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Date Posted: 07:05:57 06/18/07 Mon
Author: Issenguel
Subject: Peer Editing to Antonio de Oliveira - Issenguel

Antônio de Oliveira Sette Câmara
>INGLÊS - PRODUÇÃO DE TEXTOS 2007/01 - PROF. ADRIANA
>TENUTA
>TASK 4, SECOND VERSION - ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY
>Theme: Language related to culture.
>
>FREE SPEECH?
>
>I grew up during the military dictatorship in Brasil
>(1964-85), and there was a general climate of fear.
>You could not express your thoughts freely, artists
>and the media were censored and one could not freely
>publish one’s opinions if they diverged from the
>official line.(Is this your thises statiment?) Today’s heroes are those who dared to
>resist censorship and repression at that time.
>
>Now we are proud of the fact that we live in a
>democratic country, governed by a constitution and the
>rule of law, a democracy with all the freedoms we(wvf) are
>used to expect in this regime, such as freedom as
>speech and opinion, guaranteed in our Constitution’s
>chapter on Individual Rights.
>
>But is this true?
>
>In the USA, there is a Nazi Party (nazis in the US!)
>as well as a Communist Party and a White Nationalist
>Party (racists!), besides all kinds of crazy parties,
>religions and associations. The US Constitution’s
>First Amendment says: “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...”. That means
>lawmakers cannot even consider, examine or discuss,
>much less vote, any law or proposition dealing with
>these matters. This is what they call “constitutional
>protection of free speech”.
>
>In Brasil, we have many well-intentioned laws devised
>to protect members of minorities from verbal abuse or
>prejudice. But the problem is that they infringe on
>freedom of speech and opinion and constrain freedom of
>the press. An ordinary misunderstanding in a public
>place could land you in jail without parole for the
>crime of racism, homophobia or some other kind of
>discrimination, while a murderer can get parole and
>await trial in freedom. Doesn’t this contradict the
>ideas of freedom of thought and expression?
>
>You might say none of us wants to grant anyone the
>freedom to express, for example, racist opinions or
>sexual, ethnic, gender or any other kind of prejudice,
>or to start a Nazi or Fascist Party, or to publish
>Hitler’s infamous “Mein Kampf”, etc.
>
>Don’t get me wrong! I agree with you! I myself would
>not like to be even remotely associated with any of
>these groups. But this is exactly the point: this
>point of view (that we should restrict “wrong
>opinions”, “violent thoughts”, etc.) has often been
>used as the very foundation of censorship. This same
>rationale has been used in the past, here in Brasil,
>to forbid the publication of books and articles by
>Communist, leftist, gay and feminist authors, for
>example, and to censor films, plays and other artistic
>manifestations. How can we be sure it won’t happen
>again?
>
>If we give someone (say, the Government or the justice
>system) the power to define what is racism or
>prejudice (note that this definition can be very
>subjective), we cannot ensure this will not be used
>AGAINST our freedom to speak our minds. After all, HOW
>CAN WE MAKE “RIGHT THINKING” MANDATORY without
>infringing upon the very liberties we must preserve?
>Who is going to define what is “right thinking”? That
>seems contradictory.
>
>Why did the American Founding Fathers enshrine freedom
>of expression in such a inmovable way in the American
>Constitution?
>
>It looks like freedom has a price, which is tolerance,
>that most praised (and maybe the least understood) of
>civic virtues. Tolerance means TOLERATING THOSE WHO
>ARE INTOLERANT IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM, so as not to
>restrict freedom. It would be too easy to “tolerate”
>only those who think like ourselves... (WW)bot this is not
>tolerance at all.
>
>Real democracy has to live with these contradictions.
>In fact, democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but
>still not perfectly realized anywhere. We must keep
>fighting for it, for, as Churchill stated in his
>famous phrase, "Democracy is the worst form of
>government, except for all other forms that have been
>tried..."

Dear Classmate, As I could see your text presents an intersting topic but it is too long. What I probably know is that there is a limit for our texts, they must have beteewn four and six paragraphs. when I was reading it I lost myself in the midle of the text,I think, sometimes you lead your discussion to a different topic" Democracy". By the way, it is an argumentative text. You have presented many supporting sentences.

I hope my point of view could help you.
Thanks and good luck

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