Blog #1 Freedom of Expression

In Gwen Wilde's essay, she is very persuasive on the way she portrays the idea of having the phrase "under God" removed from the pledge of allegiance. Wilde makes multiple points about how you may be affected if you are a non-Christian. For example, many people who aren't Christian might be called unpatriotic because they don't feel comfortable saying the phrase "under God". She also talks about how people can't feel like they are patriotic towards their country because of this phrase. I strongly disagree with removing the phrase in the pledge due to the fact that I am Catholic and I attend Strake Jesuit. I also believe that this country was founded through the help of God. In Bok's essay, he makes many point regarding censorship on college school campuses. He supports to no censorship even if people will get offended, but he does not support the campus police from stopping someone being harmed. In my opinion, the difference between an act being harmful or an act being offensive is that an act that is harmful would cause physical pain towards someone, while an offensive act would probably cause some mental harm. It's very hard to truly determine between the two, but I disagree with Bok's view on censorship. For example, I feel that if someone puts up a confederate flag then a lot of people will be offended and it's safe to say that they should probably take down the flag. There is no need to allow behavior like that even if someone can't express how they feel. I think there should be a limit to how much you can censor someone and that should have helped decide this dilemma. An example where I was personally violated of my freedom of expression was when I posted a comment on social media that was removed most likely because the person may have found it offensive. I believe that in this example it's fine to allow people to have the power to remove any comments they feel are offensive or harmful towards them. While many students may not agree with me, I feel that administrators have the right to do what they want if anything offensive is posted about the school, but the administrators shouldn't be able to punish a student if they are just expressing themselves freely on their social media. I don't feel like the government really needs to get involved as long as administrators don't blow anything out of proportion with what students say.