not have freedom. 
In the heart wrenching video, she cries, “not a single person can speak freely and if anyone speaks of the truth they”ll be caught by the police.” In China, the people are not protected by the rights that we have in the United States. It is punishable by incarceration and even death to speak freely especially that of anything negative towards the government. Chinese citizens face the issue of censorship making it extremely easy to find the citizens that do speak out against the government. This woman spoke out in fear of her life to get the message out to her fellow citizens, a fear that no American will ever have to face. The truth of the matter is China did not want anyone to know of what was happening in their country as a result of the Virus that began in Wuhan. If the citizens were able to speak freely as Americans can, us as a country might have been more prepared as to what was about to affect us as well. The virus no longer is detained in China, it is spreading across different countries, and the death toll is rising with no way to cure the people infected. 
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Things I Learned: Freshmen Year

My first year at HPU 1. GPA's in High School and College are completely different I remember coming into college and thinking that if I had a 4.2-3.8 through all of High School why would college be different. Now that I've been at HPU for two semesters, I can say that even maintaining a 2.0 which is what you need to be academically eligible is hard. When I was told that to keep my scholarship, I needed to have a 2.75 cumulative gap, inside my head, the thought that was running through was "who wouldn't be able to have a 2.75 that's a piece of cake." Halfway through first semester is when it hit me that It was harder than I thought. After completing my first semester and being placed on academic probation, I just thought about my scholarship and how I needed to do my best the following semester to keep it. It definitely humbled me and made me realize that GPA's aren't the same.  Another thing that was different with the whole gpa aspect is
Post a Comment
Read more

#RunwithMaud

AHMAUD ARBERY- Remember his name Background Ahmaud Arbery was going for a jog, like he tended to do normally. He thought it would be a regular day like always, but this jog turned out to be his last. On February 23, 2020, Arbery was chased down and shot by two white men, one of whom was a retired police officer and DA investigator. Gregory and Travis McMichael, father and son killed this innocent jogger because of his skin color. These men have been known to be racist but yet when the investigation was made, they weren't arrested or charged for the killing of Arbery. Instead they walked free for two months, after leaving an innocent man on the street, dead. Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vElX_sLt2NM  (Warning graphic) In a video that was leaked, it shows Arbery jogging and trying to get away from a truck, that had the McMichael's inside. The truck continued to follow the jogger and cornered him and when the jogger tried to run the other way he was shot. Stil
Post a Comment
Read more

The Partisan Press

Have we really changed? To answer this question, we first have to dive in deeper into what the Partisan Press is, in this article we are able to learn more about the partisan press and what it was like back in this era. The Partisan Press helped individuals get things done, what I mean by this is that the articles were written to help get the author's point across, it was biased. It was based on their views and agendas. This is a brilliant idea because you can get people to understand your perspective and see why you view certain things the way you do, but the downside of all of this, one could say is that people weren’t getting accurate information. What they received and were reading were opinions not facts. I feel that this was a bad era for journalism because things weren’t true and honest. Although it was a time where you can express what had to be said about the given topics, it harmed the communities overall because they were stuck with what they were given.    Even
Post a Comment
Read more