U.S. Kids Don't Understand First Amendment

l4m3z0r writes "This rather alarming article discusses a study of high-school students in which they were asked about censorship, protected speech, and other aspects of the first amendment. The results are extremely worrisome: "Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories." and this "Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.".."

Comments

Re:Yuk

[jimicus]

Our government seems to be under the impression that making something illegal will deter people who are already criminals from doing it.

What other kind of logic do you expect?

Re:Blame where blame is due

[Gadgetfreak]

I'm surprised you have enough friends to mod you "insightful" for that wonderful comment. (It was +4 when I started typing this.) NASCAR is a lot more complicated than you seem to think it is, and WalMart is kicking everyone's ass at capitalism. Whether or not you like it, there seem to be plenty of others who love it.

Thanks for continuing to prove that the USA is going down the drain simply because your ignorance is always someone else's fault.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Accuracy

[CrayzyJ]

It is highly likely in one form or another that Iraq was involved. there is much more to it than flying the planes: weapons, money, whatever, and even moral support all count as "involvement".

Interestingly enough...

[renderhead]

A majority of Americans wrongfully believe that a majority of Americans believe that Iraq was behind 9/11.

Okay, so I just made this statistic up, but since hardly anyone bothers to back the oft-quoted "Americans believe Iraq caused 9/11" statistic with sources, I figure I'm in good company.

Re:Interestingly enough...

[Homology]

Okay, so I just made this statistic up, but since hardly anyone bothers to back the oft-quoted "Americans believe Iraq caused 9/11" statistic with sources, I figure I'm in good company.

Here we go. From an interview (April 2003 ) vith Noam Chomsky , University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political activist :

Ramachandran :The idea that Iraq represents any kind of clear and present danger is, of course, without any substance at all.

Chomsky : Nobody pays any attention to that accusation, except, interestingly, the population of the United States.

In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The international polls show that support for the war is higher in the United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or Iran.

Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack, the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support the war.

As a /. geek I'm sure you now are able to Google for the actual polls yourself. And before you claim that Chomsky's number are made up, I suggest you actually learn more about the man.

Re:Accuracy

[vsprintf]

I used to play cello in Soviet orchestra, now I sell froggie pops

The people in your country must have strange tastes. Frozen amphibians, yum. ;)