Argumentative Speech Essay

Argumentative Speech Freedom of Speech We all know what the general meaning of freedom of speech is. But let me tell you a deeper meaning of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the right, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to express beliefs and ideas without unwarranted government restriction. Speech is built in to our lives as a way to communicate with others. That’s why I believe everyone has the freedom and right to speak. Some nations still restrict the people’s right to speak. One of them is North Korea. North Korea is one of the 5 remaining countries that adopt the communist ideology. According to Wikipedia, anybody in North Korea who tries to speak to the public about the government will be sent to labor camps and be forced to work there. Worst case scenario, they get executed. North Korea is not the only country who does this. Myanmar, Nepal, and the rest of the communist countries do this as well. I believe this has to stop for all humans have the same rights and none of us are superior to anyone. It’s also a matter of honoring human rights. There has to be steps taken to ensure that freedom of speech is available to everyone. The first major movement in freedom of rights is the creation of the First Amendment. According to Wikipedia, the First Amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15 1791 as one of the Ten Amendments. I believe that from that point on, freedom of speech has been more widespread and movements like that make the world a better place. Democratic countries are the perfect examples of a country that honors the freedom of speech. In a democratic country, the people are the rulers, and the freedom of speech is used by the people to make the country better. The freedom of speech has a significant impact in our social life. For example, without the freedom of speech, we wouldn’t be able to object to something that the people think doesn’t seem right. A few months ago, the workers in Jakarta asked for a minimum wage increase because of rising prices on goods. The workers are using their freedom of speech to express their thoughts to the government. The government finally increased the minimum wages. Another example is without freedom of speech, the government would control the people. The government would make rules that doesn’t honor human rights, like North Korea. I’m sure no one wants that to happen. Some might argue that there should be huge limits on freedom of speech. That freedom of speech should be limited to our society only and that freedom of speech does not cover the right to speak about the government. But think about it, if freedom of speech is limited, we won’t be able to change rules that are made by the government. We won’t be able to change what’s wrong with the rules. A good example is the US right now. Recently the US has been discovered to spy on US citizens and other countries through the internet. This was revealed by somebody who works inside that government. If freedom of speech didn’t exist, the US citizens would have never known that their government was spying on them. But because freedom of speech exists, we are able to know. Countries shouldn’t be able to limit our freedom to speech. We know now how important freedom of speech is. How crucial it is for every one of us. We all have the right to know, we all have the right to tell. We all have the right to protest if something is wrong in the government. We might feel offended by something someone says. We might also offend someone by something we say. But the world has decided that freedom of speech is important, and it has been shown by the creation of the First Amendment. No one should be able to restrict our minds and restrict our rights to speech. There has to be steps taken to ensure our freedom to speech. So far it has been good, but we need more progress. We need to speak out our thoughts. So far the US has been the country that pushes freedom of speech the most. We all have to follow their example and push the rights to speech. I wouldn’t even be talking here if freedom of speech didn’t exist.