Here's the first column of the semester: archived here since The Snapper website isnt up and running just yet.

like the others, it is unedited. The sheep comment at the end was taken out...probably for the better.

You may have missed it, but CBS News last week reported that The First Amendment Center surveyed Americans this summer on what they thought of the first amendment, the most basic of freedoms. The results of this survey, which were designed to probe the public's willingness to have their civil liberties curtailed in the wake of September 11th, 2001, were shocking.
49% of Americans feel that the First Amendment goes too far. Nearly half of all Americans! Unreal! Apparently, it is an obstruction to the government's war on terror.
If that doesn't make your blood boil, I'll continue. Almost half of those surveyed felt that the media has been too aggressive in querying the government about the war on terror.
There's more: 48% of those surveyed felt that the government should have the freedom to monitor religious groups even if that monitoring infringed upon the religious freedoms and rights of that group. 42% said that the government should have more authority to monitor Muslims. There were also significant drops in the numbers of people who felt that newspapers should have the right to freely criticize. Even worse, 40% of the respondents favored restrictions on the academic freedom of professors to criticize the government's policies during war, with 22% of those respondents strongly supporting such measures.
Are Americans really that stupid? How on earth can they want to give up the most basic of all freedoms?
This isn't the first time that the first amendment has come under fire. In 1798, under the threat of war with France, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Acts curtailed free speech, and newspapers were shut down for publishing opinions against the government's policy. People went to jail for exercising their right to free speech. Ever since, censorship has reared its ugly head in World War I, where communists, socialists, pacifists, and pro-Germans alike were jailed under the Espionage Act. It wasn't until 1931 that the Supreme Court intervened by making it nearly impossible for the government to censor free speech. Even so, World War II bought back more censorship only this time; it was "voluntary."
It's happening again. Students at Ohio State University were threatened with arrest and expulsion from the University if any dissent was shown to the commencement speaker, who just happened to be George W. Bush. Dissent is an essential part of free speech. The White House Press Secretary has stated that people should watch what they say. The Attorney General ranted last December that public debate would "give ammunition to America's enemies"- in short, he equated civil liberties with aid to terrorists. Indeed, some interpretations of the new Patriot Act, passed in haste by a frightened and cowed Congress (some of whom did not even read the damn law--more on this next week), see certain forms of dissent and protest as "terrorism."
You should be enraged at your fellow Americans. I'd like to remind you that freedoms and liberties are not just given to us by the government. They are specifically mentioned and emphasized that these rights are the natural born rights of every single American man, woman, and child and nothing short of God can take them away. No one can take them away. It is my belief that suggesting that the first amendment, our most basic freedom, be curtailed for a little bit of security is the death knell of a free society. Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who give up liberty for a little bit of security deserve neither." I happen to agree with him.
Those who give up their rights are no better than sheep.