Free Speech At Risk – Innocence of Muslims on YouTube SHOULD NOT Be Removed

Posted by bruce in Featured, Politics | 4 comments

I do not care where you stand politically, democrat or republican or whatever else you would like to call yourself. If you are an American citizen or someone that has came to America for WHAT WE STAND FOR, which is freedom and the ability for any individual to speak their mind or give their opinion regardless of what that opinion maybe, then you should be offended by the White House request of YouTube to review the video which supposedly cause the initiation of violence against US embassies and consulates around the Middle East and a few other countries.

How can we possibly say that we are a country that stands for freedom of expression if we are not offended by any government official requesting that a video that has an opinion about a topic be removed, how can we say that we have not lost the war against extremists when we allow criticism of certain groups videos to be removed but yet do nothing to remove criticism of other groups. Let a Muslim group criticize a religion and you will not see the government make a request for “review” of YouTube.

I do not care if you agree with the content of the video, I personally would not be interested in watching it. I have been around enough cultures to know that everyone will NEVER be happy with everyone else, its human nature. But by no means should any one group be given preference over another, and without a doubt this is what is shown by this request by our government.

I will say it again, liberal or conservative, I really don’t care, how can you say this request is ok? Where is this tolerance we speak of? Is it tolerance only if it does not offend certain special interest groups. That is sure what it looks like.

Also, this is not about the person who created the video, I could care less about him as well, what matters is that the government should never step in to remove the opinion or expression of an individual. I disagree with the opinions of many of the things I see on TV or on videos online but I do not think that the videos should be removed.

I also found the follow two comments on the post on Mashable discussing this interesting and it says alot:

The first one shows someone saying Remove It. No one says a word when it is mentioned that other religions are criticized but no one says hatred.

 

And the second one says Keep it and the first thing someone says is that the comment just shows Hatred. I think it is a bit of a stretch to say hatred by someone saying that the video should stay. What I understand at this point is that people are ok with free speech as long as it doesn’t criticize one certain religion.

I am a big proponent of free speech to say the least. And this occurrence the past couple days should concern anyone, once again, no matter what political affiliation. This belief in free speech goes beyond political affiliations, it goes to the core of what we are as a country and what our founding fathers believed. We will never be as great as we once were until we lose this weakness to stand for what we believe in.