Blog #3: Promote Tolerance&Promote Innovation

The words "Freedom of speech" have always been something I have heard throughout my years of schooling. The First Amendment is that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment or 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."(https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment) This being said freedom of speech is something that will always be personal to me.

All of the Eight Values of Free Expression are very important. To me two of them stood out the most. The first one being Promote Tolerance. Medlawlit says "It has been argued that freedom of speech, especially through our practice of extending protection to speech that we find hateful or personally upsetting, teaches us to become more tolerant in other aspects of life- and that a more tolerant society is a better society." (https://medlawlit.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9.html) Freedom of speech is the way everyone expresses themselves and because of the First Amendment we have the right to do so. 

Protesting has always been very controversial but it plays a major role in freedom of speech. We count on being able to express ourselves and some countries don't have that. We are not afraid to stand up for ourselves in this generation today which is a good thing but sometimes we don't use our right to freedom of speech with protesting in a good way. Some people resort to violence when protesting. To me I don't see how that really gets you anywhere with your protesting and I understand why although we have freedom of speech there comes a point where it needs to be stopped when violence begins. Being violent to get your voice heard should not even come across to anyone as a good idea. Using your voice in a peaceful and passionate way about what you are protesting goes a long way.

The second Value of Expression that stuck out to me was Promote Innovation. This means that "a community in which free speech is valued and protected is likely to be a more energized, creative, interesting society as its citizens actively fulfill themselves in many diverse and interesting ways."(https://medlawlit.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9.html) As a female who wants to go into the sports work field full of males I relate to Promote Innovation. I feel that the more women who go into the sports work field will show innovation. Although it is overloaded with the male population that is why promote innovation stands out so much to me because it's fighting the stereotype that working in sports has.

We are very fortunate to have these Values of Expression. We just need to use them in the right way. For promote tolerance yes we can say what we want but doing it in a violent way will not be the answer. As for promote innovation we need to stand up for our passions. The First Amendment gives us the right to feel, speak and act however we want but it does come with it's boundaries just like everything else.