The Value of Free Expression

The Government in its purest form is supposed to be by the people for the people but at certain times the people inside of the government can corrupt and use the overarching power of it to hurt and abuse its own people and it is times like that when we as people must stand up for ourselves. That is why I believe Check on Governmental Power is the most important of the Eight Values of Free Expression. The ability to speak out against our government is so powerful and important. When I first saw this as an option to choose it immediately made me remember the video we watched on the first day of class when Tulsi Gabbard spoke her mind about the current state of the democratic party

and why she
is leaving it. In that video Tulsi is calling out the Democratic Party, the party currently in control of the White House and Congress, for what she sees them as they truly are. She is essentially calling out the president of the country for his faults and if not his the faults he has allowed. In some countries this is imprisonment or at the worst death.

    While I do feel that the check on Governmental Power is the most important of the Free Expression values the one I see most used in action today is Promote Tolerance. In the year 2022 with the amount 

of sites and apps we can use, communication is at a peak and with the use of these new sites and technology things that are taboo in society will surely find their way there. There is an extreme amount of racial tension in America at all times I would say and after events like the BLM protests during the pandemic this type of tension had reached an extreme high. We see all the time on twitter and other social media apps racist propaganda being said about a specific race or at a person in general. While I personally do not agree with anything these people have to say the fact that they are allowed to say it is good for society. One of the most prominent examples I can think of is when Laura Ingrahm told KD and Lebron to shut up and dribble when they were talking bad about the current president at that time Trump. While she may not have seen it, that statement had some very racist undertones to it as it seemed she meant you two are only good at playing basketball and nothing more. While nothing really happened to her career wise it helped society to see what it was really like while you may not agree with it the first amendment makes us more vigilant to situations like this while Laura Inghram is free to say stuff like this again she is probably gonna think twice about it. An even more recent example of this is Kanye west and his very anti antisemitic tweet that he sent out while it is know he deleted off the platform the impact it left completely tarnished his legacy. That tweet led to Adidas and Gap cutting off ties to Kanye and while those are the main ones there is so much more. Kanye did

nothing illegal by tweeting that he was well within his rights to tweet whatever he wanted but in the end society deemed it wrong and he now has to deal with the consequences of society turning its back on him. That is what's so great with the first amendment because it allows companies and independent people to decide what they believe is right or wrong and through this process we can make a more tolerant society.