On January 7th there was a terrorist attack on a French humor magazine, Charlie Hebdo. The magazine had published offensive pictures of the prophet Mohammed, which is against Muslim religion.¹ These pictures led to an attack in which 12 people were killed, including the chief editor and the chief cartoonist. There has been much debate on whether or not the freedom of speech should allow people to offend people. I believe that freedom of speech gives you and I a right to offend people. Even with censoring and limited free speech there would still be conflict, and the freedom of speech is connected to almost all other freedoms.  

   Whether freedom of speech is limited or not, it will always cause conflict. If freedom of speech is not limited people can go around offending people, but if it is censored even more people will get upset. If we limited freedom of speech we would have to limit all speech, because everything you say can offend someone. It is impossible to say something that does not have the possibility of offending someone. Limiting freedom of speech would cause more conflict than not limiting free speech because so many people are against censorship and there are so many ways to accidentally offend people.

    Secondly, our freedom of speech is connected to almost all of our other freedoms. The freedom to peaceful protest involves freedom of speech, as does freedom of religion and the press.The freedom of speech is like a thread holding together a blanket of our rights.² Without freedom of speech other freedoms are useless. If we don't have the freedom of speech then how will we critique the government or say what we want in books or on the internet. If we censor free speech we will have be censoring every other freedom that we have.

   Many people disagree with this point of view, they say that free speech is becoming too complex, too corrupt. They say that the Founding Fathers never intended for free speech to be used as a weapon, but a support or a guarantee.³ The founding fathers did think this freedom was important enough to put it first in the Bill of Rights⁴ though. They didn’t know how complex our society would be, but the Bill of Rights is strictly off limits to limitations. Our freedom of speech was important to people even back then.   

   In conclusion, although many people disagree, I think that freedom of speech gives everyone the right to offend people. No matter what, we should not limit a freedom that is so sacred. A freedom that everyone protects and guards. A freedom that is connected to all of our important freedoms. That is why I think freedom of speech should allow you to offend people.