Freedom of Speech or Freedom to Hate

While researching a topic for our proposal paper, I came across a website that had a very interesting article titled Why Islam Should NOT Be Protected Under the US Constitution.

http://catchkevin.com/islam-not-protected/

Like any individual I was very interested in reading this articles argument as to why religious freedom should no longer be protected by the Constitution. In short the article did it's best job of interpreting the Constitution and interpreting The Qur'an, and overall it took a very Right Wing conservative approach in it interpretation of both documents. The article used fear to drum up a storm against Muslims, citing that Islam is "not" a region, but that it is a "totalitarian form of government seeking COMPLETE DOMINANCE". Author Kevin Lehmann, not only makes outrageous statements about Islam, he also does his best to back these statements with his OWN interpretation of the Constitution. When talking about rights being given to us by 'God', Lehmann explains, that 'God' gave these rights to us as Americans and therefore any outsider (Muslim) should not be granted these rights. I could talk more about the article but I feel if you read it, you will have your own comments to make about Mr. Lehmann's views on the constitution and Islam.

To make such a claims and statements about a religion is very ignorant and hateful, but this is the United States and everyone is granted the freedom to say whatever they damn well please.

Who needs the public?

Over the last few days on public radio they have discussed Mayor's new city budget, but was most interesting was the lack of public involvement. In August of 2012, Mayor Emanuel hosted a few town hall meetings open to the public to discuss the cities budget, but these meetings turned sour fast. Throughout the meeting Emanuel was greeted with boos over his proposed budget plans. Most individuals would attempt to figure out why these individuals were booing, by asking what specifically in the budget they disagreed with, but not Mayor Emanuel.
Emanuel, like a few politicians these days, struggles with the notion that people are questioning his decisions. Dick Simpson, a former independent alderman put it best about Emanuel; "Rahm is good on transparency in terms of putting things on the internet...He’s not so good on community participation and democracy".
 For the last 30 years the city of Chicago has held open public meetings, to allow the community to get involved on how the cities budget should divided, but this year Rahm Emanuel has no more to these meetings. This notion that an elected leader struggles to keep the community and public involved is nothing new to this country, but to see an elected official change a process that is over 30 years old is quite shocking.
Whether you are for or against Emanuel, is not important, but to see an elected official kick the public out of "open public meetings" is quite disturbing. Emanuel is putting his job first, before the city, which unfortunately is nothing new in the city of Chicago.
By holding closed door private meetings with selected groups and individuals, the Mayor is showing his lack of faith in the people that have elected him. In a country where people like to know what is going on in their city, Emanuel has chosen to shut the most important people out, the public.

http://www.newstips.org/2012/10/public-left-out-of-emanuels-budget/

The Great Debaters

This past week we were re-introduced to our two presidential candidates in the first presidential debate. I am the type of individual that follows our countries politics, but I wont pick sides. We are given a great opportunity by having the freedom to debate and give our own personal opinions, but this past weeks debate was very disappointing. Like most people I have heard all of the pundits analysis of the debate, about who won and lost, who this debate was more important too, and so on. I was disappointed, because I felt what we watched was not a debate.
President Obama, seemed very disinterested but I felt he did a good job of explaining what his plans were for the upcoming for years. Mitt Romney on the other hand was much more engaged, in the sense that he seemed to want to be there. His responses on the other hand were  much more predetermined, and at times I felt he wasn't answering the questions being asked, especially anything he was asked to rebuttal. Overall, I felt this 1st debate was very disappointing, because it was too much of a predetermined question and answer. Hopefully the 2nd town hall debate is much more reminiscent of what a great debate is.

Hate Begets Hate...

Although I was unable to attend Deepa Kumar's speech in response to the book, Islamaphobia. I did get the chance to read a few of out classmates responses to her speech, and this has given me an understanding of what she was trying to discuss.
I was not shocked with what my classmates had shared about Kumar's speech about the Muslim enemy/threat. In this country our media has portrayed Muslim's as the enemy to our so called "Christian beliefs". But, our country is not the only culprit in this idea of using fear to create an enemy that may or may not be their. My father is from Iran, and he has told me that like America, Iran has made christian idea's and beliefs the enemy/threat to the Islamic beliefs of the middle east. By 'creating' these fears about one another, we have made the earth a very cynical and dark place.

Power of Thought.....

Before answering the second blog prompt, I chose to read through a handful of my classmates answers to the question. I felt by doing this I was not only getting a view of what others believed a public intellectual is but how they have influenced individuals. Reading these answers helped me come up with a few questions. Who is a public intellectual? How have they influenced me? These were the two questions I tried to answer when coming up with at least one individual that I not only consider a public intellectual, but an individual that has influenced my views on different issues and or events.
For me stand up comedians, are public intellectuals I have felt most influenced by. Whether they are black (Pryor, Rock, Chappelle, etc.), white (Ron White, Rogan, Burr, Loui, etc), hispanic (Francisco, Iglesias, etc.) or other, which sounds unintentionally racist. These individuals have helped to influence my views on politics, gender, and life in general. Through stand up, comedians are able to express their views on a multitude of issues. Stand-up it self is a great forum for opinion, although only one individual at a time is on stage many different opinions are expressed by many different individuals at any time. Comedians do a great job of informing people about social issues and how they affect them, and by doing so they allow you to form your own opinion on an issue. Different opinions allow everyone to feel like they apart of something bigger than themselves, as we discussed in class like opinion tends to draw people together. 

Death of the Public Intellectual?

Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals was a very interesting critique on the lost art of public intellectuals and the impact that they have had, and should continue to have on the public in regards to making informed decisions.

Before I even read Posner's views on public intellectuals, I came into it with my own view of what i believed a public intellectual to be. In a more medieval time, I felt a public intellectual was an individual who stood on a crate preaching to the masses their beliefs about how we the people must be critical of people in power (people making decisions). After reading Posner's view on public intellectuals it seems almost impossible to have public intellectuals. Not because people are incapable of being an intellectual, but because everyone has a platform to speak and preach their beliefs to the public (internet). This is not a bad thing, this just means we may need to redefine what it means to be a public intellectual.

We The Public

The definition of public life is the public service of an elected or appointed government official (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/public+life). Knowing what public life is, it allows us as individual Americans to critique the work that those we have elected have done up to this point and time. As I stated in my comment in regards to Dr. Macek's prompt, I felt that people in my generation do not take enough ownership in understanding politics in this country. By not getting involved, or at the very least having an understanding about how politics in this country work, we are letting our politicians off the hook in terms of public discourse. Politicians tend to say what people want to hear, as opposed to the hard truth, such as our economy is in the toilet and we must find ways of turning it around. By letting politicians off the hook and not holding them accountable, we are making the realms of the 'public sphere' less meaningful. For the public sphere to be meaningful, we must hold our politicians to a very high standard, and by doing so we will be reaping the benefits of meaningful and important discussions and debates out of different public sphere's. As individuals we need to pay more attention to politics not only in the United States but around the world, because at this point in our lives 'ignorance is not bliss'.