Watch what you say.......or else

The United States government has no place in censoring what it is that the public is "allowed" to view, not withholding provisions against illegal material such as "snuff" and child pornography.  The first amendment holds that freedom of speech and even the press shall not be infringed upon, and yet it is against FCC regulations to utter phrases deemed "too vulgar" on television or the radio; this is a direct disregard for the freedom the first amendment protects. It is the claim of the moral majority and the religious right that this "mature content" is objectionable and ought not be in the hands of children. Truly, this is the responsibility of the parent to decide what their child will and will not be exposed to, and any claim to the contrary is merely the lethargic complaints of parents too engrossed in their own lives to take notice of what their children are viewing. This age of "Uncle Sam knows best" has gone on for quite long enough; no longer should the masses be subject to "big brother" and his all-seeing eye.  I quote the late great Ronald Regan when I say "I do not believe in a government which protects us from ourselves" president Reagan brings to light here that the government ought not interfere in social matters that overstep their constitutional boundaries. It has been said that violent media can encourage adolescent audiences to mimic what they see on the screen, but statistics show otherwise. The 1993 game Doom was demonized from its start, with moralistic interest groups attacking its very premise the "first person shooter" concept. The interest groups found their argument in the influential aspect of media, claiming that it would "teach our kids to kill". In the decade following the release of the game, juvenile homicide arrests fell 77 %, showing almost no correlation between the violence in teens and the games or movies they partake in.  A heavy backlash was felt by the media community after the Columbine high school incident where enraged parents turned their angst against all that which the perpetrators identified, and anything that could be blamed(Sternheimer,13-17). Though it is easy to mistake a correlation between adolescent violence and the media they enjoy, upon further examination it is easy to see that the two are not mutually inclusive. It may be that troubled teens all identify with violent media not all violent media patrons are troubled teens. There is strange inconsistency in the policies of what is and is not "protected speech". Video games are deemed protected, where movies and most notably television are heavily restricted. The 8th circuit court of the United States upheld that states have no right to restrict the sale of "M" for mature rated games to minors, deeming such a restriction as unconstitutional(Browning). It is often claimed that it is not the American peoples "fault" that their children mature to be killers, all too often the stance is taken "it's the medias fault they corrupted my son" while this is an obvious case of just plain bad parenting its also highly untrue. Other nations enjoy the same box office block busters we do, most movies make it "across the pond" and one of the most violent movies in recent memory is an American adaptation of the hit thriller from Spain, "REC" or its American title Quarantine (Roger Moore). European nations as well as our brothers to the north have far fewer murders per year than us. America has the second worst overall  murder rate in the civilized world second only to Russia (Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems). The United States has its own unique set of problems; its social unrest and overall sense of confinement causes great social strain. It is not what we watch but why we partake in such vices that makes us a nation on the verge of social collapse.

Yours truly,
V