In regards to yesterday’s letter from Jonathon Lutz, Jonathon, you are a senior in political science, yet you completely misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. You propose to silence and oppress Steve Skutnik, merely because his point of view differs from your own. Only in cases of speech that incites people to riot or fight, more commonly called fighting words, or cases where obvious defamation or extreme obscenity is present, is the freedom of speech considered to be violated or abused.

While you may dislike Skutnik’s libertarian point of view, that does not give you, nor anyone else, the right to censor him.

You also make several false assumptions in your rather weak argument. You assume that everyone agrees with you, and that is most certainly incorrect. I sir, for one, could not be any further from agreeing with you. You claim that questioning our political leaders and criticizing them is a threat to this country. The simple truth is, you are a far greater threat to liberty and freedom than Skutnik because you feel that his questioning of authority should be silenced. That is in fact the way things are done in many countries. Such countries also tend to be dictatorships, where people do not have the right to protest and disagree with their government. We do have that right in this country, Mr. Lotz, and I for one am disgusted by your proposal, which violates one of our most essential freedoms.

Skutnik is well within the limits of his freedom of speech. He has that right, as do all Americans. I pose but one question to you, Mr. Lotz: Where in the constitution are you guaranteed the right to silence others simply because you don’t like what they have to say?

Kurt Ferguson

Junior

Psychology