I think that freedom of speech does not give one the right to offend people. I am thinking this because of the Paris terror attacks on January 7, 2015. Those Charlie Hebdo cartoonists had knowingly made many insulting pictures of Muhammad, even though they had known that Muslim people believe in idolatry. The pope of the Catholic Church also agrees that the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist should have not insulted the Muslim people’s religion, he had said that he believed in the freedom of expression, but he also believed in the freedom of religion.¹ Because the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist people had provoked these people by not respecting their religion, I think that it would be reasonable to limit free speech so that people wouldn’t go to violence to resolve matters. So I think that freedom of speech does not give one the right to offend people.

My first reason of why I think that freedom of speech does not give one the right to offend people is because offending people was not the reason of why the founding fathers made the First Amendment. The First Amendment states that the Congress cannot make any law going against the freedom of religion, speech, press, peacefully assemble, and to petition the government.² The most likely reason of why the founding fathers added the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights is so that when running the government people could freely come up with new ideas. The point of it was not to go around insulting people and making them feel bad about themselves. So since the most likely reason of why the founding fathers put the First Amendment there is so that people could contribute new ideas to the government, and not so you could go around offending people knowingly.

Another reason of why I think that freedom of speech does not give one the right to offend people is because it might provoke people into fighting each other. This is America, good, strong, powerful, caring, nice, and peaceful. We do not want to be fighting each other. Those word that you just said, they might have offended someone and that someone could just be getting back at you by punching you since you had said something offending about their mother. So if this freedom of speech is getting people hurt, making them feel insecure and sad, and offending people, I think that freedom of speech does not give you the right to offend/hurt these people and make them feel insecure.

If you are still thinking that the freedom of speech gives you a right to offend people since America is a free country and that you can get away with offending people and being mean, that thought is incorrect. There are laws that limit a little freedom of speech since it might put people in danger and it might offend a lot of people. Some examples of these are that you can’t make any threats, you can’t curse at school, you aren’t allowed to use any fighting words, obscenity, and you can’t make lies about people to bring down their reputation.³ There is another practice that limits information that you get called censorship, but it is not practiced in the USA. So even if America is a free country and you have the freedom of speech, you still might be in trouble if your mouth says things it is not supposed to say.

So I think that freedom of speech does not give you the right to offend people. My first reason is because the First Amendment was not put there so that you could go and offend people, but it is there so that we could have a flowing fresh stream of new ideas. Another reason is because it might provoke people into fighting and that is never a good thing. Some speech is just not protected by the government so it might be safer just not saying somethings like threats. So let us think is our hearts those Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who had offended those Muslim people and had been killed because of the fact that they didn’t know when to keep their mouth shut.