What Has Become of the First Amendment?

NOTE: Please don't read this if you aren't in the mood for something serious and political. I promise to make my blogs in the future more lighthearted. This was just something I have been thinking about for the past few days.

We (well, not me right now), live in a country that was essentially built on certain "rights". One of those rights being, the right to free speech. But, when is free speech not a good thing? Does there come a point when someone's right to free speech is harming others? If so, what do we do about this? In the past week I have come across two very different stories that evoked two different emotions in me, but they both beg me to ask...is free (and I mean completely free) speech a good thing?

Story Number One - NYC Cabbie Who Runs Anti-American Islamic Website...

It is hard for me to understand how people can persecute others who are different than them. It is even harder for me to understand how they can do it in the name of their god. I could never serve a god who told me to kill, rape or beat someone for such things as being from a certain country, being a woman, being homosexual, believing in another god and more. On a website that an American citizen made (though I notice he is referred to as "American-born" in the article, and not a citizen), this guy mocks Americans killed my muslims. But what is even more baffling than this, is that this guy is protected under the first amendment! He can keep posting all the stuff he wants and no one can do anything about it!

Story Number Two - Student Abortion Art

This story baffles my mind so much I don't even know where to begin. This girl's art project is a slap in the face so so many people (in a nut shell, she artificially inseminated herself and then self aborted using "herbs"; she did this numerous times). People's lives are hell when they go thru miscarriages and abortions, but she is making a light of the subject. She is even putting the evidence on display for people to go look at...what part of that is not wrong? But what really go me was the comments people posted about this story. The interesting thing is that people who are Yale alumni, artists and even pro-choicers are speaking out against what this girl has done. Of course, there are crazy people that back her, but that is definitely the minority. Here are a couple comments I grabbed from Yale's Daily News site:

This entire event serves to remind us of what post-modern "art" actually has become... an anti-social behavior that has become intolerable, insenstive, and inhumane. Of course the University is concerned... it should be... there are many of us educated people, and alumni, who believe funding should be cut until the institutions return to education and abandon their intentions to destroy the very fabric of the society in which they thrive. The art faculty and deans should be held accountable for their encouragement of such projects, just like they would be if they held a real professional position in society. The reason they are at Yale is that they could not survive elsewhere.

I'm very pro-choice, but I think the YDN needs to stop calling Shvarts' actions "miscarriages." The term miscarriage implies an accidental, natural event, as well as an intent to carry the pregnancy to term. It's clear that Shvarts' actions do not fit either of these criteria.

While I pity this poor misguided person, a much larger shame here belongs to Yale. In their fervent attempt to make this whole thing "disappear", they take it upon themselves to state that this is performance art, and, had it been real, would have raised concerns about the student's physical and mental health. Guess what, Yale? What you have here is the DEFINITION of someone with a mental illness, regardless of what is true or false.