Pressing the Issues

I have not yet read the article entitled The Bomber: How A Promising Student Was Failed By His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster. I will go out and get it as soon as possible though. There is a picture going around on Facebook of someone burning a copy of the magazine. Because I am a full fledged supporter of the first amendment, I see nothing wrong with someone expressing their anger by burning the magazine. As a U.S. citizen everyone has the right to burn whatever book or magazine they want. You can burn the Koran, the Bible, or Charlotte’s Web for all I care. You can even burn the American Flag without going to jail. The freedom of speech is one of the greatest rights we have. You can say whatever you want and will not have to go to jail for it. Socially, of course, you can’t say whatever you want, but that’s another story for another day.

The first amendment also guarantees freedom of the press. Dan Carlin said the press is one of the checks and balances of the government. The press is the public check and balance, or at least it was intended to be. We need controversial information out there. We need stories on evil men to see if there is anything we can do to prevent them from doing evil things. This isn’t about giving glory to an asshole. It is about providing high content information to the public.

Article I Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution: “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

We have a constitution that specifically states that we do not grant titles of nobility yet the biggest news story of the week has been the new royal baby. This is the information that the public wants to hear. This is what CNN and Fox News make the most money from. This is a bigger story than the government spying on you in a country that isn’t supposed to respect or recognize nobility. This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Our fundamental governing principle is that God does not bestow governmental powers to people, but the people govern themselves.

We aren’t doing a great job of governing ourselves anymore. The government is spying on us and asshole can still bomb the Boston Marathon. I’m a runner I have ran a couple marathons. I am not good enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon, but I want to. I still think the media needs to write the story that the Rolling Stone wrote. We need the press to freely exercise their freedom of speech and come up with more important content and less unimportant baby bump stories.