Freedom Of Speech...Unless

As I sit here reading through the amendments to the U.S. Constitution one thing jumps out at me in the First Amendment. Here's how it reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. The conundrum here is that I don't see where it is written “unless the speech or the press offends someone.”

Seems anymore our freedom of speech has deteriorated from its original purpose. Maybe that's one reason our communication skills have deteriorated as well. We are constantly on guard fearing we will say something that will offend someone. It's come to the point that I am leery of saying, “It's a nice day” for fear that the person I'm saying it to has had a horrible day and can think about nothing other than how much he or she would like to silence this Polly-anna-ish idiot who thinks it's a great day.

We are fearful of saying anything about race, color, religion, politics, abortion, sexual orientation, school sports mergers, county commissioners, bison, marijuana, Indian reservations, governors, congress in general and presidents in particular.

Men are afraid to tell a woman co-worker that she looks nice or tell her 'that's a nice dress' or even recognize that she's had her hair done for fear of a sexual harassment suit. And the endearments hon, sweetie, darlin', sugar are definitely no-no's when talking man to woman. (It's OK however for a waitress to call her male customers by those same pet names in hopes that it will induce the patron to dig deeper into his pockets when it comes time to figure out the tip).

That said, could the following be an editorial, or opinion piece of the future?

“Hello readers. It's a nice day ... or maybe it isn't. My topic today will be on .....

Get it?

That's it for now folks. Thanks for listening.