Censorship Should be Abolished

You mentioned 'Clearly, the freedom of speech is not unlimited,' but that is not true. There have been laws limiting freedom of speech, but they have violated the first amendment. The first amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law. .. abridging the freedom of speech. " This means that the Founding Fathers intended for freedom of speech to be unlimited. 'however, hate speech being an example, free speech must often be limited in order to protect the public at large from distasteful, even offensive material' Even if you think hate speech is distasteful, someone rambling on about why they hate something isn't worthy of being punishable by law. Hate speech should not be punishable unless is incites law-breaking (rioting/violence/bullying) 'This idea is further reinforced by my opponent near the end of his paragraph, in which he states that people ought not be punished for their speech unless it is "bullying, inciting a riot, inciting violence, causing panic. .. or threatening someone. " The problem for my opponent is this: punishing someone for using this kind of harmful speech is censorship, something that my opponent claims to be looking to abolish; we can easily see the contradiction here. ' The title of this debate doesn't cover my whole argument, I wasn't going to make the tile: Censorship except for bullying, inciting a riot, inciting violence, causing panic, or threatening someone should be abolished. I chose my title because it covers most of my argument, that most censorship should be abolished. The reason I believe those examples should be censored is because they can incite law-breaking. 'Ironically enough, I'd just like to point out that the only way to eradicate censorship is, in fact, to censor it. So, in the end, by affirming the resolution, my opponent has inadvertently given me the round. ' If I was giving you the round, I would have said that censorship should remain tomorrow as present as it was yesterday. By 'censoring' censorship you save a lot more things from being censored than you lose (censorship itself) 'What my opponent is advocating here is that, under the law, children ought to have access to violent and sexually explicit materials (as he makes the argument that age limits on violent movies, pornography, etc. ought to be abolished); anyone should be able to understand that a child should not be exposed to these kinds of materials, especially at such early ages; the psychological effects of being exposed to pornography and violence will tend to remain with a child through adolescence and puberty; my opponent is advocating that we allow our youth to be so easily corrupted by a culture that is addicted to sex and violence, even as a means of profit, and doesn't care about casualties along the way [. http://www.zenit.org......] [. http://www.forerunner.com......]. My opponent may try to come back and say that parents need to watch over the content accessed by their kids, not the government; but remember one thing: parental censorship is STILL censorship. ' Do you honestly think only adults look at pornography? Do you honestly think only teenagers watch PG-13 and only adults watch R on their own? Prohibition doesn't work, we should know that from the 20s and 30s. It also causes the 'forbidden fruit' effect. If a parent wants to prevent a kid from watching something, then it's their job, not the government's, and there wouldn't be a way to stop parental censorship because the government has no control over that. Another thing I'd like to add is that a lot more money would be made in movies if age limits weren't enforced in movie theaters. You might argue that it would make more money if they were enforced because another person would have to go into the theater with them, but that isn't true. A lot of kids will either choose not to see a movie because they're not old enough, sneak in, watch it for free online, or watch it somewhere else. More money would be made if everyone had access to all movies. 'My opponent advocates abolishing indecency laws as well; let me clear up what these laws cover: my opponent is asking us to abolish laws which ban things like public urination, indecent exposure, or sex/masturbation in public, to name a few things; so, if you agree with my opponent that lewd, uncivil, offensive behavior ought to be allowed in full view of the public (again, including easily-harmed children), then yes, vote Pro. ' I don't advocate making public urination legal because it would be vandalizing property. Making something legal does not mean everyone will start doing it, most people would be embarrassed to masturbate or have sex in public. Just because you think something should be legalized doesn't mean you encourage it, I just see no reason for it to be illegal. It would not be 'harming' children, masturbation and sex are completely normal, natural things, children will encounter them whether you censor them or not.